This indispensable new edition brings Chalmers' popular text up to date with contemporary trends and confirms its status as the best introductory textbook on the philosophy of science.

Over the last 25 years this account to dethrone empiricist thought has become both a bestseller and a standard university text with translations into fifteen languages.

This revised and extended edition offers a concise and illuminating treatment of major developments in the field over the last two decades, with the same accessible style which ensured the popularity of previous editions. Of particular importance is the examination of Bayesianism and the new experimentalism, as well as new chapters on the nature of scientific laws and recent trends in the realism versus anti-realism debate.


"Crisp, lucid and studded with telling examples… As a handy guide to recent alarums and excursions (in the philosophy of science) I find this book vigorous, gallant and useful."

New Scientist

A distinguished economist traces the history of nine American ethnic groups--the Irish, the Germans, the Jews, the Italians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Blacks, the Puerto Ricans, and the Mexicans--in order to explain their varied experiences in adapting to American society.