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«Science, » writes physicist Gregory Derry, «is the active and creative engagement of our minds with nature in an attempt to understand. » Not to understand anything in particular, mind you—just to understand, to gain a sense of our place in the world. Whether viewed as a body of knowledge, a collection of techniques, or a way of seeing, Derry adds, science is just plain interesting. It is also difficult to live in the modern world, which is so entangled economically and culturally in technology, without some grasp of science, technology's sire.
All that said, Derry states his aim: to show his readers how to think scientifically. In this aim he is quite successful, as his narrative proceeds through case studies that draw on real-world situations to discuss the importance of precise measurement, replicable experimentation, clear research design, logical thought—and imagination. He is quite clear on what constitutes good science, and he profiles a few heroes (Kepler, Einstein, Helmholtz, Joule) to illustrate how that good science is conducted. He is just as clear on what constitutes bad science, which often results when money and politics enter the laboratory. The fundamental virtue required of a scientist is honesty, he remarks, and a scientist who is dishonest or unethical scarcely deserves the name.

Prologue.
What Is Science?
Exploring the frontiers of science: how new discoveries are made in the sciences.
A bird’s Eye View: The Many Routes to Scientific Discovery.
Nature’s Jigsaw: Looking for Patterns As a Key to Discovery.
New Vistas: Expanding Our World with Instrumentation.
Close, But No Cigar: Discrepancies As a Trigger to Discovery.
Ingredients for a Revolution: Thematic Imagination, Precise Measurements, and the Motions of the Planets.
Mental tactics: some distinctively scientific approaches to the world.
A universe in a Bottle: Models, Modeling, and Successive Approximation.
Thinking Straight: Evidence, Reason, and Critical Evaluation.
The Numbers Game: Uses of Quantitative Reasoning.
Larger questions: the context of science.
Ultimate Questions: Science and Religion.
More Practical Questions: Science and Society.
Difficult and Important Questions: Science, Values, and Ethics.
Questions of Authenticity: Science, Pseudoscience, and How to Tell the Difference.
Contentious Questions: The Shadowy Borderlands of Science.
Very Abstract Questions: The Philosophy of Science.
Questions of Legitimacy: The Postmodern Critique of Science.
Common ground: some unifying concepts in the sciences.
Fleas and Giants: Some Fascinating Insights about Area, Volume, and Size.
The Edge of the Abyss: Order and Disorder in the Universe.
Riding Blake’s Tiger: Symmetry in Science, Art, and Mathematics.
The Straight and Narrow: Linear Dependence in the Sciences.
The Limits of the Possible: Exponential Growth and Decay.
In the Loop: Feedback, Homeostasis, and Cybernetics.
Epilogue.
So, What Is Science?