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The Higher Moral Panic: Academic Scientism and its Quarrels with Science and Technology Studies
Abstract
'Higher Superstition' calls for scientists to symbolically take up arms against an anti-science movement (the academic left) which it claims has taken over a large part of the social studies of science, feminism, environmentalism and cultural studies. Despite its simplistic typecasting, unusually vitriolic and dismissive rhetoric and lack of interest in scholarly engagement with the fields of study under attack, ‘Higher Superstition’ has received considerable attention, much of it positive. It has become one of the most widely cited texts in the so-called ‘Science Wars’. Numerous explanations for the emergence of such extreme claims and their positive reception have been canvassed. The lack of focus of the attack of the ‘Science Wars’ and the variety of explanations for its emergence suggests that the question of what constitutes an effective response from the humanities is a complex one and that the extreme ‘Science Wars’ rhetoric of texts such as Higher Superstition is unlikely to assist ‘the sciences’ address real issues in a substantial way.
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NOTES AND REFERENCES
See the special issue edited by Malcolm Ashmore and Evelleen Richards, Special Issue on ‘The Politics of SSK: Neutrality, Commitment and Beyond’, Social Studies of Science, 26, 2, 1996.
See R. Hart, ‘The flight from reason: Higher Superstition and the refutation of science studies’, in Andrew Ross (Ed.), Science Wars, Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, 1996, pp. 259–92. Hart identifies a number of places where Gross and Levitt have taken quotations out of context to bolster their criticisms.
Lewis Wolpert, The Unnatural Mature of Science, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1992; G. Holton, ‘How to think about the ‘anti-science’ phenomenon’, Public Understanding of Science, 1, 1, 1992, pp. 103–28. For approval of Holton's views but a call for even stronger rhetoric see J. Maddox, ‘Defending science against anti-science’, Mature, 368, 17 March 1994, p. 185.
For an Australian variation with an even more extreme epistemological ‘policing’ see Keith Windschuttle, The Killing of History: How a Discipline is Being Murdered by Literary Critics and Social Theorists, Macleay Press, Sydney, 1994. See also K. Windschuttle, ‘History must prevail against challenge of cultural studies’, The Australian, Wednesday 23 November 1994, pp. 32–33. For a discussion by Windschuttle citing Gross and Levitt's ‘mission’ with approval see K. Windschuttle ‘Certain principles in hit and myth times’, Higher Education, The Australian, Wednesday 15 February 1995, pp. 25–26.
Richard Olson, for instance, calls for all parties to reflect on the different value systems they have brought with them into debate: R. Olson, ‘Whose is the higher superstition? Reflection on the need for sceptical open-mindedness in the days to come’, Skeptic, 4, 2, 1996, pp. 32–35. S. Weininger and J. Labinger ‘Conversing with outsiders’, C&EN, 73, 2, 9 January 1995, p. 27. Some other ‘milder’ overviews of aspects of the debate can also be found in ‘Science vs anti science?’, Scientific American, January 1997, pp. 96–101.
A good sample of negative appraisals of Gross and Levitt can be found in the collection edited by Ross, op. cit; see also N. Wise, ‘The enemy without the enemy within’, Isis, 87, 2, 1996, pp. 323–27; B. Martin, ‘Social construction of an “attack on science” (review of Gross and Levitt, Higher Superstition)’, Social Studies of Science, 26, 1, 1996, pp. 161–72.
A large number of positive reviews can be found, for a sample see, H. Bauer, ‘Higher Superstition: the academic left and its quarrels with science’, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 8, 4, 1994, pp. 555–63; W. Herbert, ‘The PC assault on science’, US News and World Report, 20 February 1995, pp. 64–65. For a good example of the mimicry of Gross and Levitt's extreme polemical style see R. Sandell, ‘Science and superstition’, Engineering World, June 1995, pp. 19–22.
J. Cribb, ‘Call to counter age of anti-science’, ‘Higher Education’, The Australian, Wednesday 18 October 1995, p. 12.
D. Bereby, ‘That damned elusive Bruno Latour’, Lingua franca, September/October 1994, pp. 22–32, 78; C. Macilwain, ‘Science Wars blamed for loss of post’, Nature, 387, 22 May 1997, p. 325.
L. Winner, ‘The gloves come off: shattered alliances in science and technology studies’, in Ross, op. cit., pp. 106–7.
S. Hilgartner, Discussion Paper, ‘The Sokal affair in context’, Science Technology and Human Values, 22, 4, 1997, pp. 506–22.
