Douglas Williams of the Department of Political Studies at Queens University in Kingston (Canada) has written a wide-ranging account of Popper's thought with the emphasis on the social and political aspects of his ideas. The intention of the author was to draw out both the strengths and limitations of Popper's work from the perspective of a critical admirer. This stance has enabled him to identify some aspects of Popper's work that are generally neglected, especially the moral dimension of his thought which Williams regards as a pervasive unifying principle. He also notes that virtually nothing has been written about Popper's defence of the cultural ideals of Western society and a major aim of the book is to show "the sustaining unity and power of Popper's vision" as it runs through his work in cosmology, philosophy, science, history and politics.

Despite these promising indications, the results are disappointing. This is not because Williams dissents radically from many salient features of Popper's philosophy. These disagreements, from a professed admirer of Popper's achievement, should be challenging and illuminating. The problem is that Williams does not provide the arguments and the evidence that are required to make his objections convincing, or to drive the discussion to a deeper level. Inconsistencies and inaccuracies abound. What is one to make of an author who on page 164 rebukes Popper for his 'failure to apppreciate the ideal of the good life in a free and egalitarian society', having previously (p 15) quoted from Popper's Unended Quest 'For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society...'?

Williams comments that Popperian exegesis has polarised between disciples and vehement critics. It appears that he has achieved a balance of a kind by occupying each extreme in turn. In one mode he writes:
'During the last four decades, and spanning a seemingly endless number of fields of inquiry, Popper has established himself as one of the most significant thinkers of our century...Few thinkers in our century have possessed the intellectual powers, the courage, and the faith in humanity necessary to sustain such a project. Bertrand Russell is perhaps the last that comes to mind'(viii).

In the critical mode he raises myriad objections, large and small, to Popper's psychology, his epistemology, and his politics, concluding that some of Popper's ideas, especially his concept of rationality, are not consistent with the maintenance of human freedom and autonomy.

Williams digs deep to locate the roots of Popper's ideas. He suggests that Popper followed Kant's defence of human dignity and moral autonomy against the twin threats of mechanistic determinism (Newton) and skepticism (Hume.) This is a fertile formulation that could have led directly to an account of Popper's responses to these threats, namely indeterminism, fallibilism, a non-authoritarian theory of knowledge and a limited 'non-justificationist' theory of rationality. Instead, Williams embarks on an account of the rise of science and the battle to maintain a sense of enchantment in a culture of science and technocratic politics. The remaining chapters examine Popper's methodology for the natural sciences (Chapter 4), his prescriptions for the social sciences (Chapter 5) and his defence of liberalism (Chapter 7 and Chapter 8). Chapter 6 defends Mannheim from some Popperian criticism.

One of Williams's problems is that he has tried to achieve too much in 200 pages. This tendency is especially apparent in Chapter 4, where in less than thirty pages he covers the development of most of Popper's leading ideas in epistemology and the philosophy of science. This is too densely packed for an introduction and it is likely to confuse people who come to the book in search of Popper's social philosophy. At the end of the chapter Williams changes from the descriptive to the critical mode and delivers an essentially negative verdict on Popper's psychology and also his epistemology.

In Williams' conclusion, he wrote that his aim was to faithfully reconstruct the unity of Popper's vision by pursuing an 'immanent critique'. That is, 'criticism of a man or woman's thought is held to flow from his or her own assumptions and values' (185). He wanted to improve on the excessively specialised and polemical nature of most of the commentary on Popper's work. This is a worthy aim but not one that Williams achieved, possibly because he did not make use of Bartley's account of the 'metacontextual shift' generated by Popper's non-authoritarian theory of knowledge and politics. Consequently Williams has been unable to do justice to Popper's epistemology and its cultural implications.

A similar problem has apparently occurred with Williams' critique of Popper's politics, especially Popper's views on the limited, protective role of the state. Williams has promulgated some very misleading statements, on Popper's views about the role of technocrats and social engineering, for example. This is a situation where the imminent critique may need to be supplemented by an account of Williams' own assumptions and values because they have apparently influenced his adverse comments on Popper.

