why left attacks on objectivity of science are wrongheaded

I’ve been wanting to read Higher Superstition for some time now, and it finally showed up at a local used book store. To my surprise, I’m a little disappointed.


Authors Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt preach to the choir. Higher Superstition is as inaccessible to the average reader as some of the neologism- and jargon-ridden deconstructionist tracts that it criticizes. Particularly annoying is the consistent mocking of mathematical ignorance by using advanced mathematical concepts – a particularly egregious example is a footnote discussing deterministic causality and quantum mechanics (the subscripts are not going to come out):

“The model is so simple that we cannot resist the temptation to summarize it for readers with a little knowledge of mathematics and physics:


Consider a universe of N particles the set of whose possible respective coordinates form a configuration space (modeled on 3N-dimensional Euclidean space). Let qk denote the position of the kth particle (as a triple of local coordinates) and mk its mass. Thus q = (q1, … ,qN) is the configuration vector. We assume as well a complex-valued wave function, ψ, defined on the configuration space. The dynamics are then given by the familiar Schrödinger equation


iħ∂ψ/∂t = -(ħ2/2)Δψ + Vψ

(where V denotes a potential energy function) together with the ordinary differential equation

dq/dt = ħIm(gradψ/ψ)

(here the Laplacian Δ and the gradient are given in terms of a Riemann metric scaled by the mass of the particles.) The mathematically literate reader will readily see that, given an initial ψ0 at one particular time, ψ evolves purely deterministically (as usual) and thus, with initial values for q as well, the whole system evolves deterministically. As it turns out, however, with modest and unproblematic assumptions on the initial values of ψ0 and q(0), “small” subsystems consisting of “small” numbers of particles will behave so that, statistically speaking, the standard quantum mechanical formalism applies.

This sort of thing – especially the comments about readers with “some” knowledge of mathematics and physics and the “mathematically literate” reader – just gives ammunition to the opposition.

Gross and Levitt’s documentation of some of the stranger claims of the deconstructionists – that the uncertainty principle and relativity mean that physics is uncertain and relative are valuable, but they don’t really answer the questions of an ordinary reader – i.e., one not physically and mathematically literate enough to follow the example above – of why physics isn’t uncertain and relative. Although they discuss some general ideas in their introductory chapter, they really don’t get down to the meat of the matter – the persistent misconception that science is a belief system or a philosophical position, instead of just being a tool. Rodin was once asked how he sculpted, and supposedly replied “Well, I start with a block of stone and chisel away everything that isn’t a statue.” That’s really all science is – you start with an immense block of stuff and chisel away anything that isn’t true.

Worth a read mostly for historical purposes; surprisingly dated (written in 1994) now, as the two cultures have moved even further apart and both sides seem to be proud of their isolation. ( )

Two smug conservatives go yah boo sucks at leftie straw men. That's not quite an accurate summary of this book, but it conjures up perfectly my feelings all the while I was reading it: revulsion at the abominably orotund and self-congratulatory writing style, profound irritation that -- despite a half-hearted attempt in the introductory pages to claim non-partisanship -- the authors were framing their very justified criticisms of sloppy, antiscientific thinking as a political left-right battle. A full 100% of Republican Senate/House candidates this Fall reject the science of climate change. The leaders of the campaigns against the science linking tobacco smoke to disease, against the science showing the depletion of the ozone layer, against the science demonstrating the reality of evolution, against the science that showed SDI wouldn't work, and now against the science indicating the world is warming -- it is nary impossible to find a leftie amongst them. But, you cry, Gross's and Leavitt's real targets are the postmodernists/social constructivists, who're definitely a bunch of lefties, no? Well, okay, if you think that people like Nietsche and Nazi Party member Heidegger, two of the primary inspirations of that school, are lefties. To be fair, some of the authors' targets are of the left -- for example, that branch of feminism which tried to twist science for ideological reasons -- but this is by no means uniformly the case. Antiscientific idiots are to be found all across the political spectrum, but the majority of them seem always to be on the political right.

I succeeded in ploughing through this book because I had to for the sake of research. What's depressing is that, behind the tone of infantile sneer, there's some very valuable stuff being said. But I imagine that most of the people who should be reading it will have thrown the book at the wall in disgust long before they get that far.
( )

A much needed dissection of the unfortunate philosophy of scientific criticism. The authors evaluate the phenomenon of people evaluating and criticizing science from the standpoint of ignorance of its very methods, and give a devastating critque of the emptiness that has pervaded too much of the thinking on the left. They take great pains to distinguish the academic left from the political left, although there is obviously some overlap. There are some definite weak spots, as the authors sometimes appear to be more interested in maintainint the status quo than in evaluating their subject critically. While there are definitely critiques to be made of the excesses of the new feminism, eco-feminism, New Age environmentalists, and radical Afrocentrists, in some places they speak smugly from a position of privelege about things they are clearly uninformed on, counting mere numbers of women in the schools as though that is the whole story, and dismissing the concept of animal rights summarily as though everyone who has a brain automatically accepts that position. They do acknowledge the problems society has with sexism, racism, and environmental damage, but clearly assume that all right thinking people will agree with their particular take on it, and everyone else is a radical or a reactionary who can be easily dismissed. It also seems at times that perhaps the ahthors are of different political leanings, which could perhaps explain the somewhat schizophrenic approach to social and political issues that arise...it may simply be a compromise position. Overall, it's a solid work that should be read by all academics, but as with most books, it should be read with a critical eye, rather than just accepting everything the author's say as gospel. ( )

It's great to see a book where academics take the gloves off, drop the pretense of civility and sink the boot into something that they clearly think is just FUCKED. Gross and Levitt do this with undisguised glee and the richly deserving target of their drubbing is the feeble-minded, insular and flaccid "assault" on science by sociology and its pathetic theoretical fellow-travellers.

Gross and Levitt expose how sociology's whining "attack" on the scientific method in particular and science in general was motivated by spite at sociology not being considered a truly scientific discipline in any empirical sense and how it was informed by a sadly slack-fingered grasp of the scientific method - one best described as "utterly laughable".

The sociological caricature of science as some kind of socially-constructed and moribund canon of dogma is, therefore, a ridiculous and pathetic strawman that bears zero relation to how science actually works in the real world.

Gross and Levitt go on to expose the "research" based on these blundering assumptions as the farces they are and to show how a whole generation of sociologists and their students are being taught this garbage as holy writ, without exposure to any kind of critique or alternative.

Their account of the Sokal Hoax where a paper made up of utter pseudo scientific nonsense was published in the prestigious journal *Social Text* simply because it conformed to the sociologists' anti-science agenda makes for particularly amusing reading.

Gross and Levitt's book leaves the anti-science obscurantists in broad disarray. It's unfortunate that they chose to call their opponents "the academic left", since this makes their work seem some kind of right-wing reactionism or revisionism. They explain what they mean by that term in the introduction to their second edition, but it remains a very poor choice of terminology.

This is a book for anyone who has ever been exposed to this "science is flawed/socially constructed" nonsense and then got on a plane and thought "yet this thing is still flying ... ?" It's a kick in the teeth for an anti-intellectual and stultifying movement that is as brain-dead and deadly as Creationism or fundamentalist Islam. It's a two-fisted counter-attack that needed to be made and should be read by anyone interested in the philosophy of science.

It would be nice if sociology lecturers put it on their reading lists as well, but they seem strangely reluctant to do so. This speaks volumes about sociology as a discipline. Maybe it will grow up one day.