An up-to-date, clear but rigourous introduction to philosophy of science has long been needed, and this book at last presents to teacher and student alike the ideal text for the subject's exploration. The book offers an indispensible grounding in the philosophical understanding of science and its problems, and captures through astute illustration with real science the excitement of the exploration of the natural world. Alexander Bird pays full heed to negleted but vital conceptual issues such as the nature of scientific laws, while balancing and linking this with a full coverage of epistemological problems such as our knowledge of those laws. Laws of nature, natural kinds, explaination, theories, realism, inference to the best explaination, induction and anti-inductivism, probability, scientific method and progress are all illuminated with keen insight and communicated skillfully to the reader who is furnished with a profound understanding of the issues raised by one of humankind's most ambitious and thrilling endeavours.