Recipes for Science

Angela Potochnik is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Public Engagement with Science at the University of Cincinnati, USA. Matteo Colombo is Assistant Professor in the Tilburg Center for Logic, Ethics, and Philosophy of Science, and in the Department of Philosophy at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. Cory Wright is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Graduate Studies at California State University Long Beach, USA.

List of Figures; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Science and Your Everyday Life; Chapter 1. What is Science?; 1.1 The Importance of Science; 1.2 Defining Science; 1.3 Recipes for Science; Chapter 2. Experiments and Studies; 2.1 Experiment: Connecting Hypotheses to Observations; 2.2 The Perfectly Controlled Experiment; 2.3 Experimental and Non-Experimental Methods; Chapter 3. Models and Modeling; 3.1 Models in Science; 3.2 Varieties of Models; 3.3 Learning from Models; Chapter 4. Patterns of Interference; 4.1 Deductive Reasoning; 4.2 Deductive Reasoning in Hypothesis-Testing; 4.3 Inductive and Abductive Reasoning; 5. Statistics and Probability; 5.1 The Roles of Statistics and Probability; 5.2 Basic Probability Theory; 5.3 Descriptive Statistics; Chapter 6. Statistical Inference; 6.1 Generalizing from Descriptive Statistics; 6.2 Using Statistics to Test Hypotheses; 6.3 A Different Approach to Statistical Inference; Chapter 7. Causal Reasoning; 7.1 What is Causation?; 7.2 Testing Causal Hypotheses; 7.3 Causal Modeling; Chapter 8. Explanations, Theories, and Values; 8.1 Understanding the World; 8.2 Theories and Theory Change; 8.3 Science, Society, and Values; Glossary; References; Index