Military Innovation In The Interwar Period

Book Description

This study of major military innovations in the 1920s and 1930s explores differences in innovating exploitation by the seven major military powers. This volume of comparative essays investigates how and why innovation occurred or did not occur, and explains much of the strategic and operative performance of the Axis and Allies in World War II.

Customer Reviews:

Some good information, but lacking in many areas.......2006-08-14

The book does provide detailed footnotes as it is a series of essays where the writer of each "chapter" presents their viewpoint and analysis. However, this book provides no tables or charts to support any of the analysis or discussions presented. It would have been very helpful if there were a table or chart comparing each nation's "innovation" in each category described in this book, examples: armored warfare, strategic bombing, carrier development, etc.

What is most lacking in this book it that it focuses primarily on the US, Britain, and Germany, limited on Japan (amphibious assault and aircraft carrier development but nothing on their armor and combined arms tactics) and nothing significant on France, Italy, and Russia, who are mentioned merely in passing. This is the most glaring weakness of this book. Russia developed the T-34 tank, had a sizeable navy, large industrial base, naval infantry, paratroopers, cavalry, and actually trained with the Germans in the 1930's. The Italians were on the winning side of World War One, developed a large navy, their own tanks, and an ambitious goal to dominate the Mediterranean Sea, but they too are not mentioned.

It is important to learn how each of these major combatant nations developed as each had their own policies that led to successes and failures. An example is in amphibious landings, where the writer presents a view that the US was the most developed in the world during the interwar period. If that is the case, then why didn't the US attempt an amphibious assault prior to 1943 and why were the casualties so high in the first assault experienced at Tarawa? If the US was amphibious warfare strategy and doctrine was the most developed, then why did the British conduct the disastrous raid on Dieppe in 1943 as a rehearsal, wouldn't the US have enough experience in northern Africa, Sicily, and Anzio in 1943? The writer's claim is not supported through citing successful battles or numbers of equipment produced.

Another question is why weren't the British, Germans, Italians, and Russians mentioned or compared to in amphibious warfare? If Italy wanted to control the Med, wouldn't they have developed some type of doctrine or equipment? The Germans thought about invading England, what kind of equipment did they have and how would they have executed the invasion? The Russian Naval Infantry, what was their doctrine? The Japanese amphibious landing is well researched and presented, but again, no tables or charts are presented to summarize the writer's viewpoint.

Russia's development during the interwar period is very critical as the equipment developed during the period was superior or at least equal to the German equipment. The T-34 tank's only weakness in 1941 was the lack of radio equipment along with the doctrine of dispersing the tanks instead of massing them into large formations. If one reads other WW2 history books, one learns that the Germans were only able to defeat the T-34 tank in 1941 with better unit maneuver and with greater numbers. German anti-tank weapons had no effect with the German tanks undergunned and under ranged. The largest caliber on a German tank in 1941 being the short barreled 75mm mounted on the Panzer MK IV and the StugIII (which was an assault gun found in anti-tank battalions).

Another glaring omission in this book is there are no discussions on anti-weapons or counter munitions designed to defeat the innovations being developed in the interwar period, the lone exception being the torpedo and US artillery proximity fuses. There are no discussions on the bazooka, anti-tank rifles, anti-tank guns, shaped charges, depth charges, or anti-aircraft guns. Obviously the Germans had planned for anti-aircraft defense, otherwise they would not have developed the 88mm gun nor would have the deployed it so close to the front line troops. Rommel was able to repulse the British armor counterattacks at Arras, France in 1940 only with the 88mm anti-aircraft gun. This experience influenced him to utilize this weapon in a dual purpose anti-tank role in the desert. The British had attacked him in Arras with heavily armored Matilda tanks, armed with a 2-pound anti-tank gun, but no high explosive rounds against infantry. These cases are extremely relevant and important discussions into the interwar period.

Why did the British choose not to equip their tanks with HE rounds? Why didn't the Germans equip their Panzer MKIV and StugIII tanks with long barrel 75mm guns from the start? Why didn't the Russians equip their early T-34 tanks without universal radios (only the platoon leader had a radio)?

