The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science

Michael Strevens

Nov 2020 · Highbridge Audio · Narrated by Julian Elfer

About this audiobook

A paradigm-shifting work that revolutionizes our understanding of the origins and structure of science. Captivatingly written, interwoven with historical vignettes ranging from Newton's alchemy to quantum mechanics to the storm surge of Hurricane Sandy, Michael Strevens's wholly original investigation of science asks two fundamental questions: Why is science so powerful? And why did it take so long, two thousand years after the invention of philosophy and mathematics, for the human race to start using science to learn the secrets of nature? The Knowledge Machine's radical answer is that science calls on its practitioners to do something irrational: by willfully ignoring religion, theoretical beauty, and, especially, philosophy-essentially stripping away all previous knowledge-scientists embrace an unnaturally narrow method of inquiry, channeling unprecedented energy into observation and experimentation. Like Yuval Harari's Sapiens or Thomas Kuhn's 1962 classic, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The Knowledge Machine overturns much of what we thought we knew about the origins of the modern world.

About the author

Michael Strevens, who received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017, is a professor of philosophy at New York University. He was born in New Zealand and has been writing about the philosophy of science for twenty-five years. He lives in New York.

British-born Julian Elfer is an award-winning New York City-based actor and audiobook narrator. With over 100 titles to his credit, Julian brings a unique facility for characterization in fiction and an empathy for the personalities and events of the past.