Mooney and Sokal

If you read blogs, you almost certainly know about Chris Mooney, one of the world's distinguished Prospect alumns and author of The Republican War on Science. It's also likely that you've heard of Alan Sokal, perpetrator of the infamous Social Text scam, exposing the ignorant anti-science posturing of some post-modern humanities scholarship. Obviously, they're people with some similar concerns, but also very different targets.

It's noteworthy, then, to see them publish an op-ed together in The Los Angeles Times that more-or-less just takes up the (correct, not coincidentally) Mooney point of view that the politically powerful conservative movement is the real problem here.

Comments

It's a bit overstated to claim that Sokal "expos[ed] the ignorant anti-science posturing of some post-modern humanities scholarship"--first, I can't think of any postmodernists who are "anti-science" (that's the hallmark of our friends on the far right); second, the reasons for Sokal's inclusion in the infamous issue of Social Text are a bit more nuanced (essentially, the editors included his piece in an issue on lit theory and science because they were interested in an actual scientist doing theoretical work-they were aware of the many weaknesses of his article, which, BTW, he refused to revise for publication, as the proposed edits would defeat the purpose ofhis gambit.)

Also, the Sokal Hoax has becaome an oft-wielded club for anti-academic conseravites to pummel the academy, and humanities departments specifically; it's a good idea to think about this incident more clearly so we don't give them more ammo.

Posted by thefix | February 5, 2007 9:25 AM

Thefix: There are plenty of postmodernists who are anti-science. Spend a few days in a graduate humanities department and you'll see what I'm talking about. Just try to introduce scientific methods into social science research and you're guaranteed to hear from them. Ask them what they think about evolutionary psychology. You'll get an earful.

Posted by The Fool | February 5, 2007 9:28 AM

The left's most prominent weakness vis-a-vis science would probably be in the area of genetically modified food. If putting a bit of a frog in your tomato makes it cheaper to produce, many scientists say why not? But many in the public and the left of the political spectrum are much more hesitant.

More broadly, I guess I don't get so hot under the collar about 'wars on science' in the abstract. Politics is a war on science. Trade politics is a war on the theory of comparative advantage. AIPAC and co are a war on the academia's consensus view of the colonisation of Palestine. etc etc etc.

Posted by otto | February 5, 2007 9:39 AM

I gotta say, it speaks to what a doorknob Sokal is that he treats pomo trends in literature and sociology from a decade ago as threats even remotely as serious as the stuff that Mooney's on about. Like a few poetry profs are really going to bring science to its knees.

Posted by Scott E. | February 5, 2007 9:46 AM

I wish thefix were right. It's true that the most influential forces against science are on the right, but I saw Sokal on a platform with S. Aronowitz, the editor of social text, at the height of the Sokal hoax controversy. There was a lot of anti-science ignorance on display by self-styled men and women of the left that day--really really foolish stuff. Sokal didn't give right wingers a club with which to pummel progressives in academia, the people whose embarassingly silly views he exposed did that.

Posted by J | February 5, 2007 10:08 AM

Spend a few days in a graduate humanities department and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Overgeneralize much? I spend my whole working life in a graduate humanities department (philosophy) and you'll get no basis for your statements there. Admittedly, most of the philosophers of biology I know aren't big on some strands of evolutionary psychology, but that's because they don't think it's good science, not because of some hostility to science itself.

Posted by Matt Weiner | February 5, 2007 10:12 AM

"Ask them what they think about evolutionary psychology. You'll get an earful."

Advantage, crazy lefty pomo lit crits!

Posted by david | February 5, 2007 10:13 AM

Of course there's a certain resentment toward science to be found in many contemporary humanities departments - though I suspect it's a byproduct of reasonable criticisms of the historical contingency of scientific belief in practice, and not necessarily part of a grand 'anti-science' agenda. Fact is, many scholars who take it upon themselves to write critiques of science/engineering practice don't actually have any expertise in the areas under discussion, and the ham-fisted 'master narrative' critiques ring false as a result. (Not to mention the dull-edged talk of 'faith' in science, which really does smack of the desire to bring the status of scientific knowledge down to that literary judgment - embarrassing.) At the same time, much superb work has been done on the thorny history of scientific knowledge, with its paths-not-taken and generative competition, which probably benefits to an extent from the outsider status of historians talking about science. But a tendency to constantly hit the refrain of 'unknowability' and focus on the 'mythical' character of scientific findings is a bad stain on the field of science studies. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing as always.