How was the Sherman tank developed and doctrinally planned to be utilized, a vehicle with an underpowered 75mm gun, prone to catching on fire, and a narrow track base not suited for cross country mobility (as described in the book Death Traps, Belton Cooper)? At the end of WW2, the US might have gotten directly into war against the Russians? How would the Sherman tank fared in the vast Russian muddy steppes and marshes and no highways? The Germans learned the hard way fighting against the T-34 an incorporated many of the features (wide track base and sloped armor) into the Tiger and Panther tanks. Was the Sherman tank designed to be an infantry support vehicle with anti-tank battalions designed to defeat enemy armor? What calibers of weapons were they equipped with and how were they to be employed? None of these questions are answered in this book.

Overall the book does provide some information that is interesting, such as the German night bombing tactics, use of the Stuka dive bomber to provide precision bombing, and the lack of reliable and powerful aircraft engines that prevented German strategic bomber development. However, the lack of direct comparisons (such as comparing the T-34 vs the Panzer Mark IV vs the Sherman Tank in armor thickness and armament range, penetrating power), lack of tables (such as showing the range and capacity of the Japanese aircraft carrier vs the US and British), charts (comparing the number of tanks and tank regiments fielded by Russia, Germany, England, France, Italy, US, and Japan in 1939), and complete omissions of the Italians and Russians is glaring and detracts to what could have been a well rounded and educational book.

Given the Editors' strong professional and education backgrounds, expected a lot more information from this book. Recommend borrowing this book from the library rather than purchasing it.

Military Innovation in the Interwar Period.......2005-08-26

This book is a necessary for those who want to understand the relationship between development of technology and military innovation. It is not an easy book to read, but contains tremendous amount of information along with accurate historical records. Must for military tacticians and historians alike.

Essential Addition to the Study of the Inter-war Period.......2005-01-15

The acclaimed scholarly team of Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett have edited an anthology of essays encompassing the technological innovations in weaponry during the 1920's and 1930's. These innovations span the research and developments of all the major belligerents that play a major role in the coming global conflict. Each scholar was instructed to compare and contrast his or her topic country with two other countries making this work not only a significant contribution in and of itself, but also a vital comparative study as well. In addition, the researchers were asked to structure their essays around three concepts: the strategic framework of the period, the organizational factors of the institutions under study, and the doctrinal framework of the services. Many of the contributing factors to victory and defeat in World War II are covered within the pages of this important work. Williamson Murray takes a look at "Armored Warfare: The British, French and German Experiences," and "Strategic Bombing: The British, American and German Experiences." Richard R. Muller examines "Close Air Support: The German British and American Experiences, 1918-1941." Geoffrey Till discusses "Adopting the Aircraft Carrier: The British, American, and Japanese Case Studies." But perhaps the most important chapter is Allan R. Millett's "Assault From the Sea: The Development of Amphibious Warfare Between the Wars-the American, British, and Japanese Experiences." Millett compared the development of amphibious doctrine in Japan, Britain, and the United States. The author concludes the U. S. led the way in amphibious warfare doctrine, initiating combined arms operations between air, sea and land that would prove to be a critical advantage in the pacific campaign. According to Millett, Japan started out impressively as was evident by its ever-expanding Pacific empire in the 1930's. Since every landing force became an isolated island garrison, however, Japan's whole amphibious program literally faded away. Great Britain, on the other hand, never had the economic resources necessary to implement a successful amphibious program. Millett concludes that factors such as budget and innovative foresight are vital contributing factors in technological innovation. The author is also quick to point out that in many cases, new weapons become obsolete as soon as hostilities begin. Generally, books of essays are usually disjointed and inconsistent. The guidelines and structure the editors have chosen have tied all the chapters in this book together nicely. This is arguably the best work on the inter-war period to emerge in years. Highly recommended.

Great historic analysis on military innovations.......2001-09-18

It is a very good review on how things developed between world wars. It provides a good insight of the thinking of the different countries and how they coped with their doctrines and how much they took an advantage of the WWI experiences.
I am rating 4 stars because actually I would like much more information rather than 30 pages on each subject.

Readable and Good.......2001-07-15

This is an anthology of various articles. Generally anthologies are the pits as they tend to lack a central them and the quality will vary. These articles are generally by the authors and as such they are of an even standard.

