The Art of the Soluble (Routledge Revivals)

By: P.B. Medawar

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Synopsis: First published in 1967, The Art of the Soluble presents collection of essays giving the views of the author on creativity and originality in science and on the logical connections between creative and critical thought. It is also a pioneering study of the ethology of the scientists – of the anatomy of scientific behaviour. Is it true that scientists are detached or dispassionate observers of Nature? What underlies the scientist’s deep concern over the matters of priority? How did a class distinction grow up between pure and applied science? By what criteria do scientists value their own and their colleagues work? Some of the answers grow out of author’s four critical studies of Teilhard de Chardin, Arthur Koestler, D’Arcy Thompson and Herbert Spencer and the book as whole is knit together by a major essay Hypothesis and Imagination, on the nature of scientific reasoning. P. B. Medawar, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1960, did not see science as a book-keeping of Nature but, on the contrary, as the greatest of human adventures. This book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of philosophy of Science, natural science, and philosophy in general