Essays exploring the nature of science include discussions of topics, such as psychoanalysis, evolution, genetics, and the role of imagination in scientific discoveries

Pluto's Republic: Incorporating The Art of the Soluble and Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought

Science & Math

Medawar, Peter

History & Philosophy

Oxford University Press

Essays exploring the nature of science include discussions of topics, such as psychoanalysis, evolution, genetics, and the role of imagination in scientific discoveries

Pluto's Republic: Incorporating The Art of the Soluble and Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought (Oxford Paperbacks)

The threat and the glory: Reflections on science and scientists

Sir Peter Medawar, as his many admirers know, was not only a great scientist but a great writer. The creative energy that earned him the 1960 Noble Prize for Medecine for his pathbreaking work in immunology also fueled his many and varied writings. Books such as Pluto's Republic, The Limits of Science, and The Hope of Progress (to name but a few) made the ever-changing world of modern science accessible to non-specialists, and have since become small classics of their kind. As Lewis Thomas writes in his foreword to this posthumous collection, "some of the wisest remarks of the twentieth century" come from the pen of Peter Medawar. The Threat and the Glory explores the twin nature of modern science; its ability to inspire both hope and fear in its professional and lay observers. Medawar, of course, says it best when he writes of science's ability to make the seemingly impossible a reality, "scientists may exult in the glory, but in the middle of the twentieth century the reaction of ordinary people is more often to cower at the threat." This theme runs throughout this collection of writings which cover a characteristically wide range of topics: genetic engineering, evolution, philosophy, creativity, scientific fraud, the medical community, and attitudes toward death. Ranging in tone from these serious reflections on the nature of science to more lighthearted pieces such as "Son of Stroke"--a guide for long-term hospital patients based on his own experience as the victim of a cerebral hemorrhage--The Threat and the Glory entertains as much as it educates. Selected by his close friend David Pyke, these essays--some previously unpublished, many appearing in book form for the first time--show Medawar to have been not only a tireless truth-seeker, but also a merciless debunker of myths. Reading Medawar, we come to understand and accept the indispensable role of science in our world. Witty, incisive, and above all compassionate, The Threat and the Glory will delight those who are familiar with Medawar's writing, and will be a special treat for those who are not.

The Threat and the Glory: Reflections on Science and Scientists

Sir Peter Medawar was not only a Nobel prize-winning immunologist but also a wonderful writer about science and scientists. Described by the Washington Post as a "genuinely brilliant popularizer" of science, his essays are remarkable for their clarity and wit. This entertaining selection presents the very best of his writing with a new Foreword by Stephen Jay Gould, one of his greatest admirers. The wide range of subjects include Howard Florey and penicillin, J. B.S. Haldane, whom he describes as a "with-knobs-on variant of us all," and, in the title essay, scientific fraud involving laboratory mice. There is Medawar's defence of James Watson against the storm of criticism that greeted the publication of The Double Helix. A merciless debunker of myths, he reveals the nonsense to be discovered in psychoanalytic interpretations of Darwin's illness and launches devastating attacks on Arthur Koestler, IQ psychologists, and, most notably, Teilhard de Chardin. He raises questions about the nature of scientific endeavour--he famously defined science as the art of the soluble--and a common theme is his desire to communicate the importance of science to the widest possible audience.

The Strange Case Of The Spotted Mice: And Other Classic Essays on Science

Oxford University Press, U.S.A.

The Limits of Science

"Science," writes Sir Peter Medawar, "is incomparably the most successful enterprise human beings have ever engaged upon." In this brief, brilliant book the Nobel laureate explores the nature and limitations of scientific pursuit. The three essays included touch on some of the largest questions known to man: Can science determine the existence of God? Is there one "scientific method" by which all the secrets of the universe can be discovered? In "An Essay on Scians" (an early spelling of "science"), Medawar examines the process of scientific inquiry. Debunking the common belief that science is inductively structured, he claims that great leaps of imagination are required to determine the laws of nature and likens the process of scientific hypothesis to the creative acts of poets and artists. The question posed in "Can Scientific Discovery Be Premeditated?" is answered with a firm no. Sir Peter stresses the role of luck in the history of science and cites as examples of un-premeditated discoveries those of X-rays, HLA polymorphism, and the nature of the disease myasthenia gravis. In the title essay, Medawar distinguishes between "transcendent" questions, which are better left to religion, literature, and metaphysics, and questions about the organization and structure of the material universe. With regard to the latter, he concludes, there are no limits to the possibilities of scientific achievement. "This is science's greatest glory," writes Medawar, "for it entails that everything which is possible in principle can be done if the intention to do it is sufficiently resolute and long sustained."

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Hope of Progress

London: Wildwood 1974

Memoir of a Thinking Radish (Transaction Large Print Books)

Biographies & Memoirs

Isis Large Print Books

El extraño caso de los ratones moteados (Spanish Edition)

Crítica.

La amenaza y la gloria

Gedisa

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