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Title: Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science by Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt, N. Levitt ISBN: 0-8018-5707-4 Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.1 (21 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: If it doesn't work for science...
Comment: Gross and Levitt know their subject, and they present their case with wonderful lucidity and sophistication. Some may call it pedantic, but it taught me a few new words, and for that I am grateful.
However, there remains something troubling about this book. First of all, the author's views of politics are egregiously simplistic. As far as their concerned, there are only two political beliefs: left and right, the latter being populated mostly by their enemy the "creation scientist." Second, the book sends dangerously mixed messages. They call the academic left their "friends" even as they lambast them in a manner that would give Ayn Rand a lesson in polemics. Because of this, their critique is limited to myopic analyses of specific blunders (with a hasty appeal to their representativeness), while leaving untouched the mistaken postmodern premises that give rise to such blunders.
Last, and most importantly: Gross and Levitt come across as watchdogs patrolling their own profession. When they find a transgressor, they simply throw her over the fence into the humanities and social sciences, to run amok as she pleases. Granted, the sorry state of the humanities is not their problem; they are scientists. However, as scientists, they of all people should hold the virtues of objective inquiry in high regard. If the postmodern word-salad of relativism does not work for the natural sciences, why should it work in the humanities, which is every bit as concerned with understanding of reality?
I give the book four stars because these men are heroes for taking on the postmodern academy. I did not give them five stars because they do not go far enough. They pawn their misguided "friends" off onto their sister departments, and think that sufficient. But they will always come back. By refusing to strike the root, Gross and Levitt work against their intention.
Still, what is good in here is EXTREMELY good, and I recommend the book highly.
Rating: 5
Summary: "a reality-driven enterprise"
Comment: Triggering the most hilarious literary scandal in recent years, this book will be a major influence in determining how our society progresses. Science has been under severe assaults during the past generation. Much anti -science feeling arose as a reaction against the use of science and technology to support war. Later, science was accused of supporting racism and sexism. Now, as this book makes clear, a new wave of slander on science has arisen and is gaining strength. The origin of these assaults began with the wave of "postmodernist" writings among French philosophers and social commentators. The attitude of science being merely the tool of society instead of working aloof or apart from social issues leapt the Atlantic to take firm root among North American academics. This "academic left," having begun as a movement for social equality, has turned its wrath on science. Nearly every element of science, from relativity to biology, has come under the distorted scrutiny of humanities scholars. Alan Sokal's fictitious example in Social Text demonstrated just how contorted this outlook can be.
After an excellent presentation of "postmodernist" concepts, the authors address the anti-science critics declarations. The authors offer us a rogues' gallery of misguided "spokespersons" who bend language, misinterpret what science discloses and the methods it uses, and who fail to comprehend the very topics they purport to critique. They accept that much of science seems obscure and eludes quick or superficial comprehension. Why then, they query, do these critics insist either on denouncing its methods or adopt the findings in an attempt to restructure society? In Gross and Levitt's view, the critics see attacks on science as a means of attaining intellectual power and guiding society along a revised path. Since these critics see corruption at every level, they mean to "purify" society by tearing out any and all roots supporting it. That they have been effective at this slashing exercise in many areas is the reason this book was written.
Gross and Levitt show that those condemning science as "patriarchal," environmentally destructive or racist, are almost universally devoid of knowledge of the workings of science. These attackers seek to replace traditional science with new "ways of knowing." Gross and Levitt offer some real howlers as examples of this genre. From the frivolous "Newton's Principia is a rape manual" to the bizarre notion of a "feminist algebra," Gross and Levitt expose the fallacies of these "anti-patriarchal" constructs. Given the long term campaign by feminists to rebuke science, they show remarkable restraint in their assessment of this aspect of post-modernist techniques. The chapter "Auspiciating Gender" is but seven pages longer than the next longest one. Still, as they remind us, those adherents to such grotesque notions are now firmly established in academic positions and making education policies.
Throughout the book, the authors remind us that science is "a reality-driven enterprise." Science achieves its results by constant attention to methods and results. Whatever impact "culture" has on science, it isn't in the methodology. No reputable scientist assumes his theories will go unchallenged, especially as new data emerge. The cycles of checks and confirmations or refutations has kept science moving forward since the Enlightenment. Gross and Levitt urge readers to remember that without the methods and results of science, countless human achievements from the elimination of smallpox to the computers viewing this page would never have occurred. In the words of Richard Dawkins, "show me a cultural relativist in a jet aircraft at 35 000 feet, and I'll show you a hypocrite." What more can be said?
Rating: 4
Summary: Lower sub-stition
Comment: When I first read this book I found it hilarious and in so far as I don't ride with postmodern appropriations of science I thought it merely odd. But with the passing of the Sokal episode and its trivia the basic issues have resurfaced and the harm done by this book suddenly came home to me. Let's face it, the book is more stupid than what it critiques. Science is failing. Period. It has failed on the theory of evolution, and given us reductionist views on man the average Buddhist finds embarrassing. Whatever the sins of the postmodernists they at least sensed the problem.
The most pathetic bit in this forgettable book is the excoriation of Jeremy Rifkin's Algeny, admittedly a book hard to take, and one that caused palpitations in Gould who reviewed it. I actually tracked the book down and discovered a very acute critique of Darwinian theory. It is no great shakes as a book, but at least the author could see the problem.
That's the point where this science arrogance is so ill-advised and misleading, the tactics those of the Big Science bullies preening with their positivistic idiocy.
For a history of the science wars, cf. The One Culture? J. Labinger, ed
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Title: Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science by Alan D. Sokal, Jean Bricmont, Alan Sokal, J. Bricmont ISBN: 0312204078 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths About Science by Noretta Koertge ISBN: 0195117263 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2000 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: The Sokal Hoax: The Sham That Shook the Academy by The Editors of Lingua Franca, Lingua Franca ISBN: 0803279957 Publisher: University of Nebraska Press Pub. Date: September, 2000 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: The Flight from Science and Reason by Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt, Martin W. Lewis, N. Levitt ISBN: 0801856760 Publisher: New York Academy of Sciences Pub. Date: 01 April, 1997 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists are Murdering Our Past by Keith Windschuttle ISBN: 1893554120 Publisher: Encounter Books Pub. Date: 07 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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