On Science

This book is the most interesting in the 'Thinking in Action' series and forms part of an increasingly articulated critique of scientism. The author, a physicist by training, ranges widely over the history of ideas, relating the origins of science to magic and producing some most interesting bifurcating diagrams to explain the relationship of various kinds of magic and types of spiritual belief. He considers the origins of mathematics and its relation to science and gives a good tour of quantum theory before looking at science and the mind and at science and society. His last chapter introduces the notion of science and sensibility, a qualification of the word consciousness and one that permeates the whole of the humanities. Science need to recognise its complementarity to art and literature rather than lay claim to its territory.