Sokal's book with Bricmont, Academic Impostures, is interesting - a sustained attack on a handful of well-known Theorists whose invocation of science has historically been shoddy and (at times) merely in every way wrong. There's two sections to the book as I recall, one a broader set of questions about epistemology. Something in there for a very small Everyone. The Social Text paper made the journal and its associated constellation of academic fields look bad - and my sense, reading the essays around the affair, is that the reviewers at the journal did not have an idea what they were publishing. They responded to his silly metaphors and weren't in a position to criticize the science; Sokal had a right to crow about it. But it was in the end a small thing, proving little but calling attention to much - and that's where we find the difference between the resentful Righties who use the Sokal hoax to bludgeon the academy in general, as part of a broader reactionary program for education, and the implicated Lefties who were merely uninformed and (in some senses) bad scholars.

Posted by Wax Banks | February 5, 2007 10:29 AM

Seems like a good op-ed, by the way.

Posted by Wax Banks | February 5, 2007 10:42 AM

Matt Weiner: so "most" of the philosophers of biology you know aren't big on "some" strands of evolutionary psychology? That's so vague I think you could say that about any topic of research. I'm not big on "some strands" of evolutionary psychology either. For example, I'm not big on white supremacists who claim support from genetics. But surely you are familiar with the left wing hysteria against sociobiology, i.e. against ALL strands of evolutionary biology?

Let me give you another example of what I'm talking about. In any poliical science department in the land you will find some people who oppose all use of statistical methods because it smacks of "positivism". For some, as soon as you can apply the label "positivist" to something, that means its case closed. That's what I'm talking about.

Posted by The Fool | February 5, 2007 11:00 AM

One of the people "caught up" in the Sokal imbroglio was Michael Bérubé, yet Professor Bérubé has a reasonably good grasp of, e.g., special relativity, and is in no way intrinsically anti-science. This was a large part of the problem with that incident: the broadness of the brush used. Which is why it's good to see Professor Sokal focus on the real enemies of reason and progress.

And yes, some of us have encountered the fringe school of thought that the electron is purely a social construct of the white Western patriarchy. But that's on the fringe. Few undergrads are getting this sort of thing in their humanities requirements. And its proponents sure aren't US senators, or appointees to run federal agencies.

And besides,

Ask them what they think about evolutionary psychology. You'll get an earful.

As david notes, advantage, postmodernists!

Admittedly, most of the philosophers of biology I know aren't big on some strands of evolutionary psychology, but that's because they don't think it's good science, not because of some hostility to science itself.

Hell, I and many of my fellow life scientists aren't big on a great many strands of evolutionary psychology, but that's because we don't think it's good science. Weird how the modern right wing venerates evolutionary psychologists while empowering creationists and spewing illiterate screeds at climate scientists. Wait, no, it's not weird at all.

Posted by mds | February 5, 2007 11:09 AM

Sigh.

mds: so you and many of your fellow life scientists aren't big on "a great many" strands of evolutionary psychology. So, like Mr. Weiner, presumably that means that there are some that you are ok with.

However, In many humanities departments you will find many people who are opposed to ALL evolutionary psychology

Advantage: The Fool.

QED

Posted by The Fool | February 5, 2007 11:15 AM

You can fill in the blanks in the following statement with anything:

Many _________ researchers aren't big on many strands of _______.

Talk about vacuous.

Posted by The Fool | February 5, 2007 11:17 AM

For the record, like Sokal, I oppose the right wing and I oppose creationism. I also oppose misguided lefties who throw the epistemological baby out with the bath water, leaving intellectual argumentation as nothing more than a rhetorical tournament of the silver-tongued.

Weiner: didn't you learn anything at ANU?

Posted by The Fool | February 5, 2007 11:23 AM

I haven't the Sokal/Bricmont book, though I did read a lot of the material on the Social Text thing a few years ago (I was considering using it as the topic for a paper in a philosophy of science course). While I found Sokal's hoax moderately amusing, and enjoy seeing Stanley Fish made to look silly, and I think there's a very real and valid point about the misuse and misunderstanding of scientific research and concepts by careless or dishonest philosophers...

A lot of the time I get the sense that actual scientists who are bristling against what seem to me to be relatively mild claims made by philosophers of science don't particularly grasp the nature of the claims.

Posted by Quarterican | February 5, 2007 11:36 AM

The Fool: You seem a bit confused about what supports and what refutes your claim.

You said that spending a few days in a graduate humanities department would illustrate postmodernist anti-scientism. You adduced hostility to evolutionary psychology as an example.

