Talk:Science wars

message: "...and so laid fertile foundations for postmodernism to grow on.", is not a fact, but rather a matter of opinion and should be presented as such. This article shouldn't be hijacked by Stove-cultists the way they once turned the page on David Stove into a fawning shrine, this time around with their anti-Popper fixation/rhetoric.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.45.100.185 (talk) 10:39, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I would concur. One is hard pressed to find a consensus that Popper is the starting point for postmodernism. Also the rest of the Historical Background section is rather poor and I would contend numerous claims made in it. Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend are just very different thinkers. And their characterization in this context is shallow at best. Not a single "postmodern" thinker or school is mentioned by name but it is claimed that "A number of different philosophical and historical schools, often lumped together as "postmodernism", began reinterpreting scientific achievements of the past through the lens of the practitioners, often assigning political and economic conditions as formative a role in theory development as scientific observations." I actually do not have a deep issue with that, this is indeed how social science always works, i.e. look at the conditions under which things happen, yet this is just completely unsourced. It also does not present the proper prehistory of sociology in any way and makes it appear that sociology is kind of an irrelevant between philosophers of science and postmodernists. The passage reads as if logical positivism is the correct position and departure from it was the issue. However I think it's not historically tenable to even hold that most scientists ever were logical positivists! Overall the historical background section is tendentious (against sociology, against Popper/Kuhn/Feyerabend) and might contain original research. I think the article would be better off with that part simply removed or replaced with something that has better standards. There are more problems: For example the main passage starts with: "The attack upon the validity of science from the Humanities and the social sciences worried many in the scientific community" yet this is an unsubstantiated claim. First off not even Feyerabend, one of the most radical thinkers of the philosophy of science "attacked the validity of science", nor did Kuhn, or any serious social scientist I have ever read. Basically this is a poorly founded unreflected premise. If a thinker attacked science the thinker should be referenced. The same sentence continues: "[..] worried many in the scientific community, especially when the language of social construction was appropriated by groups who claimed to proffer alternative scientific paradigms. Many scientists perceived that as attempted political control of science in society". Again this is subjective (biased against humanities and social sciences) and unsourced. How does whoever wrote this quantify that many in the scientific community were worried? Which groups appropriated "social construction"? How did they proffer alternative scientific paradigms? All this is claimed, unsourced. It smacks of original research and bias. 99.150.131.106 (talk) 04:29, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bias 

message: I've added lots of content and removed the sentence "This article can be confused with science during the civil war." because I have no idea to which civil war it refers!
:You did a good job, thanks! --Fastfission 17:06, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: May 2005

message: (From article) "The Science wars were a series of intellectual battles in several of the academic humanities in the 1990s". 
In "What the Social Text Affair Does and Does Not Prove", Alan Sokal writes of the term "Science Wars"
"The term was apparently first coined by Social Text co-editor Andrew Ross, who explained that 'the Science Wars [are] a second front opened up by conservatives cheered by the successes of their legions in the holy Culture Wars. Seeking explanations for their loss of standing in the public eye and the decline in funding from the public purse, conservatives in science have joined the backlash against the (new) usual suspects -- pinkos, feminists, and multiculturalists'. (Andrew Ross, ``Science Backlash on Technoskeptics, The Nation 261(10) (October 2, 1995): 346-350, quote at p. 346. See also Ross, ``Introduction, op. cit., p. 6.)
In light of the ongoing political and scientific debate in the U.S. on teaching Intelligent Design in the schools, might we want to "re-open" the discussion (article) of Science Wars here, from something that "was" a feature of the 1990s to something that "is" ongoing now?
*It's not up to us (on Wikipedia) to re-open things. I'm pretty sure the larger consensus is that nobody is fighting the old "Science Wars" anymore in any real sense, and I've not heard label the current debates over ID as part of the "Science Wars". --Fastfission 13:39, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Were or are?

