Includes bibliographical references and index.

This book seeks to provide students and practicing nurses with the tools to better understand and engage in scientific arguments to support quality nursing and evidence-based practice. The nature of nursing and its relationship with science remains an area of ongoing debate, controversy and considerable confusion to both students and practitioners. For a science-based health discipline, it is something of a paradox that most nursing students have limited exposure to scientific philosophy education, which is not covered in depth in many modern university nursing programmes. This work seeks to remedy this: in providing material on modern scientific research methods, with particular emphasis on the context of practice, it presents an alternative theoretical iteration of holistic nursing as scientific inquiry. The author is a passionate advocate for empirical and pragmatic approaches to nursing, and the book provides challenging ideas to support a new wave of critical-thinking in contemporary nursing, confronting postmodern dogma with contemporary scientific critique. In doing so, this text engages readers with the art of progressive empirical client-centred care, appropriate for the development of 21st century holistic nursing practice.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed October 17, 2018).

Cover; Title Page; Copyright Page; Contents; List of Figures; List of Tables; Foreword; References; Preface: Using this Book; Chapter 1 Science and Nursing -- Why Should I Care?; Science Under Siege; Nursing Epistemology; Science and Technology in Nursing; Science and Medicine in Contemporary Health Care; Nursing Science; Nursing Praxis; Pragmatism and its Value for Nursing; Making Sense of Nursing Theory; Summary; Key Points for Further Discussion; References; Chapter 2 The Rise of Empiricism; The Beginnings of Science; Science in the Medieval World; The Renaissance and Scientific Revolution.

The Age of EnlightenmentMathematical Probability; Rationalism; A Priori and a Posteriori Knowledge; The Rise of Empiricism; The Hypothetico-deductive Method; Inductive Reasoning; The Problem of Induction; Deductive Reasoning; Abductive Reasoning; Summary; Key Points for Further Discussion; References; Chapter 3 Modern Science and Nursing; Romanticism; Positivism; Logical Positivism; Pragmatism; Classical Pragmatism; Neo-pragmatism; Post-positivism and Karl Popper's Critical Rationalism; Falsifiability; Popper's Critical Rationalism; Popper's Scientific Legacy.

Thomas Kuhn: Scientific Evolution and RevolutionsThe Revolution in Physics and Its Impact on Scientific Philosophy; Summary; Key Points for Further Discussion; References; Chapter 4 Scientific Determinism, Causality and Care; Scientific Determinism and Causality; The Deductive-Nomological Model; The Deductive Statistical Model; The Inductive Statistical Model (I-S Model); The Statistical Relevance (S-R) Model; The Causal Mechanics (C-M) Model; The Pragmatic Model; Unification; Summary; Key Points for Further Discussion; References.

Chapter 5 Social Science: Scientific Realism, Alternative Frameworks and the Rise of Postmodern ThoughtMetaphysics and Science; Scientific Realism; Arguments Supporting Scientific Realism; Criticism of Scientific Realism; Non-Realist Empirical Frameworks; Anti-Realism (Nominalism); Arguments for Anti-Realism; Criticism of Anti-Realism; The Mind-Body Problem Revisited; Reductionism and Holism; Reductionism; Holism; Interpretivist and Constructivist Rationales; Intentionality; Phenomenology; Hermeneutics; Critical Theory; Feminist Inquiry; Social Constructionism and Constructivism.

PostmodernismEpistemological Relativism; The Development of Postmodern Thought; Deconstruction; Neo-Pragmatism; Ways of Knowing; Trans-cultural Nursing; Reaction to Postmodernism; Post-Structuralism; Post-postmodernism; Caring and the Divine; Unitary Human Beings; Health as Human Consciousness; Human Becoming; Caring Caritas; Integral Nursing; The Appeal to Divinity; Map of the Problematique: The Limits of Postmodern Thought; Description and Explanation vs Prediction; Research Culture and Ethics in the Social Sciences; Summary; Key Points for Further Discussion; References.