I pointed out that there were plenty of graduate humanities departments for this was not true: the philosophy departments I'd been in. I conceded that there are people in those departments who are hostile to some strains of evolutionary psychology, but said that this was not a bad thing.

You are now admitting that hostility to some strands of EP are OK. So it seems that the graduate humanities departments I mentioned aren't anti-science. This means that your original statement was an overgeneralization, as I said.

You seem pretty confused on a lot of other issues, though. You give as "another example of what I'm talking about" an alleged fact about political science departments. But political science departments are social science departments, not humanities departments. So even if true this wouldn't support your hypothesis.

You also speak of "the left wing hysteria against sociobiology, i.e. against ALL strands of evolutionary biology?" I'm going to assume the last word should be "psychology," because otherwise this makes no sense; but it's still wrong. Sociobology is not the totality of evolutionary psychology. As this paper (google cache of a pdf) discusses, sociobiology is one phase in the development of evolutionary psychology in the broad sense, meaning treatments of psychology in terms of evolution. Evolutionary Psychology in the narrow sense, the "strands" I was referring to that aren't popular among my former colleagues, is a successor to sociobiology. My colleagues criticize this narrower EP because they feel that some of its tenets, e.g. the massive modularity of mind thesis, aren't well supported. And I believe the wider revulsion against evolutionary psychology is in large part a reaction to dubious popularizations of the already contentious approaches of sociobiology and narrow EP; it can hardly be taken as a sign of a more general hostility to science. (Otherwise life scientists like mds would hardly agree with it.)

Good day.

[On preview I see that The Fool, who I suspect to be the Troll of Sorrow, shows enough interest in me to follow around where I've spent time. On one level, I'm flattered; on another, get stuffed. Anyway, I hope the above bit about sociobiology and EP can be useful to some people; anyone really interested should read the Griffiths paper I linked, as this isn't my field.]

Posted by Matt Weiner | February 5, 2007 11:38 AM

The biggest anti-science beliefs on the left (and these are by no means held by all of the left) usually have to do with alternative medicine or conspiracy-based paranoid hysteria ("Big Pharma's suppressing cancer cure DCA!","Mercury causes autism!","Frankenfoods!"). I agree that none of these are as big a problem as righties disagreeing with fundamental biology or climate change denialism, but the left's problems still tend to piss me off more than the right's.

Posted by Cain | February 5, 2007 11:43 AM

Weiner:

I'm sorry I didn't make the same fine terminoloigcal distinctions you did in my blog commenting (guffaw!). I thought we were kind of loosely talking about the humanities versus the sciences, in which case I would lump departments of government/political science in along with the humanities. Your particular field, philosophy, is the one "humanities" department which which is not a notable offender on this score, so maybe I'm just referring to phenomena outside of your personal experience.

Sorry I don't have time to read the paper you link to and how it classifies research in evolutionary posychology. Again, I apologize for not making the same fine distinctions in my blog post as you would have (snicker). Most evolutionary psychologists would grant that their field began with what was formerly known as "sociobiology" but is now known as "evolutionary psychology" since the term "sociobiology" has been so unfairly but quite effectively slimed back in the 70's and 80's.

Posted by The Fool | February 5, 2007 11:51 AM

Also, for the record, I am not the Troll of Sorrow or any other kind of troll. I have posted lefty comments on lefty blogs under the same name for as long as there have been lefty blogs.

Posted by The Fool | February 5, 2007 11:55 AM

"Just try to introduce scientific methods into social science research and you're guaranteed to hear from them."

I stopped that stupidity when I saw Agreste as a required text for sociology graduate students.

"Ask them what they think about evolutionary psychology. You'll get an earful."

That's already been sufficiently covered, so I'll pass.

Posted by Barry | February 5, 2007 12:00 PM

I am not the Troll of Sorrow

I apologize for the misidentification. I still find your addressing me as "Weiner" rude (other people do that, but they're not insulting me as they do it), and your gratuitous mention of my time at ANU off-putting.

As for the main contention, you seem to have conceded that you were overgeneralizing about humanities departments (since your critique doesn't apply to philosophy), and it seems likely to me that you are overgeneralizing in other respects too.

Posted by Matt Weiner | February 5, 2007 12:18 PM

Weiner: sorry for the ANU crack. I just assumed that someone who studied philosophy at ANU would be familiar with the writings of someone like Michael Devitt and thus would understand that there is a creditable argument to be made that many postmodernists are anti-science.

Posted by The Fool | February 5, 2007 12:48 PM

sorry for the ANU crack.