There are a number of chapters that discuss a range of issues from the use of Tanks to the development of the Aircraft Carrier.

The book is interesting although the area covered is naturally enormous and the amount of space that can be devoted to complex subjects is naturally limited. Despite this most of the essays are interesting and not only for what they say. In the first essay about the development of armored warfare by way of an aside the writer attacks Gueridian as a sycophant and also as a person whose reputation was largely the result of self publicity. Later the English theorists Fuller and Liddell Hart are critiqued as presenting overly schematic histories of the First World War which warped the truth to fit in with their own theories. Interestingly the essay then goes on to suggest that the first world war infantry battles were so complex that even now we struggle to understand them and for that reason it was no surprise that Douglas Haig had the problems that he did.

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Army Logistician, published by Thomson Gale on March 1, 2007. The length of the article is 1831 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Polymer advances in the interwar period: the impact of science on World War II.
Author: Paul Wakefield
Publication: Army Logistician (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 39 Issue: 2 Page: 30(3)

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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Innovation in the interwar period
Allan Reed Millett
Manufacturer: Office of Net Assessment, The Pentagon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Military Science | History | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0006QXSWK

Book Description

On October 4, 1957, America looked up at the sky and caught its breath. Soaring through space was the Soviet satellite Sputnik. With its launch, the Soviets had won the space race, demonstrated their unsurpassed technology-and struck fear in the heart of a complacent post-war America.

Although Sputnik was unmanned, its story is intensely human. Here, an investigative reporter recounts it all, from the satellite's top-secret creation to the strategic positioning of Soviet spokesmen around the world, which made this the biggest breaking-news event in history. Using declassified documents, Dickson reveals buried Soviet state secrets-and the reason Eisenhower was secretly pleased about the launch. From Cold War bomb raid drills to today's science in the classroom, from the 1960s race to the moon to the birth of the Internet, Sputnik helped shape American life forever

Customer Reviews:

Why America Wasn't First in Space.......2007-10-17

Sputnik was the "beep-beep-beep" heard around the world, the beginning of the Space Age on Oct. 4, 1957. Paul Dickson has written a compelling account of the epic event that shocked the American public. Sputnik heralded the modern era of transistors and miniature electronic devices, communications satellites and the worldwide Internet.
How could Russia, a nation then considered technologically backward, suddenly propel itself into forefront of world science, scoring a worldwide publicity coup in the process that surprised even its creators?
Dickson's book is one of the best popular books about Sputnik yet published, a tale of challenge, fear and the resulting monumental government program that put the first man on the moon.

Sputnik: Shock of the Century.......2007-10-03

Dickson's well-researched book masterfully pieces together the complex series of events leading up to the launch of Sputnik and those which followed in its aftermath. With earlier chapters devoted to the early history of rocket development, the book's content is largely centered on the late 1950's, especially 1957 and 1958; description of events outside of these years are presented in order tell the various stories to completion. But this is a book which has as its focal point, around which everything else revolves, one particular October evening fifty years ago. Written without hyperbole and in a style which is engaging, sometimes suspenseful, he tells the tale in the way of a great storyteller. Although abundant in facts and details, it reads smoothly and logically, tying in the factual details to the main themes, never turning dry or tedious. Sputnik: Shock of the Century covers the events, individuals, controversies and secrets surrounding the greatest technological and political event of its day. It would make excellent reading for anyone interested in space, history of science and technology, postwar political tensions, education, popular culture, and the environment of the United States in the 1950's. As we now pause to celebrate 50 years of manned and unmanned space exploration, heralded by that shiny, spherical Russian moon, this book makes for thoughtful reading as we look forward toward the next 50 years. Time very well spent.

A Fascinating Story, Well Told!.......2007-09-27

Growing up during the manned space program of mid 1960's, I missed the fears and excitement of the Cold War and the initial space race. Fifty years later, with teenage children who consider last week to be "old news," Paul Dickson's book "Sputnik: The Shock of the Century" is a great way both for me and my my children to have an understanding of what the world, and certainly this country, was like at that time.

