“科學戰爭”中的迷信、騙局、誤解與爭辯：評Gross & Levitt《高級迷信》與Sokal & Bricmont《知識的騙局》中譯本

Abstract

The Chinese translation of Gross & Levitt's Higher Superstition and Sokal & Bricmont's Fashionable Nonsense amounts to half of the necessary work for introducing the so-called ”Science Wars” to Taiwan. This highly flaming debate, ostensibly on the validity of the social-constructivist approaches in the field of Science and Technology Studies and the problems of methodological/ epistemological relativism, actually reflects the deeply anxious intellectual milieu in the post-Cold War, pre-Seattle US academe. The ramifications of the ”Science Wars,” however, exceed the original field of battle, and raise meaningful debates on issues such as democratization of science, the strategies for the Left in the US, and the post-colonial critiques of science and the idea of trans-cultural truth as an ideology of Western domination. Between the two books, Higher Superstition is found to be of questionable intellectual quality, especially for its repeated use of straw-man attacks, while Fashionable Nonsense a more cautious defense against the misuse of natural-scientific language by the post-modern humanists despite the flamboyant image of one of the authors. Sokal & Bricmont's critique of scientificism in the social studies of science is discussed and found warranted in light of the history of debates on the ”Strong Programme” and other social-constructivist research schemes in science studies.