OK. I was only there for three weeks, doing work on probability mostly. And I don't deny that many postmodernists have an anti-science bent, I'm just not sure how monolithic their influence is. And EP isn't a good test case, partly because of the slipperiness of the terms, which makes it hard to tell just what people are hostile to.

Posted by Matt Weiner | February 5, 2007 1:02 PM

The influence of moonbat humanities profs may pale to nothing in the face of the influence of, well, the entire republican party. But they're not completely without influence. Their influence *within humanities departments* isn't negligible. And presumably those matter at least a little, right?

Not to mention, a great deal of their rhetoric has provided fuel for anti-science arguments made by the republicans. The left's philosophical critique provided fuel for the republican's attempts at painting science as just another set of opinions based on fundamentally religious claims.

Posted by Patrick | February 5, 2007 1:13 PM

Now hold on there gentlemen (where are the women in this debate?),

I get easily frustrated with the tendency of the left to hitch its wagon to rationalist scientists who blithely carry on as if Kant had never been born. Science is not a magic pill to answer all questions or turn every "mystery" into a "problem." The very nature of observation and experience is restrictive. Don't agree? Fine, but please refer to recent science (and not-so-recent philosophy) in your argument. To merely dismiss any response that doesn't conform with 19th century ideas of common sense does no service to our understanding.

It's a bit of a laugh to call bible-thumpers anti-science while rigidly refusing to yield one inch to scientific heterodoxy. What it displays is the exact same molding of data to fit political preferences that the right employs on creationism and global warming.

Mara Beller writes in her essay on the Sokal Affair:

When physicists failed to find meaning in Bohr's writings, no matter how hard they tried, they blamed themselves, not Bohr... Carl von Weizsäcker's testimony is a striking example of the overpowering, almost disabling, impact of Bohr's authority. After meeting with Bohr, von Weizsäcker asked himself: "What had Bohr meant? What must I understand to be able to tell what he meant and why he was right? I tortured myself on endless solitary walks." [7] Note that von Weizsäcker did not ask, "Was Bohr right?" or "To what extent, or on what issue, was Bohr right?" or "on what issues was Bohr right?", but, quite incredibly, he wondered what must one assume and in what way must one argue in order to render Bohr right?

Science needs humanities at least as much as humanities needs science. They illumine each other. Hard heads like Sokal are actually mushy romantics, yearning for a time past when certainties were inviolable as steel bars. If anything, this seems to me an extrememly conservative perspective.

Posted by Deets | February 5, 2007 1:16 PM

Weiner:

This whole argument got started when I disputed thefix's statement, "I can't think of any postmodernists who are 'anti-science"

Since you no longer deny that "that many postmodernists have an anti-science bent," I think my work is done here.

Good day gentlemen.

Posted by The Fool | February 5, 2007 1:38 PM

As for the influence of humanities professors, they're largely either perceived as harmless drudges (like Dr. Johnson) or the butt of jokes. The Mr. Chips of the world wield little influence.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | February 5, 2007 1:48 PM

It seems likely that both "No postmodernists are anti-science" and "All humanities departments are full of anti-science postmodernists" are overgeneralizations.

Posted by Matt Weiner | February 5, 2007 1:49 PM

"Mara Beller writes in her essay on the Sokal Affair:"

Beller's argument is that physicists saying silly things about sociology/psychology is the cause of postmodernists saying silly things about physics.

I don't see the connection myself.

Posted by No Longer a Urinated State of America | February 5, 2007 1:57 PM

"It's a bit overstated to claim that Sokal "expos[ed] the ignorant anti-science posturing of some post-modern humanities scholarship"--first, I can't think of any postmodernists who are "anti-science"

At least in the early 1990s, there were of students, some frankly brillant in other aspects, who didn't hestitate to call science a superstition. They didn't pick that up from the air. IIRC, the journal "Science as Culture" also took up a weaker version anti-science agenda (or, well, anti-scientist), lambasting scientists as anti-democratic experts (a natural progression, it being run of ex-Maoists, I guess). "Science as Culture" also published a book alleging that HIV didn't come from Africa, putting forward a crackpot conspiracy theory instead. (However, S-a-Culture did have an excellent analysis of the 1950s sci-fi film "The Day the Earth Stood Still", but that still doesn't compensate.)

Posted by No Longer a Urinated State of America | February 5, 2007 2:09 PM

Weiner:

It also seems absolutely certain that "All humanities departments are full of anti-science postmodernists" is a misquote. Very lame.

