Current Debates on Science, Science Studies and their Critics

Sponsors

Organized by
Michael Nauenberg, Physics, UCSC,
michael@mike.ucsc.edu
Theodore Porter, History of Science, UCLA
tporter@history.ucla.edu

L The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the lively current debates about recent social historical and philosophical re-interpretations of science. These debates where triggered by the Gross and Levitt book 'Higher Superstition', and the publication in Social Text of an article by Alan Sokal, subsequently revealed by him to be a hoax.

It is our goal to bring together scientists and those who write about the history and sociology of science to build the ground for intellectually productive discussion around issues of current interest. This meeting will also be an opportunity to bring together faculty and students from the humanities and the social, physical and biological science to discuss these issues.

The format of the meeting will consist of short presentations by speakers followed by panel discussions on the topics of their talks.

Speakers and panelists

• Cathryn Carson History of Science, UCB
• Harry Collins, Sociology, Univ. of Southampton, UK
• Charles Bazerman History of Science, UC Santa Barbara
• John Ellis German Literature, UCSC (Emeritus)
• Barbara Epstein History of Consciousness, UCSC
• Sandra Faber Lick Observatory, UCSC
• Paula Findlen History, Stanford University
• Catharine Gill Principal, G.B. Kirby Prepschool
• Ernest Hook School of Public Health , UCB
• Timothy Lenoir History of Science, Stanford University
• David Mermin, Physics, Cornell
• Michael Nauenberg Physics, UCSC (Emeritus)
• Arkady Plotnitsky Literature , Duke University
• Brewster Smith Psychology, UCSC
• Alan Shapiro History of Science, Univ. of Minnesota
• Alan Sokal Physics, New York Univ.
• Sharon Traweek History of Science, UCLA
• Theodore Porter History of Science, UCLA
• Donald Walter Cardiology, UCLA

  PROGRAM

  Saturday, May 10
  

  8.50 a.m Introduction
  

  Session I " Perspectives on Science and its Sociology"
  

  Morning Chair Sharon Traweek
  

  9.00 a.m Harry Collins University of Southampton
  

  " A Martian writes a letter home"
  

  9.45 a.m. David Mermin, Cornell University
  

  " Reflections of an Earthling"
  

  10.30 a.m Coffee break
  

  ll.15 a.m Panel discussion
  

  12.45 p.m. Lunch
  

  Session II " Postmodernisn, Cultural Studies and the Philosophy of Science.
  

  Afternoon Chair Michael Nauenberg
  

  2.00 p.m. Alan Sokal, New York University
  

  "What the Social Text Affair Does and Does not Prove"
  

  2.45 p.m Arkady Plotnitsky, Duke University
  

  "But It is Above all Not True: Derrida, Relativity and the Science Wars"
  

  3.30 p.m coffee break
  

  4.00 p.m. Panel Discussion
  

  5.00 p.m End of Afternoon session
  

  Sunday, May 11
  

  Session III Cultural History and History of Science
  

  Morning Chair Theodore Porter, UCLA

  9.00 a.m. Alan Shapiro, University of Minnesota
  

  Whither the History of Science?
  

  9.30 a.m. Paula Findlen, Stanford University
  

  What Does it Mean to Think about Culture?
  

