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Tables of Contents for What Science Is and How It Works
Chapter/Section Title
Page #
Page Count
Preface
ix
Prologue What Is Science?
3
6
PART I. EXPLORING THE FRONTIERS OF SCIENCE: HOW NEW DISCOVERIES ARE MADE IN THE SCIENCES
9
58
A Bird's Eye View: The Many Routes to Scientific Discovery
11
15
Nature's Jigsaw: Looking for Patterns As a Key to Discovery
26
9
New Vistas: Expanding Our World with Instrumentation
35
7
Close, But No Cigar: Discrepancies As a Trigger to Discovery
42
10
Ingredients for a Revolution: Thematic Imagination, Precise Measurements, and the Motions of the Planets
52
15
PART II. MENTAL TACTICS: SOME DISTINCTIVELY SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES TO THE WORLD
67
56
A Universe In a Bottle: Models, Modeling, and Successive Approximation
69
20
Thinking Straight: Evidence, Reason, and Critical Evaluation
89
18
The Numbers Game: Uses of Quantitative Reasoning
107
16
PART III. LARGER QUESTIONS: THE CONTEXT OF SCIENCE
123
92
Ultimate Questions: Science and Religion
125
8
More Practical Questions: Science and Society
133
12
Difficult and Important Questions: Science, Values, and Ethics
145
13
Questions of Authenticity: Science, Pseudoscience, and How to Tell the Difference
158
16
Contentious Questions: The Shadowy Borderlands of Science
174
15
Very Abstract Questions: The Philosophy of Science
189
18
Questions of Legitimacy: The Postmodern Critique of Science
207
8
PART IV. COMMON GROUND: SOME UNIFYING CONCEPTS IN THE SCIENCES
215
88
Fleas and Giants: Some Fascinating Insights about Area, Volume, and Size
217
13
The Edge of the Abyss: Order and Disorder in the Universe
230
22
Riding Blake's Tiger: Symmetry in Science, Art, and Mathematics
252
22
The Straight and Narrow: Linear Dependence in the Sciences
274
11
The Limits of the Possible: Exponential Growth and Decay
285
10
In the Loop: Feedback, Homeostasis, and Cybernetics
295
8
Epilogue So, What Is Science?
303
2
Index
305