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The Dappled World – A Study of the Boundaries of Science: Difference between revisions
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Which (certainly to the extent this book purports to be aimed at the popular market, and probably even where it doesn’t) is a large part of the problem. | Which (certainly to the extent this book purports to be aimed at the popular market, and probably even where it doesn’t) is a large part of the problem. | ||
Perhaps in feeling the need to prove her credentials, Cartwright not only chooses highly arcane, technical and therefore, to readers like me, obscure examples, but then expounds them in mind-numbing, [[Greeks|Greek]]-alphabet fetishising, detail. The level of assumed knowledge to follow the worked examples in physics and econometrics is too high certainly for the mass market, but also I suspect for many professional philosophers. While I’m not one of those, I’ve read enough professional philosophy in this field to know that I ought to be able to keep up with most of it, and that she might have done a better job of keeping me along for the ride than she actually did here. | Perhaps in feeling the need to prove her credentials, Cartwright not only chooses highly arcane, technical and therefore, to readers like me, obscure examples, but then expounds them in mind-numbing, [[Greeks|Greek]]-alphabet-fetishising, detail. The level of assumed knowledge to follow the worked examples in physics and econometrics is too high certainly for the mass market, but also I suspect for many professional philosophers. While I’m not one of those, I’ve read enough professional philosophy in this field to know that I ought to be able to keep up with most of it, and that she might have done a better job of keeping me along for the ride than she actually did here. | ||
Nor is Cartwright an elegant writer. The concepts she is asking the reader to accept are radical, and whilst I thought they were pretty clever and — for the part where I could keep up — compelling, they’re not well expounded, assuming as they do a familiarity with Cartwright’s earlier work which it really isn’t safe to assume. A greater faculty for expounding difficult concepts — such as that possessed by a {{author|Daniel Dennett}}<ref>A philosopher who otherwise suffers in comparison</ref> - would have been an advantage here. Cartwright’s is pretty leaden prose. | Nor is Cartwright an elegant writer. The concepts she is asking the reader to accept are radical, and whilst I thought they were pretty clever and — for the part where I could keep up — compelling, they’re not well expounded, assuming as they do a familiarity with Cartwright’s earlier work which it really isn’t safe to assume. A greater faculty for expounding difficult concepts — such as that possessed by a {{author|Daniel Dennett}}<ref>A philosopher who otherwise suffers in comparison</ref> - would have been an advantage here. Cartwright’s is pretty leaden prose. | ||