Nature and Understanding: The Metaphysics and Method of Science

Nature and Understanding explores the prospect of looking from a scientific point of view at such central ideas of traditional metaphysics as the simplicity of nature, its comprehensibility, or its systematic integrity. Rescher seeks to describe - in a way accessible to philosophers and nonphilosophers alike - the metaphysical situation that characterizes the process of inquiry in natural science. His principal aim is to see what light can be shed on reality by examining the modus operandi of natural science itself, focusing as much on its findings as on its conceptual and methodological presuppositions. This is the culmination of many years of penetrating work in this area of philosophy by one of its most eminent exponents. It is the definitive presentation of some of Rescher's key ideas.