Posted by The Fool | February 5, 2007 2:11 PM

"At least in the early 1990s, there were of students, some frankly brillant in other aspects, who didn't hestitate to call science a superstition. "

Sorry, that should have been: "At least in the early 1990s, there were students taking the Cambridge SPS Tripos, some frankly brillant in other aspects, who didn't hestitate to call science a superstition.

Posted by No Longer a Urinated State of Amer | February 5, 2007 2:27 PM

Interesting..."reality-based government".

Posted by Jimm | February 5, 2007 2:54 PM

Look, there are two different things going on here. One is the sociological approach to science, going back to Kuhn, the Strong Program, etc. When humanists and social scientists look at science as it has been practiced in history and today, they find -- surpsise! -- that it is not quite as neat as scientists would like to think. Apparently some scientists got wind of the idea that science was being investigated as a cultural institution and said "Oh noes! We are teh Promethean God Men, no case studies plz!"

The second thing is that an elite French education includes both a great deal of philosophy and a great deal of math and science, so those who end up aggregating in philosophy know a superfluous amount of math, and vice-versa. So French theorists throw out metaphors from topology and analysis the way your or I might throw out metaphors with algebra, like "Bush + Iraq = Disaster." Now, someone coming from a culture where algebra is sacred knowledge used only for keeping accounts and calculating the ecliptic might respond "Oh really? So Iraq=Disaster-Bush? Or are you claiming that (Bush+Iraq)/Disaster=1? No? I didn't think so, bitch." Such an objection would be wholly rational and yet at the same time completely miss the point.

Sokal, full of wisdom, managed to conflate these two separate issues in a variety of self-aggrandizing dicta about his hoax.

Posted by atkaoua | February 5, 2007 3:06 PM

No Longer (and Matthew),

Don't you think it's a wee bit defensive to equate a critique of science with "anti-science?" I'm the first to admit that postmodernism in the late 80s and early 90s got a little bit decadent, but that hardly suggests we should flush all critiques of science, and more than Skinner's excesses last century argue for discarding the study of psychology.

Also, Mr. Fool, most postmodern philosophers (and/or thier translators) were anything but silver-tongued.

Posted by Deets | February 5, 2007 3:30 PM

I'd launch in here but there's no point. Every anti-postmodernism commenter on here is guilty of the exact same failing as Sokal: an utter refusal to actually confront the arguments of actual poststructuralist thinkers. Every criticism against postmodernism, everyone you will ever hear, is a straw man. But why bother to actually seek to understand Derrida or Lacan or Rorty, when it's so much easier to sneer and attack empty stereotypes?

If you'd really like a cogent analysis of anti-foundationalism, I'd suggest you read the relevent section in Michael Berube's book What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts?.

Posted by Freddie | February 5, 2007 3:31 PM

It wasn't intended as a quote, but as a paraphrase, and stop calling me "Weiner."

Posted by Matt Weiner | February 5, 2007 3:35 PM

"At least in the early 1990s, there were students taking the Cambridge SPS Tripos, some frankly brillant in other aspects, who didn't hestitate to call science a superstition."

Science, for most scientists and most non-scientists IS, in fact, a superstition. Science isn't a superstition necessarily, but in actual current reality (again, for most people, scientists and non-scientists alike) people's beliefs in science are no more rational than belief in the evil nature of black cats. Most people believe in current science because our current political / cultural / economic authorities like to trumpet propaganda about the miracles of science rather than trumpeting propaganda about the miracles of the Virgin Mary or Zeus.

That is, most people (including most scientists) do not actually subject their belief in science to rational analysis.
Science is extremely defendable by rational analysis, but most people never actually do such an analysis (and it usually does not occur to them that such an analysis is even necessary). Which means that science for most people is an unexamined belief, just like an unexamined belief in the existance of witches.

Posted by burritoboy | February 5, 2007 3:51 PM

"lambasting scientists as anti-democratic experts "

The Enlightenment refoundation of science explicitly depicts scientists as anti-democratic (though usually covertly so). See Bacon's Novum Organum for the most prominent example. This depiction is by scientists themselves who were hoping to found political regimes based on a "political science".

Posted by burritoboy | February 5, 2007 3:57 PM

"Don't you think it's a wee bit defensive to equate a critique of science with "anti-science?" I'm the first to admit that postmodernism in the late 80s and early 90s got a little bit decadent, but that hardly suggests we should flush all critiques of science, and more than Skinner's excesses last century argue for discarding the study of psychology."

I've read Rorty, Kuhn, and Feyerbend, and my position on science is close to Kuhn's, in that science is a social process, but it's a *rational* social process based on which models provide the best explanation of empiral or observed data, and act as a basis for further work.

