The One Culture? A conversation about science edited by Jay A. Labinger and Harry Collins, University of Chicago Press, £11, ISBN 0226467236
ACADEMICS can be notoriously territorial. It is a brave expert who casts judgement outside their field.
So when, 30 years ago, sociologists started to turn their attention to the processes by which scientists reach their conclusions, it was only a matter of time before academic feathers were ruffled.
Advertisement
Here was a culture clash par excellence. Liberal arts scholars, whose field is shot through with opinion and fashion, were sticking their noses into the physical sciences, where veracity is measured to 10 decimel places.
The only surprise is that real hostilities did not break out until 1996, when physicist of New York University sent a paper to a leading cultural studies journal arguing that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. The journal published it, whereupon Sokal went public and revealed that the paper was a jargon-laden spoof. Here was the perfect demonstration, said Sokal, of the twaddle that passes for scholarship in such fields.
The Sokal hoax marked the start of what became known as the “science wars”, which pitched liberal arts scholars engaged in what has become known as the “sociology of scientific knowledge” (SSK) movement against scientists, chiefly physicists. For a while, each side spared no effort in attacking the other. Yet within a year, “peace talks” were being organised. Now leading figures on both sides have come together to produce The One Culture? A conversation about science, a series of essays, responses and rebuttals that show where the battle lines currently stand.
It is a fascinating, and occasionally depressing, synthesis. Its fascination lies in the way the mere suggestion that the scientific process might be culturally determined causes the red mist to descend in even the most subtle minds. Many contributors cite examples of this, but only one – a physicist involved in gravitational wave research – tries to articulate the cause. According to of Syracuse University, New York, it boils down to the fact that SSK seems to dismiss as meaningless what many scientists regard as their ultimate goal, which is to bring us closer to the objective truth about the world.
By their apparent keenness to reduce science to “just another” way of understanding the world, the proponents of SSK threaten the very motivation of the scientists involved in some of the toughest intellectual work of our time. Sure enough, the response has often been intemperate and unsophisticated, as some of the protagonists admit in this book.
Theoretical physicist of Cornell University, one of the most vigorous defenders of science against SSK, now concedes here that the mere presence of inverted commas in the title of a chapter by two SSK advocates in another book led him to misunderstand their argument. He has now drawn up a list of rules for future discourse between the two sides, the first of which is: “Focus on the substance of what is being said, and not on the alleged motives for saying it.” That so basic a rule has to be stated is a depressing reflection on the dismal level of debate thus far.
Happily, there are clear signs in The One Culture? that the two sides are moving towards more constructive exchanges. The most striking is the concession by several contributors – including Nobel prizewinner – that science is often culturally determined in its early stages. Newton was led to his law of gravity by some distinctly weird beliefs, but the end result-the mathematical law-is objectively better than anything that went before. Lamentably, none of the contributors seems aware that this transition from subjective opinion to objective reality is a provably ineluctable part of the scientific process, first shown mathematically over 50 years ago.
Do the science wars really matter? Should anyone care about the degree to which science is determined by opinion, fashion and social forces? With the public being exposed to frontier science on an almost daily basis – and so often unimpressed by what it sees – the uncomfortable issues raised in this book have never been more important. The time has come for scientists and non-scientists alike to adopt a more sophisticated approach to the scientific process. Reading this book is the place to start.