Science and the Quest for Meaning

Abstract

Science and the Quest for Meaning, by Alfred Tauber, attempts to define a peace treaty in the Science Wars which have dominated much of the philosophical world in the past two decades. For those not familiar with that debate, the longstanding tension between two philosophical camps, which used to be called modernism and postmodernism, reached a crisis point when physicist Alan Sokal succeeded at publishing a nonsensical article in a peer-reviewed postmodernist-oriented journal. Sokal then went around the country giving talks about the silliness of postmodernists, and of course many of them responded with vitriol, leading to counter-attacks, etc. Sokal's derision, like that of many of my colleagues in science, was directed at those who claimed that all scientific knowledge is optional, and for all we know, ancient Babylonian astrology was better. Books such as Higher Superstition, by Paul Gross and Norman Leavitt, Fashionable Nonsense, by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, and A House Built on Sand, by Noretta Koertge, have documented some of what scientists find ridiculous. And as Tauber notes, scientists have the upper hand: they have created airplanes, electricity, satellites, and the Internet, while postmodern philosophers have created a few impenetrable articles and maybe a couple of good poems.