Ce livre traite de questions épistémologiques controversées à propos des sciences. Sous la forme originale et conviviale d'une série de dialogues, les échanges abordent d'une part des questions posées à propos des diverses sciences contemporaines (nature du progrès scientifique, prétention à la vérité des théories scientifiques, limites de la connaissance humaine) et d'autre part des questions plus spécifiques liées à l'interprétation de la physique contemporaine.
Mature sciences have been long been characterized in terms of the "successfulness", "reliability" or "trustworthiness" of their theoretical, experimental or technical accomplishments. Today many philosophers of science talk of "robustness", often without specifying in a precise way the meaning of this term. This lack of clarity is the cause of frequent misunderstandings, since all these notions, and that of robustness in particular, are connected to fundamental issues, which concern nothing less than the very nature of science and its specificity with respect to other human practices, the nature of rationality and of scientific progress; and science's claim to be a truth-conducive activity. This book offers for the first time a comprehensive analysis of the problem of robustness, and in general, that of the reliability of science, based on several detailed case studies and on philosophical essays inspired by the so-called practical turn in philosophy of science.
