Higher Speculations

aw_product_id: 
40882365784
merchant_image_url: 
merchant_category: 
Books
search_price: 
32.49
book_author_name: 
Helge Kragh
book_type: 
Paperback
publisher: 
Oxford University Press
published_date: 
26/02/2015
isbn: 
9780198726371
Merchant Product Cat path: 
Books > Science, Technology & Medicine > Mathematics & science > Science: general issues > History of science
specifications: 
Helge Kragh|Paperback|Oxford University Press|26/02/2015
Merchant Product Id: 
9780198726371
Book Description: 
Throughout history, people have tried to construct 'theories of everything': highly ambitious attempts to understand nature in its totality. This account presents these theories in their historical contexts, from little-known hypotheses from the past to modern developments such as the theory of superstrings, the anthropic principle, and ideas of many universes, and uses them to problematize the limits of scientific knowledge. Do claims to theories of everything belong to science at all? Which are the epistemic standards on which an alleged scientific theory of the universe - or the multiverse - is to be judged? Such questions are currently being discussed by physicists and cosmologists, but rarely within a historical perspective. This book argues that these questions have a history and that knowledge of the historical development of 'higher speculations' may inform and qualify the current debate on the nature and limits of scientific explanation.

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