This book was perhaps one of my favorite textbooks in my training on scientific methodologies. It's an actual reading book designed to be a university textbook, so it reads like a story while covering the subject: the history and evolution of scientific methodologies in more specifically the social sciences. Were the public at large to read this book, the media would quickly, oh so quickly, lose its grip on public opinion on the global warming debate and many other issues. The media's power of persuasion to whip up the masses into a frenzy over the issues of today with their tantalizing soundbites would diminish to where I think the mainstream media would no longer have much influence in our society.
Perhaps my favorite subjects in the book were the issues of consensus in science and the different methodologies (I really enjoyed hermeneutics being a sunday school teacher) such as the abductive and inductive methods compared to experimentation.
When it comes to Christmas gifts, I actually prefer to give away books. This is one I would give to an inquisitive reader and an active mind. It settles, or rather even enflames in many instances, the question "how do we know what we know?" (AKA epistemology). It's a question that not many people like to ask but that the scientist must be forced to ask as well as confront his own biases in doing so: how do I know and how could I prove it, and what is proof?
Excellent read for the savvy conservative looking to educate themselves in critical thinking in the world.
