"This volume raises essential epistemological questions in a text poised to make a lasting contribution to the scholarly community. Fisch develops the opposing insights of philosophers Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. Fisch probes the question of how scientific theories change to develop a more complete theory of science as a rational endeavor. Ultimately, Fisch follows more in the footsteps of Kuhn, grounding his analysis on the understanding that in philosophy, questioning is the piety of thought. In considering how scienti􀄄c theories evolve, Fisch further asks such questions as these: What is the role of ambiguity and indecision in this change process? How does the praxis of science depend on scientific frameworks? How can one decide when and how to reasonably replace one theory with another? How can a scientist be persuaded to accept a new paradigm? What role does outside criticism play in the process of perspective shifts leading to transformative self-criticism? Overall, this is a remarkable book on critical thinking and the philosophy and history of science. Highly recommended."

Choice

"According to Fisch’s argument in this book, scientists are critical and as such require a detached attitude towards their intellectual productions; however, scientists are also attached to their intellectual productions as integral to their self-identity, and hence suspend criticism for commitment. Fisch’s own approach to the historiography and philosophy of science is binocular – seeing the world of science through both poles of the detached-attached spectrum; or bi-cognitive – interpreting the world of science with the two dimensions of detached/attached axes for Fisch’s intellectual coordinate system for the intellectual biographies of scientists in their specific scientific communities."

Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science

"Deeply informed by the history of science and argued with philosophical rigor, this tour de force demonstrates the surprising yet essential role played in scientific revolutions by dithering."

Paul Franks, Yale University

"Scientific thought always takes place in the context of framework assumptions that determine what constitutes rationality. But if reason itself is local to a framework, how can such frameworks evolve and change in a rational way? Drawing on recent work in the theory of action, Menachem Fisch shows how external criticism can lead to an internal destabilization of a scientist’s deepest convictions, and eventually to reasoned change. This book will destabilize the way we have thought about this problem for the last half century and more, and lead us to a new understanding of scientific rationality."

Daniel Garber, Princeton University

"Creatively Undecided, as all great philosophical works, is both theoretically impeccable and meaningful for critically facing present-day ethical and political dilemmas. Fisch answers apparently abstract and cold questions pertaining to the philosophy of science and the history of mathematics, but–as a matter of fact–has something crucially important to say about one of the most pressing issues in our globalized and politically-torn world: how to self-criticize 'from within' our normative frameworks when challenged by competing cultures who confront us 'from without.'  Fisch ends the book by testing his philosophical theses concerning agency and rational deliberation with a historical case: a masterful narrative of the contested reception of George Peacock’s “symbolical algebra” in early ninteeth century England."

Niccolò Guicciardini, University of Bergamo