And where did I say to flush all critiques of science? The contention was [from thefix] 'first, I can't think of any postmodernists who are "anti-science" (that's the hallmark of our friends on the far right)'. I've provided such, or look at Barbara Ehrenreich at http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Debate/Ehrenreich.html, exerpt follows:

'When social psychologist Phoebe Ellsworth took the podium at a recent interdisciplinary seminar on emotions, she was already feeling rattled. Colleagues who'd presented earlier had warned her that the crowd was tough and had little patience for the reduction of human experience to numbers or bold generalizations about emotions across cultures. Ellsworth had a plan: She would pre-empt criticism by playing the critic, offering a social history of psychological approaches to the topic. But no sooner had the word "experiment" passed her lips than the hands shot up. Audience members pointed out that the experimental method is the brainchild of white Victorian males. Ellsworth agreed that white Victorian males had done their share of damage in the world but noted that, nonetheless, their efforts had led to the discovery of DNA. This short-lived dialogue between paradigms ground to a halt with the retort: "You believe in DNA?" '

Can we at least agree that those who do not believe in DNA are anti-science?

And as for proof of Sokal's contention that erosion of the concept of an objective truth would be a boon for reactionaries, try www.cei.org, www.climateaudit.org, or other such belief-tanks.

"Science is extremely defendable by rational analysis, but most people never actually do such an analysis (and it usually does not occur to them that such an analysis is even necessary). Which means that science for most people is an unexamined belief, just like an unexamined belief in the existance of witches."

I've never been to Japan. However, I have trust (by authority) that it exists. Does the fact I've never been to Japan make my belief that there is such a thing as Japan a superstition?

"Most people believe in current science because our current political / cultural / economic authorities like to trumpet propaganda about the miracles of science rather than trumpeting propaganda about the miracles of the Virgin Mary or Zeus."

Or maybe they look at the artifacts of technology that (clue: what are you doing right now that you couldn't do 20 years ago? And how did the work of Dirac, etc. make that possible?) and base their faith on that.

Posted by No Longer a Urinated State of America | February 5, 2007 4:22 PM

"Science is extremely defendable by rational analysis, but most people never actually do such an analysis (and it usually does not occur to them that such an analysis is even necessary). Which means that science for most people is an unexamined belief, just like an unexamined belief in the existance of witches."

What does this even mean? Seriously.

My general sense is that there are number of places in academica that have been overrun by crazy postmodern thinking--which is unfortunate, but hardly anything to get really worked up over. They are irrelevant and might as well just not exist as far as the practical world is concerned.

Posted by Korha | February 5, 2007 4:23 PM

'My general sense is that there are number of places in academica that have been overrun by crazy postmodern thinking--which is unfortunate, but hardly anything to get really worked up over. They are irrelevant and might as well just not exist as far as the practical world is concerned.'

As Sokal and Mooney point out, the relevancy is that a degraded bastardized form of postmodernism is alive and well and appearing on a climate change denialist website near you. You'll even find it being used on the thread on the IPCC 4AR on this weblog:
http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/2007/02/ipcc_versus_aei/#comment

And this *will* have a big global effect, if only by providing the thin intellectual cover for the U.S. [and, by extension, China and India] to postpone meaningful action by 5-10 years. And people will suffer and die because of that delay.

It's not that fault of the academic postmodernists [anymore than an inventor of a computer language can be blamed for a piece of malware created using it: you can't predict all the applications a tool you create can be used for], but it shows that any Marxian postmodernist who hoped that postmodernism as a discipline would undermine the power structure was seriously naive.

Posted by No Longer a Urinated State of America | February 5, 2007 4:49 PM

"What does this even mean? Seriously."

What it means is that beliefs that are held without first being exposed to rigorous and deliberate analysis by the person holding the belief are dangerous and counterproductive.

As far as things that are without meaning, the term "postmodern" is the sine qua non. There is absolutely no declarative value to the term. It means nothing, it explains nothing, it contains no logical or rhetorical value. Postmodern is analogous to politically correct; it has never meant to elicit anything other than derision and contempt. Like political correctness, postmodernism has never held anything close to the cultural force of its detractors. This is the ultimate case of speaking truth to no power-- a bunch of people on a weblog attacking a particular strain of radical French intellectual thought from the 1970's, the principal architects of which are all dead. Having done so, those people posture as though what they are attacking is a powerful institution, as though they are saying something iconoclastic or provocative. It isn't and you aren't.

