Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
The University of Chicago Press and The History of Science Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to Isis.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 92.238.122.108 on Thu, 18 Jun 2015 11:40:40 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
386
The introduction is a brief essay on the sights, and rich in challenges to favored
state of the art of history of geology, which dicta about science (witness the title).
Porter sees as thriving in the last thirty While the topics of discussion are at the
years because of its increasing separation level of science-in-general, the content of
from geology: "The great transformation in the essays captures the texture of workathe history of geology in the last generation day science. We find the untidy models for
has been the decline of canonizing and the energy levels in the ground state of
anathematizing history." This view is carbon (essay 3), a review of the six or
somewhat surprising since nearly every au- more distinct accounts of quantum dampthor credited with this transformation is a ing (4), a sketch of two current methods for
practicing geologist.
dealing with the small-signals properties of
The strength of this work is in its con- amplifiers and a lengthy discussion of the
venience and its thorough coverage of the calculations for exponential decay (5), an
recent literature on British geology in the overview of the (properly) quantum treatpast two centuries. Porter maintains "that ment of the laser (8), and detailed remarks
geology as an organized, connected science on the optical theorem of scattering theory
called by that name is not yet two hundred (essay 9).
While each of these essays contains mayears old." Of course the same could be
said of physics or chemistry. Considered terial relevant to the particular discussion,
within his framework, the bibliography is their cumulative impact is in aid of a genthorough and on the whole well chosen. It eral, unifying theme. It is the picture of an
is divided into ten chapters, from bibliog- "untidy" universe, a world of distinct parraphy and reference works (26 items) to ticulars whose individualities lend them"Geology, Culture, and the Arts" (22 selves to a "scientific" treatment only by
items, nearly all from the last decade). The employing partial analogies, crude generlengthier chapters, on specialist histories, alizations, and rough conceptual approxicognate sciences, studies by area, and bio- mations. The articulation of this picture
graphical studies, are appropriately subdi- sets up one of the author's central, and
vided. The work also includes chapters on provocative, claims; namely, that working
general histories and geology and religion. explanatory methods and goals, which call
An excellent index makes all of this acces- for the use of fundamental laws, actually
sible.
preclude the literal truth of those laws. A
The bibliography and the index are detailed look at real explanations, coupled
printed in a reduced typescript but so care- with a standard antirealist line (to the effect
fully spaced as to make it not only legible that inference from explanatory success to
but pleasing to the eye. The inclusion of the truth of the explanatory story is, in
fifteen pages of plates after the introduction general, fallacious), supports the author in
is a tribute to the taste of all those con- concluding that fundamental laws are not
nected with the production of this little some sort of "grand truths about nature."
book. After all, why are we students of hisPerhaps this is a species of antirealism,
tory if not for the delight afforded by such but it is not grounded in any general skepillustrations as these-and Porter's first- ticism about science, or knowledge. For as
rate explanatory captions?
strongly as the author is committed to the
CECILJ. SCHNEER untruth of basic laws, just as strongly does
she come out in favor of the reality of
causes and for the truth of causal expla* Philosophy of Science
nations as a condition of their acceptability. Thus insofar as we accept the move
from an observable effect to an unobservNancy Cartwright. How the Laws of able cause,
say, from the vapor trails in a
Physics Lie. 221 pp., figs., indexes. Ox- cloud chamber to the electrons that
proford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford
duce the trails, as providing a causal exUniversity Press, 1983. $22.50 (cloth);
planation, the author thinks we must also
$9.95 (paper).
accept the reality of the unobservable
The book consists of nine essays, one cause, here the electron. The focus on caucompletely new and the other eight sality, and the commitment to a causal
emended from essays already published or nexus, is very strong, strong enough to
forthcoming. It is a book of ideas and in- produce a causal criterion for the accept-
This content downloaded from 92.238.122.108 on Thu, 18 Jun 2015 11:40:40 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
387
This content downloaded from 92.238.122.108 on Thu, 18 Jun 2015 11:40:40 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions