Abstract

The author of this book has undertaken an ambitious task, namely, an attempt to formulate a new and comprehensive framework for the philosophical interpretation of science. Among other things it is his intention to move philosophy of science beyond the Popper-Lakatos-Kuhn-Feyerabend disputes over the growth of science, especially the questions of the rationality and purported incommensurability of these historical changes. These disputes had, in turn, replaced the earlier, more formal and synchronic analyses of science which had dominated the philosophy of science from the days of the Vienna Circle up to about the middle 1960's. Pandit's new framework for the philosophy of science attempts to preserve the worthwhile components of both of these traditions, albeit in a quite modified way, by evolving their discussion into a higher level of organization. This latter feature invites a self-referential critique of the book, but such would be too extensive for the present review.