Science Wars Research Articles

Does science deal with the real world?

The background to this paper is given by the so called 'science wars', about whether science is in the business of construction rather than discovery. Is it a mere social practice or a body of knowledge about the real world? At the start of modern science there was no doubt about this, because scientists such as Newton and Boyle started with a firm metaphysical and theological base. Without that, science has become ever more anthropocentric. The question is posed whether, in the face of contemporary suspicion, science can regain its proper authority, unless it can appeal to some grounding beyond itself which can provide it with a rational justification.

Who rules in science: an opinionated guide to the wars

Preface Acknowledgments 1. Scenes from the Science Wars 2. The Scientific Experience 3. How We Got to Where We Are 4. The Nihilist Wing of Social Constructivism 5. Three Key Terms 6. The Naturalist Wing of Social Constructivism 7. The Role of Reason 8. The Democratization of Science 9. Science with a Social Agenda Afterword Notes Bibliography Index

Mathematics and the roots of postmodern thought

This is a charming and insightful contribution to an understanding of the Science Wars between postmodernist humanism and science, driving toward a resolution of the mutual misunderstanding that has driven the controversy. It traces the root of postmodern theory to a debate on the foundations of mathematics, early in the 20th century then compares developments in mathematics to what took place in the arts and humanities, discussing issues as diverse as literary theory, arts, and artificial intelligence. This is a straight forward, easily understood presentation of what can be difficult theoretical concepts and demonstrates that a pattern of misreading mathematics can be seen on both the part of science and on the part of postmodern thinking. This is a humorous, playful yet deeply serious look at the intellectual foundations of mathematics for those in the humanities and is the perfect critical introduction to the bases of modernism and postmodernism for those in the sciences.

The Internet and Social Change: Key Themes and Issues

In the prevailing atmosphere of cynicism generated by the relentless cyber bole, one can be forgiven for underestimating the revolutionary nature of the Internet. There is no doubting the intensity of the sense of betrayal especially by investors and businessmen who, until recently, were unabashedly afflicted with dot.com fever. As most commentators — with the benefit of proverbial hindsight — repeatedly point out, highly successful and innova tive though it may be, the virtual bookshop amazon.com is still waiting for its promised profits. The anticipated social consequences of the Internet are, of course, not at all limited to the business world even though it is this aspect that has received publicity. In sectors of the globe that are wired, there is hardly any social sphere that is not affected by this new technology. Areas that are not yet wired are also affected, precisely because the gulf between them and the wired sectors threatens to grow larger than ever. Most technocrats and planners expect the digital divide to disappear in the near future. To focus on the social consequences of the Internet is, of course, not to buy into a form of technological determinism that has been questioned — if not completely discredited — by sociologists and his torians of science and technology (Smith and Marx, 1994; Bijker, Hughes and Pinch, 1989). No narrative of the development of the Internet can ignore the social and political factors that were constitutive elements of what appear to be purely technical factors in the construction of the open architecture of this technology (Abbatte, 1999). It is clear that Vinton Cerf, Robert Kahn and their associates specifically chose a particular architecture from a range of possibilities, and that this choice was not driven by purely technical con cerns. However, fundamental though the social constructivist perspective has been in generating new research agendas for the sociologists of science and technology, problems arising from a fundamentalist constructivist per spective have begun to surface. Coming from quite a different academic agenda than the vicious axe-grinding soldiers of the 'science wars' such as Gross and Levitt (1994), a number of 'science and technology studiers' have raised doubts about a social constructivist fundamentalism that threat ens to reduce all technologies to effects of social and political forces. An exemplar of this strain of critique is Langdon Winner (1993) whose impor tant paper Social Constructivism: On Opening the Black-Box and Finding

American Philosophy as a Technototem

John McCumber's Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era provides a compelling account of a repressed part of philosophy's history and its tragic consequences for subsequent decades of philosophic practice in the U.S. Political values and interests originating in McCarthyism got encoded within abstract conceptual frameworks, propelling analytic philosophy to an undeserved position of authority while depriving it of critical self-understanding. This comment identifies residues of McCarthyism still playing out in the ‘Science Wars’, and the career of critical philosophic projects in both other disciplines and philosophy's feminist and multicultural fringes.

THE SCIENCE WARS

Research Article| January 01 2002 THE SCIENCE WARS: A Dialogue Bruno Latour Bruno Latour Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2002) 8 (1): 71–79. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-8-1-71 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Bruno Latour; THE SCIENCE WARS: A Dialogue. Common Knowledge 1 January 2002; 8 (1): 71–79. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-8-1-71 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsCommon Knowledge Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Duke University Press2002 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Peace and Mind: Seriatim Symposium on Dispute, Conflict,and Enmity You do not currently have access to this content.

