Where is the line between science and philosophy of science? Can philosophy of science float at a very general abstract level, treating the process of scientific inquiry as if it were a computer program, isolated from its inputs? But then, look too at computer programs that nowadays are constantly downloading their own updates. The observer and the observed, the processor and the processed, get all mixed up.

Stengers is definitely a philosopher of science and not a scientist, but she goes right into the guts of the beast. A scientist can learn a bit of science from her!

The focus of this book is on some debates in physics from roughly 1850-1900. One of the points she makes is that the issues didn't so much get resolved as dissolved. She mentions that it was the reliance on probability theory by quantum mechanics that led to that dissolution - apparently that will be elaborated in volume 2.

Not that the issues have disappeared, but their form has shifted and their priorities too. A probabilistic explanation of the second law of thermodynamics gives us an answer to the puzzle of the arrow of time. Maybe this answer just raises further questions, but those can be pushed back into the shadows.

This book is not an easy read. I doubt that the translator is to be blamed. Stengers discusses the rise of theoretical physics, by which she means a physics that postulates an underlying reality that is quite different than our superficial experience of appearances. Quantum mechanics and relativity... physics has become esoteric, treasures the esoteric. It seems philosophy has gone that route also, perhaps an example of physics envy. Stengers is vastly easier to make sense of than Derrida, for example. But still, this book is filled with marvelously indirect locution. OK, the ideas it expresses are rather delicate and so maybe all these layers of wrapping are needed. No doubt there is an audience that just needs lots of wrapping in order to appreciate the value of the package contents. I find it a bit annoying, but still I found enough of a thread of intriguing ideas to keep me reading.

This book demands a fair amount of physics background. Stengers talks about Langrangian and Hamiltonian formulations of mechanics and really her whole argument is centered on their structure - the way the Hamiltonian formulation makes the advance of time look like just another coordinate transformation. She brings up Boltzmann's H function, which I have totally forgotten. But this comes up in the end game so not much is built up from those details.

Fundamental choices in the structure of a science can give the whole science a pervasive character, long after most everyone has forgotten that any choices were made. And that character can have consequences radiating out far beyond the parochial limits of that science itself. That's my take-away at the abstract level. At a concrete level, I learned a bit of physics and relearned a bit too. Stengers outlines some of the fundamental choices made in physics - I look forward to mulling over her ideas, digesting them and letting them seep into my thinking. This is a deep book with transformative potential.. ( )