Too often we're guided by what we last heard, by our friends' approval, by impulseour desires, our fears. Without reflection. Without even stopping to think. ** In this book you'll learn how to reason and find your way better in life. You'll learn to see the consequences of what you and others say and do. You'll learn to see the assumptions that you and others make. You'll learn how to judge what you should believe. These are the skills we all need to make good decisions. ** Claims. Arguments. Fallacies. Analogies. Generalizing. Cause and Effect. Explanations. These are clearly set out with hundreds of examples from daily life showing how to use them. Illustrations using a cast of cartoon characters make the concepts memorable. And many exercises will help you to check your understanding. ** Truly a book for allfrom high school to graduate school, from auto repair to managing a company. How to Reason will help you find a way in life that is clearer and not buffetted by the winds of nonsense and fear. ******* In Reasoning in the Sciences, you'll learn how to use your reasoning skills to understand how scientists make definitions, what an experiment is, what can go wrong with an experiment, how scientists reason with models and theories, what counts as a good explanation in science, and how to distinguish science from magic, religion, and fraud. No background in science is needed, just a healthy appetitite for learning.

Richard L. Epstein received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a Fulbright Fellow to Brazil and a National Academy of Sciences scholar to Poland. He is the author of "An Introduction to Formal Logic", "Propositional Logics", "Predicate Logic" and the series of books "Essays on Logic as the Art of Reasoning Well". Since 1999 he has been the head of the Advanced Reasoning Forum in Socorro, New Mexico. He has also translated and edited "The BARK of DOG", and directs The BARK of DOG Foundation.

Preface Claims 1 Claims 2 Definitions 3 Subjective Claims 4 Prescriptive Claims 5 Concealed Claims Arguments 6 Arguments 7 What's a Good Argument? 8 Evaluating Premises 9 Common Mistakes in Evaluating Claims 10 Repairing Arguments 11 Too Much Emotion 12 Reasoning with Prescriptive Claims 13 Counterarguments The Form of an Argument 14 Compound Claims 15 Valid Forms of Arguments using Conditionals 16 General Claims Numbers and Graphs 17 Numbers 18 Graphs Reasoning from Experience 19 Analogies 20 Generalizing 21 Cause and Effect 22 Cause in Populations 23 Inferential Explanations 24 Functional Explanations Making Decisions 25 Evaluating Risk 26 Making Decisions Writing Well Reasoning in the Sciences 27 Some Examples to Start 28 The Scientific Method 29 Experiments 30 What Can Go Wrong with an Experiment 31 Models and Theories 32 Explanations in Science 33 Ways of Knowing Index