message: As you'll see, I added quite a few additional disciplines to the list of research areas that produced postmodernist thought antagonistic to the rationalist concept of science. This is entirely in accord with the facts of the matter, so I don't see how this could be disputed; if you've actually read 'Higher Superstition,' I'm sure you'll agree.  One of the basic rhetorical ploys of Higher Superstition -- a ploy that, to my mind, gravely undermines the book's value -- was to equate science and technology studies with the work of people in a variety of other disciplines that have little or nothing to do with STS. To be sure, there are people within STS who can justifiably be labelled "postmodernists" ... people who reject the concept of an "objective reality." But most followers of the Strong Program, and I would number myself among them, strongly disagree with this. David Bloor, who is generally considered the founder of the Strong Program, emphatically stated (in Knowledge and Social Imagery) that the Strong Program does not deny that there is such a thing as objective reality or verifiable truths that can be discovered through scientific techniques. (If you are shocked by this statement, may I suggest that you read the book?) The relativism of the Strong Program is methodological, not epistemological. (I acknowledge that not all Strong Program followers share this position, but I believe that most of them do.)
Why would a scholar employ methodological relativism?  When anthropologist E.E. Pritchard studied witchcraft beliefs among the Azande in Africa, he had something of a crisis, brought on by culture shock and his deeply devout Catholicism. He pulled himself out of this by coming up with the principle of impartiality, which is one of the four principles of the Strong Program. As Evans-Pritchard put it, if you are going to study the religion of what was then called a "primitive tribe," you had no hope of doing decent sociology unless you FORCED yourself to remain absolutely impartial regarding the truth or falsity of the natives' beliefs. It is only when the analyst understands this, and commits to it, that the sociological dimension snaps into focus. Having spent two years living in a Hindu village in northern Sri Lanka, where long ago I studied the local foundations of ethnic conflict, I can assure you that this is by no means an inconsequential thing. It is the very foundation from which a scholarly approach to the subject must necessarily begin.
Studying science is like that. It's very easy to get caught up in hero worship of the winners and disgust with the pseudo-science of the losers. Does this mean I don't think there is an objective truth? Absolutely not. It means that I can't do my study unless I try to keep that question on the back burner.
One of the points that hasn't come out in all the talk about the Science Wars is this: There were many scholars within STS, including myself, who were as disgusted with postmodern 'scholarship' as the authors of Higher Superstition.  I remember a conference where I sat for well over an hour listening to an English professor rail against the evils of technology. Later, I asked him whether he actually KNEW anything about technology. He replied, "I don't have to know anything. I already know from my political analysis that it is evil." His talk amounted to the single most vapid collection of nonsense I have ever heard in my life.
While I readily concede that some STS scholars are guilty of idiocy of this sort, I am still deeply disgusted that the authors of Higher Superstition chose to equate the work in my field with the crap that Higher Superstition was so easily able to skewer. 
And it wasn't very much fun to come to this Wikipedia article and find, in the version of the page prior to my corrections, that the locus of postmodern radical relativism was "science studies," which the original author may have mistakenly thought to be a general term, but which is in fact equated with STS by most people. Let me be clear: I am willing to admit that some STS scholars joined forces with postmodernism and fully deserved criticism for this, but to make our field take the entire blame for what was in fact a far more widespread phenomenon is not only inaccurate, but fundamentally unjust.  
So you are probably wondering, what does a Strong Program advocate such as myself think about the global warming controversy? The principles of symmetry and impartiality tell us to look for social causation in both camps. No problem with the global warming skeptics. As for the international community of scholars who have united to declare a consensus on the anthropogenic causes of climatic change, clearly there are social factors at work. They have, for one thing, collaborated earnestly to get this message across, no doubt dragging along some of their colleagues who were less than 100% sold on the idea. 
To be honest, I don't think that the Strong Program should address this controversy.
Doing so, inevitably, would only provide global warming skeptics with additional ammunition, and lead to further public confusion.  Perhaps, even, it would be fundamentally unethical, even monstrous. And you know why? I strongly believe -- having spent several long weeks examining the scientific literature (hundreds of sources) to make sure -- that there is no question about it: they are correct. My colleague Steve Fuller fell into this trap head-first, I believe, when he was asked to testify about how an STS scholar would view intelligent design. The Strong Program tells him, quite rightly, that both the Darwinian and Intelligent Design camps are socially constructed, to a degree. What Steve failed to acknowledge, I think, is to WHAT degree. 
                                                         Bryan 00:02, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Explanation of changes to lead paragraph

message: It now does a much better job of presenting the ideas and reactions of Gross and Levitt's critics than it does in presenting their views and the reasons those views resonated so strongly among scientists and engineers. The only cure for this is to go back to sources and provide more information on the original arguments and the subsequent analysis. Unfortunately this is going to make me reacquire a bunch of books that I had shipped off to the used books store long ago. Sigh Rusty Cashman 21:43, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: This article is not NPOV anymore

