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Franc28
New Member
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 Posted - 04/18/2003 : 17:23:46
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My review is also available at
http://www.objectivethought.com/articles/superstition.html
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The book "Higher Superstition" (1998), by Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, both scientists (the former a biologist, the latter a mathematician), airs the grievances of science against the new post-modernist movement in the academia.
A movement that started as a deconstructionist method of literary criticism, postmodernism is now a way of thinking that is proposed by some proponents as an explanatory method for everything, including science. Briefly, post-modernism proposes that science is nothing more than a cultural construct, and has no more objective validity than any other form of knowledge. While natural sciences have remained untouched by this movement, it is taking over the social sciences, spurred over by the latter's failures at establishing its scientific basis as firmly as the former has done.
Post-modernism and its varieties
The subtitle of this book is "the academic left and its quarrels with science", and suitably, the first two chapters discuss politics. While politics should, ideally, be informed by science, it is a sad fact that science is also often informed by politics.
The academic left is defined on page 3 as mainly social scientists who "unquestionably belong on the left" and exhibits a "deep concern with cultural issues, and, in particular, a commitment to the idea that fundamental political change is urgently needed and can be achieved only through revolutionary processes rooted in a wholesale revision of cultural categories".
This means that, rather than using science to inform the political process, the reverse should happen : feminist postmodernism demands "a complete overthrown of traditional gender categories", racial justice entails a society which prioritizes "black values" (in this case, Afrocentrism - the idea that Africa and black people are inherently superior), and environmental postmodernism "envisons a trancendence of the values of Western industrial society and the restoration of an imagined prelapsarian harmony to humanity's relations with nature".
The most used method to effect these views of the world is postmodernism, that is, the view that our ideological system (including science) is under the purview of cultural constructivism, that is, a product of the culture it exists in. It was first a product of literary criticism and history, places where no doubt it had much use, but is now widespread. Variants of this view posit that science is really a bourgeois construct, or the product of gender bias, or of a one-sided Western perspective, or of an impulse to objectify nature and alienate man from direct experience of nature. Later chapters will discuss each side in detail.
Chapter 3, the first meaty philosophical chapter, is about cultural constructivism. While it is uncontroversial, as the authors clearly argue, that science is certainly informed by culture in the sense that the projects and questions we ask are motivated by current events and interests, postmodernists use the term to mean that "science is a highly elaborated set of conventions brought forth by one particular culture" and "is but one discursive community among the many that now exist and that have existed historically". This position entails that "science deludes itself when it asserts a particular privileged position in respect to its ability to 'know' reality" (page 45).
This position, of course, conveniently opens the way for subjectivist means of knowledge, but it also invalidates postmodernism itself since it is a cultural construct which gives no privileged indication of reality. Indeed, the authors repeatedly expose the foibles of postmodernism as applied to itself, in the intelligent and enlightened discussions of the beginning and end of the book.
The authors then discuss various examples of cultural constructivism, such as Aronowitz and "Science as Power", a book opposed to capitalism which that proposes that the integrality of science and technology in capitalism justifies that his critique of the established system must include a critique of science and technology. Others are Latour and highly subjectivist proposition (postmodernism is heavily based on subjectivism), and Shapin and Schaffer with their book "Leviathan and the Air Pump"
Chapter 4 discussed how postmodernists butcher the language of science, which is surprising since postmodernism was born from literary theory. But since its idea that words informs origins makes sense in some ways in literature but not in science, the results are queer and entertaining. The problem with literary analysis is that it manipulates words, not concepts, and therefore it breeds a kind of intellectual coarseness which is inherent in art - appearances become a guarantee of content. The typical examples are quantuum mechanics and chaos theory. The authors examine particularily the thoughts of two postmodernist authors on chaos theory, Steven Best and N. Katherine Hayles.
Turning constructs on their head
Chapter 5 to 7 are worth the price of admission alone. Here, the authors examine the desperate attempts by "feminist" postmodernists (chapter 5), "environmentalist" postmodernists (chapter 6) and other movements - "anti-AIDS", animal rights, Afrocentrism (chapter 7). Note that I put their position in quotes : as I have mentioned earlier, what the postmodernist holders of these ideologies seek is not a reasoned position but brute social revolution thru obliteration of knowledge.
The most remarquable conclusion of these examinations is that, while the postmodernists in these disciplines claim that science is a social construct, they have very little actual evidence (the mere attempt to provide evidence is surprising, in the view that any ideology is a construct : we would expect total presuppositionalism here, but like any such people, they are forced to at least try).
For example, the best feminist attack against science we have are that : the little problems in math books (you know, the if-John-gives-half-his-money-to-Jill type of problems for children) are too white-male-oriented, and that the language used to describe sperm-ovula interactions are too aggressive. We have the idea that technological societies hate life more than others, and that to eat animals is born out of a desire to control.
The authors elegantly dispatch such nonsense and give us a bird's eye view of the biggest publications on the subject. The field is highly entertaining, and they do not hesitate to say what they think, even though science can be un-PC in many circumstances (such as when fighting Afrocentric myths). They state at the beginning that they intend to take no quarters, and they don't.
The last chapters, 7 and 8, examine the reasons for postmodernism - in essence, deconstructing deconstructionism - and why it is important for the future to fight it, especially the question "will we assist to a schism of natural and social sciences ?". I am of the position that there should, indeed, be a schism. While they must inform themselves of one another, and cross-disciplinary studies are vital, natural and social sciences are not the same at all. It is not that, as has been long the lament, social sciences are not as precise as natural sciences. It is rather that social sciences - economics, psychology, sociology, history, and so on - are not really sciences as such. They study the man-made, not nature, they must be informed by a larger pool of premises, and they study systems made by complex beings, that is, us.
Now, for the mandatory examination of the flaws of this book. They are actually very few, and all related, and rather peripherial : they do not detract at all from the meat of the book. I merely object to the authors' use of the left/right dichotomy as some kind of all-encompassing spectrum. The subtitle of the book is both succinct and troubling. It is obvious that the terms "left" and "right" in this book are being rather brandied about. It is now common knowledge that two-dimensional models are more adequate for the task (see the now-celebrated Nolan Chart for such an example). Their whole premise of "Academic Left" is left dubious by this cursory examination of the political model.
Furthermore, the authors seem to sympathize with some Left-leaning opinions which are not credible, such as the exponential growth of the human population (page 157). This is not, however, very important, as the book is very rational and skeptical. However, it may explain why the authors spend so little time on Marxist postmodernism. Coincidence or not, it does not reflect well on the integrity of the authors.
Finally, it is perhaps understandable that, not being philosophers, the authors could not justify their basic quarrel against subjectivism, but a few quotes from philosophers could have explained the objectivity of reality. It would have made an interesting section, at least. As it is, it looks like an oversight which opens the door to sympathy for the postmodernist ideas discussed.
Science, despite its faults, is the crowning achievement of Western Enlightment. Books like "Higher Superstition" make us reflect on the intellectual threats to our future, and forces each of us to take a position. I give this book a hearty four out of five.
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