Human Nature and the Limits of Science - Hardcover

Dupre, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199248060 ISBN 13: 9780199248063

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2002

Synopsis

John Dupré warns that our understanding of human nature is being distorted by two faulty and harmful forms of pseudo-scientific thinking. Not just in the academic world but in everyday life, we find one set of experts who seek to explain the ends at which humans aim in terms of evolutionary theory, while the other set uses economic models to give rules of how we act to achieve those ends. Dupré demonstrates that these theorists' explanations do not work and that, if taken seriously, their theories tend to have dangerous social and political consequences. For these reasons, it is important to resist scientism: an exaggerated conception of what science can be expected to do for us. Dupré restores sanity to the study of human nature by pointing the way to a proper understanding of humans in the societies that are our natural and necessary environments. Anyone interested in science and human life will enjoy this book--unless they are its targets.

About this title

About the Author:

John Dupre is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Exeter. He was formerly at Stanford University and Birkbeck College, London.

Review:

"Excellent, clear, and helpful"--Mary Midgley, The Scientific and Medical Network Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0199248060
• ISBN 13: 9780199248063
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 212