Book

Description

Philosophy of Science: Questions and Wonder Can science explain everything? Does our existence have meaning? In a philosophy of science course unlike any other, doctoral students in biology, computer science, mathematics, civil engineering and metallurgy were invited to confront the oldest questions of philosophy, in their own words. Why are we here? What is real? Is mathematics discovered or invented? How do we decide what is true? Is morality discovered or created? What makes us human? Their answers, gathered in this book, are rigorous and personal, scientific and sometimes spiritual, often in agreement and sometimes in lively disagreement. They draw on Plato and Kant, Ibn Sīnā and Popper, and just as often on the laboratory, the classroom and lived experience. Together they show what happens when young scientists are given the freedom to question the foundations of their own work. Organised into six themes (Science, the Universe, the Immaterial World, Knowledge and Truth, Morality and Humanity) and closing with a reflection on the joy of scientific work, this book is both a testimony and a method: an invitation to teach, and to live, science with judgement, humility and wonder.