T. Gieryn, ‘Comment and reply: policing STS: a boundary-work souvenir from the Smithsonian Exhibition on “Science in American Life’”, Science Technology and Human Values, 21, 1, 1996, pp. 100–15.
Ashmore and Richards, op. cit.; Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes, Relativism vs Rationalism, Blackwell, Oxford, 1982.
P. Hert, ‘Social dynamics of an on-line scholarly debate’, The Information Society, 13, 4, 1997, pp. 329–60.
Robert Hughes, The Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America, Oxford University Press, New York, 1993.
Standpoint epistemologies’ emphasise the local and situated construction of knowledge and the weaknesses in assuming any common standards of rationality. Political variations of these themes have emphasised the idea that the knowledge acquired by oppressed minorities and women has the possibility of being more authentic as it has not been knowledge developed to merely service the dominant status quo.
Judy Wajcman, Feminism Confronts Technology, Allen and Unwin, North Sydney, Australia, 1991, pp. 8–12; E. Richards and J. Schuster, ‘The feminine method as myth and accounting resource: a challenge to gender studies and social studies of science’, Social Studies of Science, 19, 1989, pp. 697–720.
M. Elam and O Juhlin, ‘When Harry met Sandra: an alternative engagement after the Science Wars’, Science as Culture, 7, 1, 1998, pp. 95–109.
See for example, P. Cole, ‘Voodoo sociology: recent developments in the sociology of science,’ p. 283, and P. Gross, ‘Introduction’, sec note 4, pp. 6–7, in Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt and Martin W. Lewis (eds.), The Flight from Science and Reason, The New York Academy of Sciences, New York, distributed by the Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1996.
D. Nclkin, ‘The Science Wars: responses to a marriage failed’, in Ross, op. cit., pp. 121–22.
See C. Macilwain, ‘Campuses ring to a stormy clash over truth and reason’, in ‘Briefing Science Wars’, Nature, 387, 22 May 1997, p. 331. For an example of a more sophisticated and less inflammatory exchange between a scientist and social constructivists see, J. A. Labinger, ‘Science as culture: a view from the petri dish’, and responses by H. M. Collins, S. Fuller, D. Hakken, W. Keith, M. Lynch, H. M. Marks, T.J. Pinch, A. Stockdale and J. A. Labinger, ‘Reply’, in Social Studies of Science, 25, 1995, pp. 285–348.
N. K. Hayles, ‘Consolidating the canon’, in Ross (ed.), op. cit., pp. 226–37.
The theory landscape in science studies: sociological traditions 95–110’, in ‘Part II Theory and Methods’, in Sheila Jasanoff, Gerald E. Markle, James C. Petersen and Trevor Pinch (eds.), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 1995.
Nick jardine and Marina Frasca-Spada, ‘Splendours and miseries of the science wars’, Studies in the History Philosophy of Science, 28, 2, 1997, p. 234.
E. Masood, ‘Gunfire echoes in debates on public understanding’, in ‘Briefing Science Wars’, Nature, 387, 22 May 1997, pp. 331–35. See also L. Wolpert, ‘Woolly thinking in the field’, in ‘Risk in a Modern Society, Special Supplement’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 31 May 1996, p. viii. See also response, A. Irwin and B. Wynne, ‘Lessons at the sharp end’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 21 June 1996, p. 13.
T. Geiryn, op. cit. See also, P. Gross, ‘Reply’, Science Technology and Human Values, 21, 1, 1996, pp. 116–20. See also editorial in Nature in relation to Smithsonian display, ‘Science in American Life’, 380, 14 March 1996, p. 89.
Compare D. C. Phillips, ‘Coming to grips with radical social constructivisms’, with W. A. Suchting, ‘Reflections on Peter Slezak and the sociology of scientific knowledge’, pp. 151 95, in Michael R. Mathews (ed.), ‘Special Issue on Philosophy and Constructivism in Science Education’, in Science Education, 6, 1–2, 1997.
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S. Fuller, ‘Science and end to history, or history to science’, in Ross, op. cit., p. 45.
Alan Irwin, Citizen Science, Routledge, London, 1995. See David Mercer, ‘Science, technology and democracy on the STS agenda: review article’, Prometheus, 16, 1, 1998, pp. 81–91.
B Latour, ‘Y-at-il une science après la guerre froide?’, Le Monde, 17 January 1997, quoted in Jardine and Frasca-Spada, op. cit., p. 222.