MODERN SCIENCE AND THE NATURE OF LIFE

.....""the essential nature of science, as typified by biology, and of life, as explained by science""- this theme is resounding, all the more so because Beak hopes to relieve the prevailing sense of ""cultural crisis"" caused by ignorance about science and the false expectations it has prompted. The key to Beck's approach is that science is embedded in tentativeness, in plodding experiment, in a method whose rationale comes from Nagel, Reichenbach, Feigl; and the condition of any lay harmony with modern science is uncertainty and living within the continual certainty of uncertainty. In expounding the history of biological thought and where the biologist stands today on such crucial questions as the study of cancer Beck gets away from pure intellectualism. These sections seem, on the whole, better- they give the book a missing enthusiasm, a joy and wonder which are also at the heart of science.