This brief, affordable text helps students to think critically, using examples from the weird claims and beliefs that abound in our culture to demonstrate the sound evaluation of any claim. It explains step-by-step how to sort through reasons, evaluate evidence, and tell when a claim is likely to be true. The emphasis is neither on debunking nor on advocating specific assertions, but on explaining principles of critical thinking that enable readers to evaluate claims for themselves. The authors focus on types (...) of logical arguments and proofs, making How to Think about Weird Things a versatile supplement for logic, critical thinking, philosophy of science, or any other science appreciation courses. (shrink)

"There are books—few and far between—which carefully, delightfully, and genuinely turn your head inside out. This is one of them. It ranges over some central issues in Western philosophy and begins the long overdue job of giving us a radically new account of meaning, rationality, and objectivity."—Yaakov Garb, _San Francisco Chronicle_.

The logic of discovery is nothing but the conceptualization of the rationality of scientific inquiry; yet each of the major logics of discovery - inductivism, hypothetico-deductivism, and retroductionism - has failed to conceptualize it. The author argues that the interrogative approach to scientific inquiry is one of the most promising alternatives, and he formulates a unique interrogative model which conceptualizes the rationality of scientific inquiry.

This text focuses on basic topics and problems of logic, as well as decision theory and topics related to the philosophy of science and statistics. Topics covered include inductive inference; causal inferrence; probability calculus; expected value; confirmation theory; the justification of induction; the riddle of induction and theories of probability. It also includes coverage, in both historical and contemporary terms, of the traditional problem of induction raised by Hume.

Originally published in 1969. This book explains what is wrong with the traditional methodology of "inductive" reasoning and shows that the alternative scheme of reasoning associated with Whewell, Pierce and Popper can give the scientist a useful insight into the way he thinks.