Science, Cold War, and the American State: Lloyd V. Berkner and the Balance of Professional Ideals

Radio, aviation and the origins of a technocratic vision Mr. Berkner to Washington radio science and World War II science and post-war defence - extending the partnership, 1945-49 extending the partnership - applying technocratic ideas outside of the military scientists, Project Troy, and the direction of Cold War strategic planning career choices and the Korean War panic of 1950 continental defense, secrecy, and the scientists's role in national security planning stretching the coalistion - scientists and the distant early warning line expanding federal support of private research - the case of radio astronomy Berkner and the IGY IGY satellites and the launch of Sputnik horizons and limits.

The Clothing of the American Mind: The Construction of Scientific Ethos in the Science Wars

The Clothing of the American Mind: The Construction of Scientific Ethos in the Science Wars

Boundary Organizations in Environmental Policy and Science: An Introduction

Scholarship in the social studies of science has argued convincingly that what demarcates science from nonscience is not some set of essential or transcendent characteristics or methods but rather an array of contingent circumstances and strategic behavior known as (Gieryn 1995, 1999). Although initially formulated to explain how scientists maintain the boundaries of their community against threats to its cognitive authority from within (e.g., fraud and pseudo-science), boundary work has found useful, policy-relevant applications-for example, in studying the strategic demarcation between political and scientific tasks in the advisory relationship between scientists and regulatory agencies (Jasanoff 1990). This work finds that the blurring of boundaries between science and politics, rather than the intentional separation often advocated and practiced, can lead to more productive policy making. If it is the case, however, that the robustness of scientific concepts such as causation and representation are important components of liberal-democratic thought and practice (Ezrahi 1990), one can imagine how the flexibility of boundary work might lead to confusion or even dangerous instabilities between science and nonscience. These risks could be conceived, perhaps, as the politicization of science or the reciprocal scientification of politics. Neither risk should here be understood to mean the importation to one enterprise from the other elements that are entirely foreign; that is, science is not devoid of values prior to some politicization, nor politics of rationality, prior to any scientification. Rather, both should be understood to mean the rendering of norms and practices in one enterprise in a way that unreflexively mimics norms and practices in the other. These concerns have been central to the socalled science wars, and to the extent that they are implicated in public discussions of such policy issues as health and safety regulation, climate change, or genetically modified organisms, they are real problems for policy makers and publics alike.'

Making social science matter: why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed again

ABSTRACT This book is a thoughtful antidote to the simple views that see social science as a science like any other-positivistic science. It begins with a well-grounded empirical case of the development and application of expert knowledge, then moves through consideration of context and values, the centrality of power, and a reconsideration of the Greek roots of modern knowledge. It concludes with some salient observations based on the author's own feedback and research practice. Making Science Matter: Why Inquiry Fails and How Can Succeed Again. Bent Flyvbjerg: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 205 Pages. INTRODUCTION is one of those phrases that, as an apprentice social scientist, I wished I had heard about 30 years ago. I was studying for a doctorate degree then, a process in which much musing was centered on some central issues in the philosophy of social science. In the texts that I read and the debates that I encountered there was a lot of about physics envy, that is. What was in short supply was much to make one feel confident as a social science researcher. Instead, rather like a character in a Beckett play, one was waiting for a character-the great deliverer of a truly social science-that never shows up. So I had to write a thesis regardless. Of course, there were various sightings that raised anticipations in different audiences, at different times: some barracked for Parsons, others for Marx, as a great unifier while others just got on with and didn't think too much about what it might mean. They just did it. How they did seemed to be based on an assumption that, while social science isn't physics, does have some formal similarities. It has hypotheses; contains propositions; and, maybe, some covering law-like explanations. (One colleague claims that the universal relationship between the size of organizations and their increasing need for centralization is such a relation.) If only Bent Flyvbjerg's book had been available then! BEYOND THE SCIENCE WARS The author begins with the hoax played by the physicist, Alan Sokal, one of the editors of the journal Text. Most people probably know about it. Sokal (1996) submitted an article that appeared to deconstruct physics and the editors accepted and published it. Thus was the latest salvo in the debate about the two cultures fired across the bows of the global social science community. The implications were clear: for bona fide-not to say macho-real scientists, social science is unreal and unnatural: simplistic in its assumptions, short on quality controls, and peopled by beings of lesser judgment, if not intelligence, than those to be found in the Natural Science Faculties. Flyvbjerg (page 3) is quite explicit about the implications of such warfare: Social science is locked in a fight that cannot hope to win, because has accepted terms that are self-defeating. What is to be done to change these terms and avoid defeat? Go back to Aristotle and start over again, says Flyvbjerg. Eschew Aristotle's path to knowledge that routes through the virtues of either techne or episteme and instead use Aristotle's account of a prudent and wise science-one founded on phonesis-and integrate with a Foucauldian conception of power. The route to Aristotle turns out to be quite contemporary-it works through the phenomenology of human learning in the light of the Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986) model. This is the model that demonstrates that expert learning goes far beyond knowing and using the rules to accomplish an activity. Indeed, such explicit knowledge and referral is, in fact, counter to expertise that seems to rely on tacit knowledge and intuition embedded in context much more than does on explicit and disembedded knowledge. Physics envy is closely related to Cartesian anxiety-the fear of nihilism and relativism that lies outside the borders of a strict analytical and rational scientific tradition. …