The result is a book containing a confusing mixture of praise and criticism. If the criticisms were valid, Williams' high opinion of Popper would appear to be unwarranted. For the most part they are not valid, and one wonders how some of the more spectacular misreadings survived the screening of all the helpers he acknowledged. One also wonders what kind of impression this book will make on people who have not read Popper. Clearly the best thing that can happen will be for people to read some of the books and make up their own minds on the problems and issues raised by Williams.

You know there may be a slight problem when you find large numbers of punctuation and grammatical errors early in a big book sold at this price. When you more than once find two or three contributors' articles rehashing the same material (but using slightly different "standard" diagram symbols), your reservations about the editorial standards involved increase. Learning half a dozen different ways to control blenders and hair clippers, when you were thinking more of 13.8 KV switchgear, is a further awkward twist. Want a sampling of makes, models and photos? Forget it. I do hope you want to take Electric Motors 101 several times, though. (I didn't even think it was ABOUT motors when I bought it!)

So anyway, I was pretty bummed, and I wouldn't have shelled out for it, I don't think. I'm keeping it around, though. I did come across some nice tables, and it has an index. There's also one, slpendid, nuts, bolts and numbers article on coordinating overcurrent protection. I mean, this guy does this to relax! They should have put it in a small book and charged [less] for it. (It would take up less room and be lighter to hold.) Some people could also find a use for the breakdown torques of induction and synchronous motors, etc. (I'd let them add that to the small book), but there's just too much disorganization and fat.

I would speculate that one way to make a living is to hustle articles from eager contributors into a "big, expensive book", kick back and enjoy the margin. I for one will keep this in mind while shopping in future.

The book is less about switchgear and more about the broad field of electrical engineering. It gets so far off track that it even has diagrams of resistor-diode logic circuits. It covers far too many topics in very little detail. For example, from the title I expected more than four very short paragraphs on current transformer burden. My initial disappointment told me to return the book; but I have a hard time letting go of any book with any use, even if I paid too much.

This book has "NEGETIVE VALUE"!!! As soon as you read the first chapter of the book, you will find tons of error. It is compeletly unclear and confusing. The publisher should stop selling the book and pay back each person the money because that is so ridiculus for a technical book.

This is a strange mix of useful comments and a disastrous modell exercise. In his attempt to estimate the cost of facing out Swedish nuclear energy, professor Nordhaus makes a number of mistakes, both on facts and on oil-fired capacity it simply disregarding, without explanation, despite being clearly profitable in a situation with normal electricity prices. The import potential is also much larger than he claims. The total supply is wrong by an astonishing 50 TWh (compare with our present demand of around 140 TWh and the "normal" long term demand, with neutral taxes, of around 100 TWh!)

2 He has not eliminated, as one should, the huge impact of discriminatory taxes and subsidies. Trying to defend this by calling the purpose of these taxes "social", when they are cleary political, is unconvincing.

3. In his central scenario, the Swedish carbon dioxide tax is used, when measuring the cost of climate controll. The correct method is to focus on the cost of buying emission rights, as the author himself is actually confirming (without himself noticing!) Acting as he does against he own knowledge, one has to conclude that the main scenario is chosen to please the sponsors (our major power companies).

Taken together, these mistakes add up to a mind-boggling error. With true supply figures and correct methods, his estmates (in the central scenario) are reduced but over 90 procent! More details are available in the Swedish Journal "Ekonomisk Debatt" (nr 8, 1999).

In view of the authors reputation, this outcome is difficult to understand. He may in some respects (e.g the statistics) have been misled by his Swedish advisers, but for methods there is no such excuse.

I would, nevertheless, award the book one star, in deep and sincery appreciation of his controversial comments on a number of energy policy issues. He dismisses, e g, the prevailing view that our remaining rivers have to be exploited if nuclear reactors are closed. He also mentions the anomalies of our energy statistics, adding apples and pears, electricity and heat, and thus making it possible for politicians to claim, in true orwellian fashion, that energy waste is energy saving.

Åke Sundström, retired government economist, author of a book on Swedish hydro energy. END