What makes Yglesias's offhand condemnation so infuriating is that it is precisely the kind of argument-free argument that infects this dialogue. No need to offer rational criticism or anything of actual rhetorical value; just throw the term "postmodern" out, condescend to those crazy lefty professors, and be on your way.

Posted by Freddie | February 5, 2007 4:53 PM

Sokal was shooting fish in a barrel. Really, Social Text is one thing, but the government of the United States is another thing entirely. It's taken him quite a while to heave himself into this fight.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | February 5, 2007 5:02 PM

"What it means is that beliefs that are held without first being exposed to rigorous and deliberate analysis by the person holding the belief are dangerous and counterproductive."

And the irony that the editors of Social Text printed Sokal's paper with little to no understanding of its content or lack thereof, is completely lost on you.

Posted by No Longer a Urinated State of America | February 5, 2007 5:15 PM

"And the irony that the editors of Social Text printed Sokal's paper with little to no understanding of its content or lack thereof, is completely lost on you."

Says who? I haven't weighed in on Sokal or Social Text at all.

Posted by Freddue | February 5, 2007 5:19 PM

"This is the ultimate case of speaking truth to no power-- a bunch of people on a weblog attacking a particular strain of radical French intellectual thought from the 1970's, the principal architects of which are all dead. Having done so, those people posture as though what they are attacking is a powerful institution, as though they are saying something iconoclastic or provocative. It isn't and you aren't."

Sorry!

To be honest, it's true that most people haven't studied "poststructuralist thinkers," and it's true that it's both easy and fashionable to attack "postmodernism." I'm not familiar with those arguments myself, so I wouldn't engage in them.

However, that's does mean postmodernism as a practical profession should be immune to criticism from the unwashed masses. My general understanding is that a lot of people in the academic humanities are too concerned with obscure and abstract ideas, and not enough with the lives of real people. I think that's a line of attack that holds up, even if I haven't read Derrida or whatever.

"As Sokal and Mooney point out, the relevancy is that a degraded bastardized form of postmodernism is alive and well and appearing on a climate change denialist website near you."

I just don't really see how any of this sort of intellectual thinking has affected the life of the average person in any significant way, especially now that's it's on the decline. Are people really dying because of postmodernism? That seems like a gross exxageration to me.

Posted by Korha | February 5, 2007 5:27 PM

"Says who? I haven't weighed in on Sokal or Social Text at all."

So then what do you find infuriating about Yglesias posting:

"It's also likely that you've heard of Alan Sokal, perpetrator of the infamous Social Text scam, exposing the ignorant anti-science posturing of some post-modern humanities scholarship."

Some PoMo were anti-science, yes (c.f. Ehrenreich's quote above)? And some of it was ignorant, otherwise they wouldn't have published his hoax, yes? Hardly "rigorous and delibrative analysis", no? Should we not laugh at those who have a beam in their eye complaining about the motes in others?

Posted by No Longer a Urinated State of America | February 5, 2007 5:29 PM

"Some PoMo were anti-science, yes (c.f. Ehrenreich's quote above)? And some of it was ignorant, otherwise they wouldn't have published his hoax, yes? Hardly "rigorous and delibrative analysis", no? Should we not laugh at those who have a beam in their eye complaining about the motes in others?"

But that's it exactly. You're conflating the opinions of any number of writers and critics (who happen to fall under the nebulous and vague term of postmodernist) with the failures of a very few editors who worked at a single journal. Was that a bone-headed thing to do? Sure, although all the anti-science rhetoric seems particularly ill-considered to me since the publication of Sokal's article was itself an attempt to reach out to a scientist. But that failure shouldn't be made to seem to call into question the opinions of people who had nothing whatsoever to do with Social Text. And I think it would do for the people who are accusing others of not being rational to admit that there is no logical progression from the Sokal afair to a wide-ranging debunking of the "postmoderns".

And, as I pointed out above, the notion that the followers of a niche French intellectual tradition that peaked in inluence 30 years ago are running around using their vast influence to--what?-- deny global warming?-- or whatever other evil ends you project on them is just foolish and absurd.

Posted by Freddie | February 5, 2007 5:41 PM

"I've never been to Japan. However, I have trust (by authority) that it exists. Does the fact I've never been to Japan make my belief that there is such a thing as Japan a superstition?"

If by "authority" you mean you accepted the claim that "Japan exists" without critically examining the claims by authorities (comparing the various accounts of Japan, seeing if it is geographically feasible for a potential Japan to be where it is claimed to be, weighing whether you have enough evidence to find the existance of Japan compelling considering you haven't been there, etc), then yes, your belief in Japan is effectively superstition. It may be a correct belief, but YOUR individual belief wouldn't actually be rational, but superstitious.

