這本書旨在對科學性質的現代觀點作一個簡單、明瞭和初步的介紹。當作者教授科學哲學的時候，感到沒有一本適用的書可以推薦給初學者。可以得到的關於現代觀點的唯一資料，隻有原著。許多原著對初學者來說太難，同時無論如何，它們數量太多，要使之適閤於大學生，是不易辦到的。這本書對於任何想認真從事研究這個題目的人來說，是不能代替原著的，但是作者希望它將提供一個有用的較易接近的起點。

Chalmers was elected a fellow of the Academy of Humanities in 1997. His primary research interest is the philosophy of science and he is author of the best-selling textbook What Is This Thing Called Science? which has been translated into many languages.

He has been a visiting scholar at the Flinders University Philosophy Department since 1999. For the 2007 fall semester he was a visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Chalmers is an associate professor at the History and Philosophy of Science department of the University of Sydney.

Books:

Science and Its Fabrication, Open University Press and University of Minnesota Press, 1990, pp. 142+xii. (Translated into French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Korean, Portuguese and Chinese.)

What Is This Thing Called Science?, 3rd revised edition, University of Queensland Press, Hackett, 1999. (Originally published 1976; second edition: 1982.)

The Scientist's Atom and the Philosopher's Stone – How Science Succeeded and Philosophy Failed to Gain Knowledge of Atoms, Springer, 2009, pp. 288+xii.