The story isn't really about Sputnik, the satellite. It's about the times we lived in. It's about the revision and re-telling of history and dealing with the devil (von Braun) to get to where we collectively as a nation wanted to go, be it from a social, economic, political or military perspective.

"Sputnik: The Shock of the Century" is a good, fun read. The author has managed to succeed where all too many authors of technical or scientifically based subjects fail. He has written a book based on solid research and presented it in a way that readers, regardless of their levels of expertise or knowledge of the any aspect material, will be fully engaged and understand the "other side" of the story.

If you buy books on line, you should read this one.......2007-08-08

If you are buying books on the internet and reading reviews posted in cyberspace, this is a book you must read, because both the information technologies that enable you to read this review, and the culture that values such forms of expression, can be traced to events that followed the launch of Sputnik in October 1957. As Paul Dickson describes, Sputnik was "the shock of the century." It was an event which put processes in motion that have shaped our society for half a century.
America was a different place in 1957, preoccupied with returning to the cultural norms that had existed before the disruption of World War II and the rise of communism. Government was small and largely uninvolved in education, research, or social change. Public schools emphasized the "three Rs" and local values. Colleges and universities had swelled in size to meet the needs of WWII veterans, but remained largely focused on intellectual pursuits. Industry had turned its attention from building weapons, to meeting the seemingly insatiable demand for consumer products. The military was shrinking, confident that America had a commanding lead in technology, which could neutralize any threat from the larger military forces of communist nations.
All of that changed the night of October 22, 1957 when the Soviet Union shocked the world by launching Sputnik. It would be months before the United States could do the same.
Americans no longer felt secure. In response to the ascendancy of communist technologies, Congress rapidly put in place new programs that would ultimately transform American society. The Advanced Research Projects Administration (ARPA) was created to lead massive new initiatives in advanced technology, computing, and applied research. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was established to coordinate America's push into space. Hundreds of billions of dollars would be invested to build great research centers that would bring together military, industrial, and academic interests to assure America's technological supremacy. Also, Congress would also pass the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) to ensure that public schools produced an new generation of scientists and engineers.
The results were dramatic. In a little more than a decade, America would launch hundreds of satellites and win the race to the moon. America's universities, defense establishments, and commercial enterprises would invent microchips, computer networks, and new methods in chemistry, physics, and biology that would provide the foundation for an age of technology. Perhaps even more important, traditional education would be reformed to emphasize independent inquiry, invention, exploration, and expression and sow the seeds for the Age of Aquarius. Fifty years later, we live in a world of ubiquitous personal computers, the world wide web, MySpace, and YouTube, all of which can be traced directly to the ideas and initiatives that were a response to the "shock of the century."
How did all of this happen? That's what Paul Dickson describes what happened in a compelling, carefully researched, and readable of the events that transpired around the launch of Sputnik. Anyone reading this review or buying this book on line will readily understand how the events he describes continue to shape our world as we approach the 50th anniversary of Sputnik in October 2007.

Sputnik - Comes Alive.......2006-11-13

Takes all the hoopla of a childhood event and brings it to life. Reads like a companion book to a History or Discovery Channel show. Not only the historical facts but gives you the perspective of a multitude of characters from the era. If all history books were written with such lucidity and readability kids would eat up the subject.

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Sputnik. The Shock of the Century.
Paul. DICKSON
Manufacturer: Walker
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000M4JHAI

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Sputnik: The Shock of the Century
Paul Dickson
Manufacturer: Spoken Books Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD
ASIN: 1600310249

Product Description

On October 4, 1957, as Leave It to Beaver premiered on American television, the Soviet Union launched the space age. Sputnik, all of 184 pounds with only a radio transmitter inside its highly polished shell, became the first man-made object in space; while it immediately shocked the world, its long-term impact was even greater, for it profoundly changed the shape of the twentieth century. Washington journalist Paul Dickson chronicles the dramatic events and developments leading up to and emanating from Sputnik's launch. Supported by groundbreaking, original research and many recently declassified documents, Sputnik offers a fascinating profile of the early American and Soviet space programs and a strikingly revised picture of the politics and personalities behind the facade of America's fledgling efforts to get into space. By shedding new light on a pivotal era, Paul Dickson expands our knowledge of the world we now inhabit, and reminds us that the story of Sputnik goes far beyond technology and the beginning of the space age, and that its implications are still being felt today. --Publisher

