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How to keep up is the problem. We鈥檝e done the hard work with a round-up of the scholarly, the expert and the unexpected. Read on for science studies, the book that took thirty years to write, maths, primates, lasers, supramolecular chemistry, and eco-economy, and more

CALL something a scientific revolution and you are hardly making a scientific judgment. Call something the scientific revolution, and you are taking a view about the course of European thought. Invoke both terms together and you go to the heart of science studies鈥攖he jumble of inquiries pursued by academic folk who do not actually do science, but like to ponder how it works.

You鈥檒l also, inevitably, conjure up the shade of Thomas Kuhn. A student looking for ways into science studies today will still want to read his famous essay, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, first published 40 years ago. But even if they give it a miss, they will find it developed, discussed or denounced in a host of other books.

Kuhn is there in the 鈥渂ig鈥� books, to be consulted in libraries rather than read. When Routledge鈥檚 splendid Companion to the History of Modern Science first appeared in 1990, Kuhn scored 30 mentions in the index (behind Isaac Newton with 44, but well ahead of Karl Popper with a mere 12). And 10 years later, he achieved similar prominence in Blackwell鈥檚 equally compendious Companion to the Philosophy of Science (Kuhn 34, Popper 28 and Newton, 21).

Books about Kuhn and his ideas continue to appear. There are short ones such as Ziauddin Sardar鈥檚 Thomas Kuhn and the Science Wars, in Icon Books鈥� read-them-in-an-hour Postmodern Encounters series, and long ones like Steve Fuller鈥檚 scholarly reappraisal in Thomas Kuhn: A philosophical history for our times. The man clearly had something.

What he had was a new way of looking at scientific change, of focusing on what scientists actually do as opposed to what they say they do, or what philosophers think they should do. He also got up the noses of quite a few scientists by appearing to cast doubt on the idea of scientific progress, and even on the possibility of science discovering truths about reality鈥攈ence the 鈥淪cience Wars鈥� of Sardar鈥檚 title.

So where do you go for more? Sardar is an easy way into what the arguments are about, but his is scarcely an academic treatment. Fuller builds a clever argument for why Kuhn was really a conservative, but his book would suit only a pretty advanced student. What about those nice, user-friendly course texts that abound in other fields?

There are three main disciplinary routes into the big Kuhnian questions: history, philosophy and sociology. The historians have the most choice. This is partly because the scientific revolution鈥攖he emergence of recognisably modern science about 300 years ago鈥攊s such a central part of any account of the rise of natural knowledge.

Writing a one-volume history of science that does justice to the range of research in the subject is probably impossible, although John Pickstone makes a heroic, broad-brush attempt in Ways of Knowing: A new history of science, technology and medicine. Of recent titles with a narrower focus on those early days of science, Paolo Rossi鈥檚 The Birth of Modern Science, translated from Italian, is the most comprehensive and the most traditional. It is well up on the latest historical scholarship, although it does read like, well, a textbook.

More appealing to some will be Peter Dear鈥檚 Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and its Ambitions, 1500-1700. Dear is more selective, but offers a brilliant introduction to the change in 鈥渨hat was worth knowing鈥� over the two centuries he discusses. More compressed still is the second edition of John Henry鈥檚 The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science. It might serve history students looking for a way in to history of science well, but is also a useful back-up for historians of science.

Both will find it hard to displace Steven Shapin鈥檚 succinct, stylish and provocative The Scientific Revolution from reading lists. And both will be used alongside the essential documents that Malcolm Oster has collected for Science in Europe, 1500-1800: A primary sources reader.

Collections of readings also abound in philosophy of science, with Philosophy of Science, edited by M. Curd and J. A. Cover, being the best one around at the moment. Yuri Balashov and Alex Rosenberg鈥檚 selection in Philosophy of Science offers a useful alternative.

Among single-author introductions, James Ladyman鈥檚 Understanding Philosophy of Science covers Popper, Kuhn and much else besides. It might even rival Alan Chalmers鈥檚 What is this Thing Called Science?, now in its third edition, as a one-volume treatment, although Chalmers does pose his questions in a way which students invariably find appealing.

And sociology? Here it gets harder. There isn鈥檛 an up-to-date, non-partisan guide to the sociology of science that covers all the perspectives a decent course should touch on. The science wars have something to do with this, as does the division of this branch of science studies. Already a small sub-field of a grander parent discipline, it is split into a host of small schools, each with its own allegiances.

The current crop of books trying to make sense of the science wars offers one way in. One of the best is James Brown鈥檚 Who Rules in Science? Brown is a philosopher, and makes useful distinctions and candid judgments of other people鈥檚 positions on science on almost every page. His overview combines breeziness with rigour in a way most textbook writers would envy, but does not go quite deeply enough into details. It would make brilliant supplementary reading, though.

John Ziman鈥檚 Real Science: What it is, what it does also aims to make peace in the science wars, although it has wider synthetic ambitions as well, notably to take account of all the ways scientists communicate. Ziman tells us that 鈥渟ociology has superseded philosophy at the theoretical core of 鈥榮cience studies'鈥�, although Kuhn hardly gets a mention in his all-embracing scheme.

Similarly, Jay Labinger and Harry Collins鈥� The One Culture? A conversation about science offers essays on the key issues about science鈥檚 status that any serious student would find illuminating. It also informs us, in the words of sociologist Trevor Pinch, that Kuhn no longer has the influence he once had, and that the classic Kuhnian question of whether science progresses is now a non-issue for science studies. Perhaps so, but the contributors to this conversation still spend a good deal of time discussing Kuhn.

For myself, I鈥檒l not only bet that Kuhn鈥檚 most notorious book is still being read 40 years from now, but that his ideas will still be useful as a thread to follow through the labyrinth of science studies.