A mystery still

Harvard University Press, 1999. £16.95 hbk (xii + 296 pages)ISBN 0 674 46706 XIs scientific ‘knowledge’ merely culture masquerading as objective truth? Is it a creation rather than a discovery, an artifact of a particular society that would not necessarily be the same in different places and at different times, and thus has no special claim to ‘truth’? Was Einstein’s theory of relativity merely part of a ‘general social and cultural transformation which expressed itself in a variety of “modern” movements’1xThe Science of Pleasure: Cosmos and Psyche in the Bourgeois World View. Ferguson, H. See all References1? Is the ‘individualistic view of the biological world’ characteristic of Darwinism ‘simply a reflection of the ideologies of the bourgeois revolutions of the eighteenth century’2xBiology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA. Lewontin, R.C. See all References2? Or, does scientific knowledge describe a real world that exists independently of human cognizance and that would be the same even if we had never been? Should we say with Max Planck, ‘there is a real world independent of our senses; the laws of nature were not invented by man, but forced upon him by that natural world. They are the expression of a rational world order’?Such questions are at the center of the ongoing ‘science wars’ between social constructivists3xShapin, S. Hist. Sci. 1982; 20: 157–211See all References, 4xDarwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist. Desmond, A. and Moore, J. See all References and their realist critics5xHigher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science. Gross, P.R. and Levitt, N. See all References, 6xSokal, A.D. Social Text. 1996; 46: 217–252CrossrefSee all References, 7xSee all References. Evolutionary biology is a particularly good place to consider such questions because metaphors drawn from culture play such an obvious, central and, perhaps, ineliminable role in evolutionary theorizing. Think, for instance, of the struggle for existence, natural and sexual selection, adaptive landscapes, the Red Queen hypothesis, game theory, selfish genes, outlaw genes, slave ants, queen bees, arms races, trees of life, etc. If we cannot conceptualize evolution apart from such metaphors, does this mean that our scientific knowledge is inescapably tainted by our culturally derived subjective limitations? Does evolutionary theory provide us with a grasp of the structure of nature as it exists independently from us, or does it merely reflect our very human preoccupations?Ruse sets out to answer such questions, to salvage what is reasonable from the claims of both constructivists and realists, and to find a via media between the two. His methodology consists of examining the role of cultural versus epistemic values in the work of ten prominent evolutionists to discover what role cultural values play for each, and whether there is a set or body of norms, values or constraints that guide scientists in their theorizing and observing. Ruse’s discussion of E.O. Wilson is typical. He points out that while there is no reason to take Wilson’s talk of ‘slave species’ of ants as showing his solidarity with the antebellum South, nonetheless without metaphors borrowed (or simply absorbed) from his society, his science would not exist. Culturally derived metaphors are essential to science, yet in the end it is the application of the distinctive epistemic values of predictive accuracy, coherence, consistency, unificatory power, fertility and simplicity that decides the fate of scientific claims. Ruse concludes that ‘science is indeed a social construction’. Yet, ‘however socially or culturally congenial one may find the science, if it does not succeed in the fiery pit of experience, it can and should be rejected’. Ruse’s trek through 250 years of evolutionary biology yields another interesting finding: as a science matures and becomes more professionalized, epistemic values internal to the discipline become more explicit, more important and more thoroughly satisfied, whereas cultural values, although never completely absent, become relatively less significant. In short, ‘Geoffrey Parker is a long way from Erasmus Darwin. A very long way’.What about the sort of question that Ruse began with; that is, ‘does an objective, “real world” exist “out there” that can be known through the methods of science, or is science a subjective construction corresponding to the shifting contingencies of culture and history, with nothing “real” beneath it?’. Even if (as Ruse shows) scientists increasingly value epistemic over cultural values in their science, what guarantee is there that the application of these epistemic values brings one any closer to the truth? Notoriously, Kuhn8xThe Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn, T. See all References, 9xThe Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change. Kuhn, T. See all References stressed the importance of values internal to the practice of science, yet is widely regarded as having laid the foundation for the constructivist interpretation of science.Despite priming the reader to expect a serious discussion of such issues, in the final chapter, Ruse simply punts on them, admitting that ‘a naturalistic approach as we have taken [i.e., looking at evidence from the history of science]… is not going to work’. Ruse’s history has taught us that science is ‘special’ because it has internal standards, but also ‘cultural’ because it draws upon cultural resources. We see that more clearly thanks to Ruse’s discussion, but we are no further ahead in knowing how to resolve the most fundamental issues raised by the constructivist challenge. In the end, Mystery of Mysteries leaves the answer to the deeper question posed in its subtitle a mystery still.