Sputnik: The Shock of the Century (Unabridged)

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Sputnik: The Shock of the Century (Unabridged)
Paul Dickson
Manufacturer: audible.com
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Download
ASIN: B000WVWGPE

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Sputnik: The Shock of the Century
Paul Dickson
Manufacturer: Walker & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

Aeronautics & Astronautics | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books

History of Technology | Technology | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0802716032
Release Date: 2007-06-26

Book Description

On October 4, 1957, as Leave It to Beaver premiered on American television, the Soviet Union launched the first man-made object into space—a 184-pound satellite carrying only a radio transmitter. While Sputnik I immediately shocked the world, its long-term impact was even greater, for it profoundly changed the shape of the twentieth century. Paul Dickson chronicles the dramatic events and developments leading up to and emanating from Sputnik’s launch. Supported by groundbreaking original research and many recently declassified documents, Sputnik offers a fascinating profile of the early American and Soviet space programs and a strikingly revised picture of the politics and personalities—President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Wernher von Braun, and many others—behind the façade of America’s fledgling efforts to get into space. Sputnik directly or indirectly influenced nearly every aspect of American life, from the demise of the suddenly superfluous tailfin and an immediate shift toward science in the classroom to the arms race that defined the Cold War, the competition to reach the moon, and the birth of the Internet.

Book Description

Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions has sold over a million copies in more than twenty languages and has remained one of the ten most cited academic works for the past half century. In contrast, Karl Popper's seminal book The Logic of Scientific Discovery has lapsed into relative obscurity. Although the two men debated the nature of science only once, the legacy of this encounter has dominated intellectual and public discussions on the topic ever since.

Almost universally recognized as the modern watershed in the philosophy of science, Kuhn's relativistic vision of shifting paradigms -- which asserted that science was just another human activity, like art or philosophy, only more specialized -- triumphed over Popper's more positivistic belief in science's revolutionary potential to falsify society's dogmas. But has this victory been beneficial for science? Steve Fuller argues that not only has Kuhn's dominance had an adverse impact on the field but both thinkers have been radically misinterpreted in the process. This debate raises a vital question: Can science remain an independent, progressive force in society, or is it destined to continue as the technical wing of the military-industrial complex? Drawing on original research -- including the Kuhn archives at MIT -- Fuller offers a clear account of "Kuhn vs. Popper" and what it will mean for the future of scientific inquiry.

Customer Reviews:

Interesting but Confused.......2007-09-10

Fuller's "Kuhn vs. Popper" tells of the authoritarian Kuhn and the libertarian Popper, and their separate ideals of science indicated below:

(1) Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Science, related science to the fallibility of scientists, and this made science into a progression of phase changes (Kuhn's paradigm transitions). Science could not be separated from either scientist or from history. The ruling paradigm was an opiate, a habitual application of the one induction that gave its support to an authoritarian class; breaking the paradigm required something special.

(2) Karl Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery departed significantly from Kuhn's view. Popper was a deductivist, and he wanted to bring scientific theories to the test of falsification, mere verification of the ever-go-lucky induction would not do. Popper's deduction was meant to eliminate induction by refutation, bringing science closer to an ideal that is independent of the fallibility of scientists. Popper wanted to liberate science from the dictates of the ruling paradigm.

Fuller (page 31) writes: "While neither Kuhn nor Popper would care to deny that a specific paradigm may dominate the understanding of a particular slice of reality at a particular time, they differ over whether it should be treated as a source of stability (Kuhn) or a problem to be overcome (Popper)."

Fuller's book in interesting (worth four stars) because of the contrast made between Kuhn and Popper found in the first half of the book. The confusion comes later, but Fuller (page viii) shows little affection for Kuhn from the get-go, and writes: "The more I have tired to make sense of Kuhn's words and deeds, the more I have come to regard him as an intellectual coward who benefitted from his elite institutional status in what remains the world's dominant society." Fuller tells us that Kuhn won the class struggle, and Fuller's own emotionality betrays his affection for Popper's libertarianism. From about chapter 13 on, Fuller stops comparing Kuhn and Popper directly, and Theodor Adorno and Martin Heidegger are noted. Fuller's views become more political as the reader approaches the end of the book.

