The 8-Fold Way of the Scientific Method

Description

A major objective of this book is to promote scientific temper in society. It tells you about the rigors of how science is done, and explains why scientists take such great care to ensure that the empirical knowledge acquired collectively by them has the highest attainable degree of credibility. The Scientific Method underscores the importance of a robust sense of skepticism when it comes to accepting evidence for any claim, particularly a tall claim. And yet scientists are ever willing to accept and rectify errors in their theories if any new evidence demands that, thus ensuring that self-correction is a part of how science progresses. But much of the science done so far has been based on reductionism. ‘Complex systems’ are the next challenge for 21st-century science, and we have to go beyond reductionism for investigating them meaningfully. This is a very difficult task indeed. The most familiar and...

About the Author

Vinod Wadhawan got his M. Sc. degree in solid-state physics from the University of Delhi, and the Ph. D. degree in physics (X-ray crystallography) from the University of Bombay. All his scientific career was with the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), Government of India. After his retirement on superannuation, he was given the position of Raja Ramanna Fellow for about six years by the same Department. He was based at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai, during this tenure. He is also a former Associate Editor of the journal PHASE TRANSITIONS (published by Taylor & Francis, U.K.).

After doing his Ph. D. in crystallography, he did not stay in that field for long, and shifted his interest to ferroic materials. In the year 2000 he published his book 'Introduction to Ferroic Materials', the first comprehensive and still the only definitive book on the subject.

Ferroic materials, particularly multiferroics,...

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