It Could Be Otherwise

“It Could be Otherwise serves as the rare rigorous-but-accessible take on the history and philosophy of science…It is painted by Firestein’s warm and engaging writing style, which feels less like a pedantic lecture and more like a conversation.”–Santa Fe Institute
“Patient, cumulative, and genuinely clarifying for any reader who has never paused to ask what science actually is, beneath its textbook surface…The reader who wants to understand why scientists find uncertainty energizing rather than defeating will come away with something genuinely useful.”–American Scientist
“It Could Be Otherwise is, at its core, an act of reframing; uncertainty not as a confession of failure but as the condition of possibility. That reframing is genuinely valuable, and it reaches beyond what either triumphalist or relativist accounts of science can offer.”–Science
“It’s bleak out there. It feels like science is being attacked on a number of fronts, all while the world burns around us. Nevertheless, author and Nautilus contributor Stuart Firestein gives us a beacon of hope. He argues for science that embraces uncertainty, promoting creativity and possibility. He paints science as an agent of freedom, and illuminates a path that makes redemption through science feel possible.”–Nautilus
“A solid and even stirring defense of science.”–Kirkus
“This exploration of uncertainty will resonate with readers interested in how science actually functions rather than what it definitively proves.”–Library Journal (starred review)
“A smart treatise … Making complex philosophical questions accessible, this is a persuasive defense of uncertainty as science’s defining feature and greatest gift.”–Publishers Weekly
“It Could Be Otherwise feels like a personal conversation with a deep thinker about what science is and how it works. Science, Stuart Firestein explains, is not about discovering universal truth–it’s a process to master the inherent uncertainty of things, to build useful knowledge about the world. This and other counterintuitive ideas are made sensible in a sweeping discussion about the practice and value of science.”–Lisa Feldman Barrett, author of Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain
“This wise book challenges everything we take for granted about thinking scientifically. Rather than seeing the unknown as a problem to be solved, Stuart Firestein instead invites us to embrace the possibility that dwells in uncertainty.”–Annie Duke, bestselling author of Thinking in Bets
“If you love science, you’ll read this book with pleasure. And if you are still fairly new to science–still just getting acquainted–you may find yourself falling in love. That is the power of the special kind of sophisticated optimism that Stuart Firestein celebrates here.”–Jonathan Weiner, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Beak of the Finch
“In this mind-bending book, Stuart Firestein provides compelling evidence that failure and uncertainty in science should be embraced, laying the foundation for active optimism and a far better future.”–Eric Topol, New York Times bestselling author of Super Agers

Stuart Firestein is a professor of neuroscience at Columbia University and member of the Santa Fe Institute. He has published over 100 scientific papers in journals such as Nature, Science, Cell, and Neuron. He is a Guggenheim fellow, and a fellow and consultant for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He is also the author of Ignorance and Failure. He lives in New York City.

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