The Meaning of Science by Tim Lewens review – can scientific knowledge be objective?

From GM crops to antidepressive drugs, there is a lot of public scepticism that science is never value-free "

The physicist Richard Feynman once remarked that "philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds". Some of his colleagues have not been so kind. When Stephen Hawking pronounced philosophy dead in 2011, it was only the fame of the coroner that made it news.

Good scientists, however, are willing to revise their theories on the basis of new data, and Tim Lewens's wonderful addition to the excellent Pelican Introductions series, The Meaning of Science, is all the evidence any open-minded inquirer needs to demonstrate the worth of philosophy of science.