Over the last twenty or so years, it has become standard to require policy makers to base their recommendations on evidence. That is now uncontroversial to the point of triviality--of course, policy should be based on the facts. But are the methods that policy makers rely on to gather and analyze evidence the right ones? In Evidence-Based Policy, Nancy Cartwright, an eminent scholar, and Jeremy Hardie, who has had a long and successful career in both business and the economy, expl...

Science is remarkably reliable. It puts people on the moon, performs laser eye surgery, tells us about ancient civilizations and species, and predicts the future of our climate. What underwrites this reliability? This book argues that the standard answers--the scientific method, rigour, and objectivity--are insufficient for the job. Here we propose a new model of science which places its products front and centre. In The Tangle of Science we show how any reliable piece of science ...

What is science and what can it do? Nancy Cartwright here takes issue with three common images of science: that it amounts to the combination of theory and experiment; that all science is basically reducible to physics; and that science and the natural world which it pictures are deterministic. The author's innovative and thoughtful book draws on examples from the physical, life, and social sciences alike, and focuses on all the products of science – not just experiments or theories – and ...

It is often supposed that the spectacular successes of our modern mathematical sciences support a lofty vision of a world completely ordered by one single elegant theory. In this book Nancy Cartwright argues to the contrary. When we draw our image of the world from the way modern science works - as empiricism teaches us we should - we end up with a world where some features are precisely ordered, others are given to rough regularity and still others behave in their own diverse ways. This p...

This is a volume in the highly respected Carus Lectures Series. Previous volumes have sold well, for example: Dependent Rational Animals by MacIntyre has sold 6, 039 and The Abuse of Beauty by Danto has sold 3,615.

In this book, Nancy Cartwright, Eileen Munro and John Pemberton introduce a new method for assessing whether plans for how to affect change produced their intended outcome, or whether they are likely to do so in the future. The method offers the prospect of a step-change improvement in the accuracy of policy assessments, based on a new pluralistic theory of causation. This theory, which goes beyond existing ones, synthesises seven tried and tested familiar component accounts so as to licen...

This is a much-needed new introduction to a field that has been transformed in recent years by exciting new subjects, ideas, and methods. It is designed both for students with central interests in philosophy and those planning to concentrate on the social sciences, and it presupposes no particular background in either domain. From the wide range of topics at the forefront of debate in philosophy of social science, the editors have chosen those which are representative of the most important...

Follow your nose to a hilarious Stink-fest no kid will want to miss!Stink Moody’s class is going on a field trip to the Gross-Me-Out exhibit at the science museum, and he can’t wait to see the Vomit Machine, the Burp-O-Meter, and the Musical Farts. Best of all, when he gets to the Everybody Stinks exhibit, Stink discovers that his very own nose has amazing sniffing abilities — and he learns that some people have real jobs sniffing stuff for NASA! Soon the junior ol...

Every morning, Judy measures Stink, and it's always the same: 3 feet, 8 inches tall. Stink feels like even the class newt is growing faster than he is. Then one day, the ruler reads--3 feet, 7 and three-quarter inches! Can it be? Is Stink shrinking? Stink tries everything to look like he's growing, but wearing up-and-down stripes and spiking his hair don't seem to be fooling anybody into thinking he's taller. What would James Madison, Stink's hero (and the shortest person to ever serve as ...

What is way cooler than a story about Stink? Three of them—all together in one hilarious audiobook collection. No lie!Judy Moody's pesky younger "bother"—encyclopedia in hand, zany schemes in mind, and comical comebacks at the ready—has totally come into his own with a compelling, kid-friendly series. Now it's easy for young listeners to jump-start their Stink collection with an audiobook collection that includes:Stink: The Incredible Shrinking Kid

This book presents a radical new picture of natural order. The Newtonian idea of a cosmos ruled by universal and exceptionless laws has been superseded; replaced by a conception of nature as a realm of diverse powers, potencies, and dispositions, a 'dappled world'. There is order in nature, but it is more local, diverse, piecemeal, open, and emergent than Newton imagined.In each chapter expert authors expound the historical context of the idea of laws of nature, and explore the div...

Tom Little is a circus midget with giant dreams. He may be king of the midgets, but he's got grander ambitions to become the ringmaster. Now, drawing on some dark ancient secrets, he's about to get his wish. But in assuming another man's identity, Tom must also take on his enemies who want to make him pay for the big man's sins. The circus is coming to town, as the audio version of If I Were You puts you in the center ring of the magic, mystery, and madness.