When Did the Science Wars Start?

When Did the Science Wars Start?

On the Historical Relationship Between the Sciences and the Humanities: A Look at Popular Debates That Have Exemplified Cross-Disciplinary Tension

This article discusses popular and academic debates that turned on the merit of either science or the humanities. The author uses four cases to provide this history: the Huxley-Arnold debate of the 1880s, the science education reformation (and neglect-of-science) debates in Britain in the 1920s, the two-culture debate of the 1960s, and the science wars of recent years. Each of those debates (on one side, at least) sought to establish the supremacy of science for society’s welfare, and the first three (on both sides) necessarily excised interdisciplinary approaches from their proposed solutions. More recently, the science wars have drawn comparison to the two-culture debate, even though this recent skirmish cannot be distinguished from a concern over the effects of interdisciplinary scholarship. The purpose of this article is to trace the relationship of the debates and comment on their role for the future of STS.

Feminism, Science Wars, and the Twilight of Positivism

When we began theorizing our experiences during the women's movement … we knew our task would be a difficult though exciting one. But I doubt in our wildest dreams we ever imagined we would have to reinvent both science and theorizing itself to make sense of women's social experience.

Feminism, Science Wars, and the Twilight of Positivism

When we began theorizing our experiences during the women's movement … we knew our task would be a difficult though exciting one. But I doubt in our wildest dreams we ever imagined we would have to reinvent both science and theorizing itself to make sense of women's social experience.

Science under Siege? Interest Groups and the Science Wars

Chapter 1 Science Under Siege: Historical Perspective. Reflections of a Feminist. Chapter 2 The Feminist Voice: Problems of a Male-Dominated Science. Reflections of an Environmentalist. Chapter 3 Environmentalists and the Control of Nature. Reflections from the Political Right. Chapter 4 Political Right and Science Captured. REflections from the Political Left. Chapter 5 Political Left and Science Corrupted. Reflections of a Fundamentalist Chapter 6 Creationism and the Fundamentalist Critique. Reflections of a Community Leader Chapter 7 The Voice ofTertium Quid Chapter 8 Interest Group Politics and General Cynicism: Group Comparisons Chapter 9 Reconsidering the Science Wars

What's Social About Social Construction?

With The Social Construction of What?, Ian Hacking aims to cool down the overheated debates around social constructionism (the 'science wars') by clarifying just what the phrase 'social construction' can be properly understood to mean. The book is a collection of previously published essays and lectures on a variety of topics, united not by a common argumentative thread but by this anti-polemical project. The first three chapters explore a series of approaches to specifying what is meant by the phrase 'social construction', and unpack the philosophical issues, or 'sticking points', raised by the application of social constructionism to the natural sciences. Chapters 4 and 5 develop the idea of 'interactive kinds', categories that interact with and alter the objects they label. Reframing social construction in terms of interactive kinds and looping effects helps to specify how a phenomenon can be socially constructed and real at the same time. Chapter 6 elaborates a distinction between 'forms of knowledge' and 'content of knowledge'. Hacking uses this distinction to assign relative roles to contingency and determinacy in the development of scientific knowledge. Chapter 7 applies the 'sticking points' developed in Chapter 3 to a case study of science-in-the-making, and Chapter 8 re-tells the story of the 'Captain Cook' controversy in a way that aims to defuse some of the tension. In this Review I will focus on Chapters 1-4, because these chapters introduce the concepts with which Hacking attempts to specify the meaning of 'social construction'; the later chapters are mostly applications of these concepts.

Science and humanities: across two cultures and into science studies.

C.P. Snow's articulation of a two-culture divide rested on a particular view of science that has been elaborated and superseded by interdisciplinary science studies. Thus, comparisons of the 'science wars' of recent years to the Snow-Leavis controversy fail to recognize basic structural differences between the two sets of debates. In this article, I present these differences and offer some views of what has changed in the intervening years.

