Abstract
In this introductory chapter I describe the rationale and aims of the book. I also provide an overview of its contents, drawing attention to interrelated topics. Finally, I suggest particular ways in which one can read and use this book.
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Acknowledgements
I am indebted to all authors for the high quality chapters they contributed to this book. Working with them has been an intellectually stimulating experience. I am also indebted to all reviewers of these chapters, many of whom were also contributing authors. These include Denis Alexander, André Ariew, Robert Arp, Wallace Arthur, Stefan Artman, John Avise, Francisco Ayala, Bill Bechtel, Ingo Brigandt, John Hedley Brooke, Lindley Darden, David Depew, Laura Franklin-Hall, Patrick Forber, Lisa Gannett, Eva Jablonka, James Justus, Maureen O’Malley, Roberta Millstein, Robert Nola, Massimo Pigliucci, Erik Peterson, Angela Potochnik, Anya Plutynski, Richard Richards, Elliott Sober, Andrew Siegel and Tobias Uller. I am also very grateful to Michael Ruse who wrote a foreword for this book. Finally, I want to thank Dick Burian and Jim Lennox who invited me to co-author their chapters with them. It has been a great privilege and experience to have worked with them.
I am of course grateful to the publishing editor Ties Nijssen as well as to the editors of this series Charles Wolfe, Philippe Huneman and Thomas Reydon for making the publication of this book possible. Thomas Reydon has worked with me on this project from its inception and, being a philosopher of science with a good sense of what science education is about, he has been enormously helpful all the way. I am also grateful to Megan Faurot who helped finalizing the glossary. The glossary terms were written by the authors of the relevant chapters and were edited by me for consistency. Editing this book owes a lot to my previous experience as a guest editor for thematic issues for the journal Science & Education and to Michael Matthews, editor-in-chief of that journal. Finally, discussions with colleagues and friends over the years, about philosophy of science and how it relates to science education, have been extremely useful. I thank Alexandros Apostolou, Norm Lederman, Michael Matthews, Giorgos Malamis, Bill McComas, and Thomas Reydon for making me think hard about these topics.
Last but not least, I owe a lot to my wife, Katerina, and our children, Mirka and Giorgos, for their love and support. Without these, working on any book project would have been impossible. As I am finishing editing this book, I am also finishing writing my first book which I will dedicate to them. So, I thought that if I may dedicate this edited book to someone, it should be someone else to whom I also owe a lot. Thus, I dedicate this book to my father, Giorgos, who encouraged and supported my intellectual life ever since I was a child.
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© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Kampourakis, K. (2013). Philosophy of Biology and Biology Education: An Introduction. In: Kampourakis, K. (eds) The Philosophy of Biology. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6537-5_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6537-5_1
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