message: Is it me, or this article talks about things that happened in the US, "nobody" outside the US took notice or cares about, and yet presents them as global?
It's just I never heard of all of this, and the article doesn't say a single time where did it happen... (Where were those journals from, where were they read, where were those movements -postmodernists, etc- centered, etc.) --euyyn 23:38, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The debate itself was probably centered in the U.S. in terms of the location of journals and conferences, but it's hardly true that nobody outside the US took notice or cared about it. The "postmodernists" are usually considered to be centered in France, although American humanities departments are a secondary center; the scientists involved were mostly centered in the U.S., although Jean Bricmont was based in Belgium.  The issue got at least as much play in France as in the U.S., though. --Delirium 21:25, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's good to hear it was not an exclusive US question. But anyway my point remains the same; just change US by US+France. The problem is that the conflict described is not localized properly (well, at all), somehow implying anyone should be aware of it. People who had never heard of it before (as me) are left wondering if it was a US thing or what. --euyyn 00:16, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I hadn't been aware of the term before coming here, but the dispute is very familiar. From a German perspective, I wonder if it's not in some way a reenactment of the Positivismusstreit of the 60s. But funnily, the only reference to Popper in the article paints him as a proto-pomo, so I guess the analogy is not so straightforward.--87.162.61.123 (talk) 01:55, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  US centric? 

message: There's no mention of the idea of the "Symmetry principle" and/or "Strong programme -- the idea that science studies scholars should write purely sociologically about how some scientific hypotheses replaced other scientific hypotheses among the community of scientists, without taking into account agreement with experimental observations, scientific truth, etc. (in some cases even denying that such a thing as objective truth exists).  The "Symmetry principle" / "Strong programme" may not actually be all that important in science studies, but it seems to have been disproportionally significant in creating friction between science studies types and real scientists... AnonMoos (talk) 14:50, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: "Symmetry principle" / "Strong programme"

message: The lead cites scientific realists, while the rest of the article cites scientists. There's a difference - it's perfectly possible to be a scientist with an instrumentalist viewpoint, or with something in-between (if I published something on the philosophy of science myself, as opposed to actually working on science :-}, I'd point to my own viewpoint as an example of the third...). Allens (talk) 04:34, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead, rest of article have some differences 

message: I almost laughed when I read the last paragraph, especially the final quote by Bruno Latour. I'm not a scientist or a critical theorist, and I have no pony in this race. However, the suggestive quality of the last paragraph is reductive, disingenuous, and indicates a clear bias in favor of the scientists. I'm a little shocked by it. 2602:306:3893:7900:F862:E0E3:7687:F9A4 (talk) 02:49, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bias in last paragraph 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: For some reason the further information didn't take you to the Postmodernism page but instead to the New Left, who were strongly against the postmodernist turn and were structuralists. Waterisfree (talk) 23:24, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Further Information under Postmodernism  

message: I found your article to be informative and interesting. Some portions of the article did leave me with unfulfilled questions. I was confused after reading the setting to the issue, because it was still not clear to me what each side represented. I was unsure throughout the rest of my reading, as to what was being argued and the philosophies of each group. I also felt that the article's structure should be edited. Some sections greatly overshadow others by being much larger in size than others. This gap in information can be misleading as there is probably much more that could be added to even out the spread of information. Chasemcbee (talk) 00:51, 14 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notes after Reading 

message: The section about continued conflict says that "Interest in the science wars has waned considerably in recent years". I think that the conflict continues under different headings. Recent literature indicates that there are still very strong disagreements between the two camps. Below is a list of recent literature mainly from the realist camp. Somebody, please supplement with literature from the postmodernist camp.
* Pinker, Steven. 2002. The Blank Slate.
* Pluckrose, Helen, and James Lindsay. 2020. Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody. Durham: Pitchstone Publishing.
* Amoretti, Maria Cristina, and Nicla Vassallo, eds. 2016. Meta-Philosophical Reflection on Feminist Philosophies of Science. Springer International Publishing.
* Dreger, Alice. 2016. Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and One Scholar’s Search for Justice. Penguin Books.
* Dummitt, Christopher. 2019. “I Basically Just Made It Up: Confessions of a Social Constructionist.” Quillette. September 17, 2019. https://quillette.com/2019/09/17/i-basically-just-made-it-up-confessions-of-a-social-constructionist/.
* Fog, Kåre. 2018. “Feminist Censorship: The Lace Curtain.” Journal of Information Ethics 27 (1).
* Geher, Glenn, and Daniel Gambacorta. 2010. “Evolution Is Not Relevant to Sex Differences in Humans Because I Want It That Way! Evidence for the Politicization of Human Evolutionary Psychology.” EvoS Journal: The Journal of the Evolutionary Studies Consortium 2 (1): 32–47.
* Horowitz, Mark, William Yaworsky, and Kenneth Kickham. 2014. “Whither the Blank Slate? A Report on the Reception of Evolutionary Biological Ideas among Sociological Theorists.” Sociological Spectrum 34 (6): 489–509.
* Horowitz, Mark, William Yaworsky, and Kenneth Kickham. 2019. “Anthropology’s Science Wars: Insights from a New Survey.” Current Anthropology 60 (5): 674–98.
Agnerf (talk) 11:48, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  The science wars have not waned