  10.00 a.m Coffee break
  

  10.30 Panel discussion
  

  12.00 p.m End of Program
  

  Some References

  The origins and the nature of the Science Wars debate

  • Collins, Harry and Pinch, Trevor The Golem: What Everyone should know about Science (Cambridge 1993) Frames of Meaning: The Social Construction of extraordinary Science (Routledge, 1982)
  • Collins, Harry Artificial Experts: Social Knowledge and intelligent Machines (MIT 1990) Changing order: Replication and Induction in Scientific practice (Sage, 1985)
  • Epstein, Barbara Why Poststructuralism is a Dead End for Progressive Thought (To appear in the Socialist Review)
  • Gross Paul and Norman Levitt, Higher Superstitions: The academic left and its quarrels with Science (Johns Hopkins 1994)
  • Harding, Sandra The Science Question in Feminism (Cornell Univ. 1986)
  • Haraway, Donna, Primate Visions: Gender, race and nature in the world of modern science (New York, 1989); Simians, cyborgs and Women: the re-invention of nature (London, 1990); A Game of Cat's Cradle: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies Configurations (1994)
  • Holton, Gerald, Science and Anti- Science (Harvard Press, 1993); Einstein , History , and Other Passions: The Rebellion against Science at the End of the Twentieth Century (American Institute for Physics, 1995)
  • Keller, Evelyn Fox, Science and its Critics Academe (sept. 95)
  • Latour, Bruno, Science in Action, how to follow scientists and engineers through society (Philadelphia, 1987)
  • Latour, Bruno and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The social Construction of Scientific Facts (Beverly Hills, Calif, 1979)
  • Nelkin, Dorothy, What are the Sciences wars really about , The Chronicle of Higher Education July 26, 1996
  • Mermin, David What is Wrong with This Sustaining Myth?, Physics Today March 1996 pg. 11-13; The Golemization of Relativity Physics Today, April 1996
  • Pickering, Andrew Constructing Quarks: A sociological history of Particle Physics (Edinburgh 1984)
  • Plotnitsky, Arkady But it is above all not true: Derrida, Relativity and the Science Wars http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/pmc/current.issue/plotnitsky.197.html
  • Porter, Theodore Trust in Numbers (Princeton, 1996)
  • Shapin, Steven, A Social History of Truth (Univ. of Chicago, 1994) The Scientific Revolution (Univ. of Chigaco, 1996)
  • Sokal, Alan Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a transformative hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, Social Text 46/47 vol. 14 , 1996 A Physicists experiments with Cultural Studies, Lingua Franca May/June 1996 These and other articles and commentaries can be found at the following Web sites: http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/index.html http://weber.u.washington.edu/~jwalsh/sokal/
  • Smith, Brewster M., Psychology and Truth: Human Science and the Postmodern challenge, Revista de Psicologia/ Inter Americana Journal of Psychology 1996, vol 30 pp.145-158 ; Selfhood at Risk: Postmodern Perils and the Perils of Postmodernism. American Psychologist, May 1994
  • Traweek, Sharon, Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The world of High Energy Physics (Harvard 1988)
  • N. van Kampen Het Postmodernisme in de Naturkunde
  • Steve Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory (New York 1992) The Sokal Hoax, The New York Review of Books August 30, 1996 and Oct. 3, 1996
  • Last year Alan Sokal and a Belgian philosopher, Jean Bricmont, published a book entitled "Imposteurs Intellectuel" which critizes some well known French humanists and social scientist, e.g. Bruno Latour, for writing nonsense about the sciences. When it appeared, this book caused an uproar on the Left Bank, and it has now been translated into English under the title "Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals abuse of Science").
    
  • Another recent book critical of science studies is a "House built on Sand", subtitled "Exposing postmodernist myths about science" which is edited by Noretta Koertge. She is a philosopher of science at Indiana University who co-authored also a book entitled "Professing Feminism: Cautionary tales from the Strange World of Women Studies".

  In 1996, an article entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" was published in the cultural studies journal Social Text. Packed with recherché quotations from "postmodern" literary theorists and sociologists of science, and bristling with imposing theorems of mathematical physics, the article addressed the cultural and political implications of the theory of quantum gravity. Later, to the embarrassment of the editors, the author revealed that the essay was a hoax, interweaving absurd pronouncements from eminent intellectuals about mathematics and physics with laudatory--but fatuous--prose.

  In Fashionable Nonsense, Alan Sokal, the author of the hoax, and Jean Bricmont contend that abuse of science is rampant in postmodernist circles, both in the form of inaccurate and pretentious invocation of scientific and mathematical terminology and in the more insidious form of epistemic relativism. When Sokal and Bricmont expose Jacques Lacan's ignorant misuse of topology, or Julia Kristeva's of set theory, or Luce Irigaray's of fluid mechanics, or Jean Baudrillard's of non-Euclidean geometry, they are on safe ground; it is all too clear that these virtuosi are babbling.

  Their discussion of epistemic relativism--roughly, the idea that scientific and mathematical theories are mere "narrations" or social constructions--is less convincing, however, in part because epistemic relativism is not as intrinsically silly as, say, Regis Debray's maunderings about Gödel, and in part because the authors' own grasp of the philosophy of science frequently verges on the naive. Nevertheless, Sokal and Bricmont are to be commended for their spirited resistance to postmodernity's failure to appreciate science for what it is. --Glenn Branch --This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title