Politics can only be confusing. Despite Heidegger's Nazi past, despite the cold war and the Vietnam war, Fuller fails to discredit Kuhn's privileged professional life. Fuller's criticism of Kuhn's silence on moral issues goes nowhere, in my view. My impressions aside, Fuller has made a stronger case for his criticism in "Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times." Nevertheless, there is no Popperian deduction that I know of that will remove the confusion from Fuller's politics. What Fuller is doing is not deduction, rather it is an exploration of history and it is dialectical. Fuller's dialectical path to truth is closer to Kuhn's history-knows-best-approach than it is to Popper's call-for-empirical-refutation, at least in my opinion.

Yet if Popper's science was so wonderful in Fuller view why then did it fail? The highly irrate Stove, in "Anything Goes", tells us why: Popper fell for Hume's inductive skepticism. Popper, like Fuller, gives to deduction a perfection that cannot be given to any logic independent of the emotions of the logician. Induction cannot be reduces by deduction, the two must stand independent yet one logic cannot eliminate the other. Therefore, there must be something important that is dialectical, something missing from Fuller's account even as Fuller relies much on dialectical logic.

The confident induction and the doubting deduction as emotions are made obvious by a read of Stove, or Fuller. Popper's deduction works to break free of the overbearing induction, while Kuhn's induction works to return us to a blissful automatic polite. It can only be that deduction and induction are one in the same emotion, only coming at us from a different point of view. Schelling's transcendental idealism gives support to this view, as a sensation must come that is found breaking away from itself if only to return later to get a better look of itself. Error recognition is required for induction (as Popper demanded), but it is also needed for deduction (something Popper and Fuller forgot), and it is also needed on something that has to do with emotionality (what Charles S. Peirce calls abduction). The three levels of error recognition returns us to science again, but this cannot be a confused dialectical science that Marx would have us follow. This science would integrate both Kuhn and Popper, something that Fuller's bitterness missed.

Trinity: The Scientific Basis of Vitalism and Transcendentalism

A Stinker.......2006-05-25

Steven Fuller's Kuhn versus Popper is a short work published by Icon Books. Fuller is a sociology professor at the University of Warwick in Great Britain.

Fuller uses the contrasting views of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn as an avenue to discuss broad social and political implications of modern approaches to science. Although I think that the differences between these two thinkers can be overstated (i.e. Kuhn can be seen as a realist and Popper an idealist), it could nonetheless be an interesting approach in the hands of a capable writer. Unfortunately Fuller is not such a writer.

I think Fuller may have some interesting, if unconventional, thoughts in regard to how scientists should interact with broader society, however, they are lost in this self-righteous rant. His comments are rambling, blustering and totally unreferenced. It is evident that Fuller has many axes to grind; he rails against Kuhn, philosophers in general, American academics, etc. His rant against philosophers as being failed scientists supporting failed ideas is particularly ironic coming from a sociologist.

Overall, it is a true stinker- angry and incoherent. If this is indicative of the quality of books published by Icon, I would advise readers to steer clear of them. This text came to me by way of the "bargain bin" and it has left me by way of another "bin".

Fun read, but flawed.......2006-03-23

Polemics are fun, and this one is no exception. Fuller is an excellent, energetic writer, and he seems to have read everything. If the result is more sizzle than steak, it's still a very interesting view of the divergence between two of the giants of 20th-century philosophy of science. Recommended.

Karl Popper is about my favorite modern philosopher. His view of what science should be like, and the kind of liberating cultural role it should play, is inspiring. Thomas Kuhn, on the other hand, provided a very different, and much less exhilarating, picture of how science does, in fact, operate. In my experience, Kuhn's description is largely accurate, something Popper himself did not deny. If that is so, then this "debate" is between a normative theorist of how science should function (Popper) and an observer/analyst of how science does function (Kuhn). In a debate like that, the queston of "Who's right?" is not destined to lead much of anywhere.

