This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.

How do we humans know what we know?

Can there ever be knowing about knowing?

This ambitious book is written in reaction to the so-called 'rigour' that pervades much of today's scientific research and practice. Taking examples from across the natural and social sciences, the authors examine the deep-seated assumptions that underpin the discovery of knowledge. They claim that all scientific methods are delusions in pursuit of theory. Their controversial argument uses Systems Theory, and in particular the concept of self-reference. For them, the very process of observing must mask the underlying delusions, tricking the human mind into developing a self-consistent description of itself. This opens up a belief in the certainty of a causal 'reality'. However, our esoteric descriptions, our theories, our ways of thinking, in fact all the abstractions we use to examine the world around us, are distinct from the 'reality' being observed.

This fresh and audacious work makes an important contribution to the study of scientific method, and takes readers out of the comfort zone of their perceived scientific certainty.