Politics by Other Means: Feminism and Mainstream Science Studies

Abstract: This paper explores the fraught relationship between feminist and mainstream science and technology studies (STS). The diverse contributions of feminist and mainstream authors, particularly actor-network theorists, are outlined. It is argued these two fields share many common themes, but that, while feminists have begun to integrate the insights of mainstream STS into their work, mainstream STS continues to treat feminist work and issues of inequality as a separate field of enquiry. Persistent tensions between feminist and mainstream STS are discussed, and some authors' recent attempts at integration are examined. It is suggested greater cross-fertilization would substantially improve both feminist and mainstream studies of science and technology. Resume: Cet article explore la relation souvent tendue entre les etudes feministes et les contributions au courant dominant dans le domaine de la science et de la technologie. Les multiples contributions des auteurs feministes et des auteurs qui incrivent dans la ligne du courant dominant, surtout celles des theoriciens qui s'interessent aux analyses acteur-reseau, sont presentees. On s'efforce de demontrer que ces champs d'etude partagent des themes communs. Cependant, alors que les feministes ont commence a integrer certains elements du courant dominant dans leurs analyses, les auteurs representant le courant dominant persistent encore a cantonnerl' analyse feministe et les themes d'inegalite dans un champ d'etude distinct. En plus d'examiner les tensions qui persistent entre ces deux approches, on presente aussi quelques tentatives recentes d'integration de ces analyses. L'auteure suggere qu'un plus grand croisement entre ces approches ameliorerait considerablement les etudes feministes de meme que les c ontributions au courant dominant. Introduction In the 'science wars,' a few natural scientists and other 'defenders' of science have argued a scientifically ignorant and political subversive movement, bent on destroying science, has arisen within the 'academic left' (e.g. Gross and Levitt, 1994; Koertge, 1998; Sokal, 1996, 1998). This charge has been brought against both contemporary mainstream science and technology studies (STS) scholars such as Harry Collins and Bruno Latour, and many prominent feminist epistemologists and analysts of science, such as Sandra Harding, Donna Haraway, and Evelyn Fox Keller. (2) It may seem ironic mainstream STSers and feminists are charged as co-conspirators, and feminist authors have attracted so much attention (however negative) from the defenders of science: several prominent feminist scholars have been arguing for some time mainstream STSers show comparatively little interest in feminist work, or in any kind of sustained political attack on science. In her latest book, Donna Haraway wishes that th e 'left' were really so unified! (Haraway, 1997: 283, note 17) and complains (not for the first time) about the dearth of references to STS in mainstream accounts: Either critical scholars in antiracist, feminist cultural studies of science and technology have not been clear enough about racial formation, gender-in-the-making, the forging of class, and the discursive production of sexuality through the constitutive practices of technoscience production themselves, or the science studies scholars aren't reading or listening -- or both.... It is past time to end the failure of mainstream and oppositional science studies scholars to engage each other's work. Immodestly, I think the failure to engage has not been symmetrical (Haraway, 1997: 35; emphasis in original). Not everyone agrees. In introducing a volume of essays on gender and technology, one which draws on both feminist and mainstream STS, Rosalind Gill and Keith Grint claim We no longer need to argue the case the relations between gender and technology deserve attention; argument has been won (Gill and Grint, 1995: 2). …

The Nature of Science and Science Education: A Bibliography

Research on the nature of science and science education enjoys a longhistory, with its origins in Ernst Mach's work in the late nineteenthcentury and John Dewey's at the beginning of the twentieth century.As early as 1909 the Central Association for Science and MathematicsTeachers published an article – ‘A Consideration of the Principles thatShould Determine the Courses in Biology in Secondary Schools’ – inSchool Science and Mathematics that reflected foundational concernsabout science and how school curricula should be informed by them. Sincethen a large body of literature has developed related to the teaching andlearning about nature of science – see, for example, the Lederman (1992)and Meichtry (1993) reviews cited below. As well there has been intensephilosophical, historical and philosophical debate about the nature of scienceitself, culminating in the much-publicised ‘Science Wars’ of recent time. Thereferences listed here primarily focus on the empirical research related to thenature of science as an educational goal; along with a few influential philosophicalworks by such authors as Kuhn, Popper, Laudan, Lakatos, and others. Whilenot exhaustive, the list should prove useful to educators, and scholars in otherfields, interested in the nature of science and how its understanding can berealised as a goal of science instruction. The authors welcome correspondenceregarding omissions from the list, and on-going additions that can be made to it.

Epistemic relativism and socially responsible realism: Why Sokal is not an ally in the science wars

Epistemic relativism and socially responsible realism: Why Sokal is not an ally in the science wars