Fuller is critical of Kuhn for being a repesentative of, or even an apologist for, establishment "big science" that tends to operate beyond democratic political controls; Fuller's sympathies are all with Popper's refusal to countenance orthodoxies or establishments of any kind, with science properly serving as an integral part of and support for the rational and critical Open Society. As much as I would like Popperian ideals to guide scientific practice, Fuller's attack on Kuhn seems to me a case of killing the messenger for delivering an unwelcome message about how science actually goes about its business. Science is like it is for reasons that have nothing to do with Thomas Kuhn, and it would be this way even if Kuhn had never been born.

If the problem is the gap between Kuhnian reality and Popperian ideal, then the important question is how to get from the one to the other. Fuller's suggestions about that are pathetically weak. For example, he notes that "Paul Feyerabend advocated the devolution of science funding from nation-states to local communities as the surest way to increase science's capacity for good and lower its capacity for evil." When Fuller refers to the voicing of this fantasy as a "public intervention by a philosopher of science," you don't know whether to laugh or cry. Even if you accept Fuller's ideological commitments, he fails to describe any credible scenario by which modern science, with its vast funding requirements, its national security role, and its industrial entanglements, could conceivably be transformed into the kind of enterprise that he, and Popper, would approve of.

Very New Look at Old Debate.......2006-03-03

People already interested in this book because of its topic may well be under the misapprehension that Kuhn marked a progressive moment in the history of our understanding of science. This is completely wrong, says Fuller. If anything, Kuhn legitimized the idea that science should be subject to one dominant paradigm, excluding all alternatives. From that standpoint, it's easy to see why he testified for the intelligent design people since Darwinism is a closed shop in biology -- and isn't even treated as falsifiable (which is Popper's point). Make no mistake: This book isn't a simple Dummy's Guide to Kuhn and Popper like some of the other books mentioned by the commentators here. No, it's a thinly disguised polemic against the state of science today -- and it succeeds very well in that conscious-raising exercise.

Barking up the wrong tree.......2006-03-02

The majority of practising scientists have no interest in the philosophy of science. Most of those who do take an interest think that with the exception of Karl Popper no modern philosopher has anything useful to say about how science is done. If they have heard of Thomas Kuhn at all, or of "paradigm shifts", it is from reading articles in the popular press that give Kuhn and his ideas far more prominence than they get in the scientific literature. It was something of a surprise, therefore, to read in the introduction to this book that "no one doubts that Kuhn has won the debate", and to see the great majority of working scientists who believe in subjecting hypotheses to stringent tests dismissed as "those who still want to uphold 'falsifiability' as science's gold standard".

One of the chapters is entitled "Why Philosophers Get No Respect from Scientists", and Steve Fuller appears to realize that most scientists don't in general care in the slightest what philosophers think, but he fails to answer his own question; on the contrary he reinforces the disrespect by telling us that "even the very greatest scientists, such as Galileo, Newton, Maxwell and Einstein, tend to be treated as no more than passable philosophers", going on to say that Darwin is relegated to polite philosophical silence. Maybe so, but this surely tells us more about the inadequacy of philosophy as a discipline than it does about science.

The greatest shortcoming of this book is that it contains no evidence that the author has ever met any real scientists and discussed their work with them, or even read any of their work. Only two living scientists get mentioned at all, Richard Lewontin and Alan Sokal. The book has nothing of significance to say about Lewontin, and it manages to get hold of the wrong end of the stick about the Sokal Hoax. Describing Sokal absurdly as "a disgruntled US physicist", Fuller seems to imply that he was disgruntled with the state of physics, whereas he was (and is) disgusted with the way physics is perverted by ignorant and pretentious publications by social scientists. Elsewhere he seems to think that intelligent design theory is scientific. His brief mention of "socio-biologists" (Fuller's quotation marks and hyphen) likewise travesties what real sociobiologists think.

Despite all its faults Fuller's book does have some points of interest, certainly for anyone who wants to know about the little closed world where philosophers discuss the nature of science without any actual knowledge of it, or who wants to understand something of the appeal that Kuhn has had for journalists and policy makers. Readers who want to know how science is done, however, will need to look elsewhere.

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