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Philip Kitcher is John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. His many books include Living with Darwin (2007), Science in a Democratic Society (2011), and, most recently, The Seasons Alter: How to Save Our Planet in Six Acts (2017), with Evelyn Fox Keller.
Science is always undertaken from a definite point of view, a new book concedes. But it enlarges our knowledge of the world through the interplay of different perspectives.
The “scientific method” of high school textbooks does not exist. But there are scientific methods, and they play an essential role in making scientific knowledge reliable.
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