Posted by burritoboy | February 5, 2007 5:47 PM

"What it means is that beliefs that are held without first being exposed to rigorous and deliberate analysis by the person holding the belief are dangerous and counterproductive."

Precisely. Thanks, Freddie!

Posted by burritoboy | February 5, 2007 5:49 PM

"My general understanding is that a lot of people in the academic humanities are too concerned with obscure and abstract ideas, and not enough with the lives of real people."

Which actually was exactly the opinion fairly consistently voiced by those you label "post-modernist" (wow, how about actually READING about what you're talking about? They do sell Derrida in your local Borders, you know). Most were far more involved in French politics than the vast majority of American academics would ever dream of. In fact, any campus activism tends to so badly frighten American academics (including, of course, science academics) that they usually flee far to the right-wing to avoid any further reoccurances of same.

Posted by burritoboy | February 5, 2007 5:56 PM

The key difference between science and other beliefs is that you can test scientific assertions. That is what makes them valid and scientific. You can go to Japan to see if it is there for yourself.

Some of the proofs in science are not experimental they are mathematical and only understood by experts in a very specialized field. So yes there is at this point a certain amount of belief in authority and expertise among people who put trust in the conclusions of scientists. Those conclusions do change because scientists are human and are subject tot he same flaws. I have little faith in scientists but more faith in the method overall. Science is a tool for describing processes. Nothing more or less.

The question isn't whether we "believe in science" the question is whether we as a culture value real world consequences and information when making decisions or whether we value our prejudices, feelings and faith instead.

Posted by ellenbrenna | February 5, 2007 6:00 PM

"But that's it exactly. You're conflating the opinions of any number of writers and critics (who happen to fall under the nebulous and vague term of postmodernist) with the failures of a very few editors who worked at a single journal. Was that a bone-headed thing to do?"

No, because it wasn't just a single journal, c.f. the Ehrenreich quote above, or my encounters with some of those associated with Science-as-Culture.

"And, as I pointed out above, the notion that the followers of a niche French intellectual tradition that peaked in inluence 30 years ago are running around using their vast influence to--what?-- deny global warming?-- or whatever other evil ends you project on them is just foolish and absurd."

What didn't you understand from me saying:

'It's not that fault of the academic postmodernists [anymore than an inventor of a computer language can be blamed for a piece of malware created using it: you can't predict all the applications a tool you create can be used for], but it shows that any Marxian postmodernist who hoped that postmodernism as a discipline would undermine the power structure was seriously naive.'

It's rich you lecturing others on the need for rigorous analysis when you can't be arsed reading what I've written.

Posted by No Longer a Urinated State of America | February 5, 2007 6:02 PM

Can we at least agree that those who do not believe in DNA are anti-science?

Not necessarily. It's a very suspect quote, don't you think? Everybody "believes" in DNA. Even Michael Behe. Perhaps the questioner meant something different, like, "you believe in the genetic foundation of behavioral traits?" But without context we can't say, and the audience member is only quoted in paraphrase.

It doesn't seem very sporting of Barbara E. to call critics of sociobiology "antibiologists" and further to go on and analogize them as "secular creationists." Sociobiology is not settled science, and even if it were, the field of contention comprises a much more narrow band than all of "biology."

I think you're wrong that conceding subjectivity gives ground to conservatives. If discourse is scrupulously conducted, conclusions can still be effectively argued from pretexts. Plus, there's such a thing as "real enough." Newtonian motion was good enough for the industrial revolution. We can be fuzzy about "ultimate truth" and get on just fine. Maybe even better than we are now.

And what's so damn postmodern about global warming denial? I don't see it.

Also: what Freddy said.

Posted by Deets | February 5, 2007 6:07 PM

"If by "authority" you mean you accepted the claim that "Japan exists" without critically examining the claims by authorities "

OK. I believe that the "Inferno" was written by a person named Dante. I have not performed textual analysis on the original to see if it matches La Vita Nuova. Is my belief that Dante wrote the Inferno supersition? Or is every fact I believe that I haven't done a PhD thesis on going to be labeled a superstition?

Ellenbrenna made some excellent points:

"The key difference between science and other beliefs is that you can test scientific assertions. That is what makes them valid and scientific. You can go to Japan to see if it is there for yourself."

Testability isn't the whole of the story, though.

"Some of the proofs in science are not experimental they are mathematical and only understood by experts in a very specialized field."

That's the problem with e.g. particle physics theories where we're not yet at the accelerator energies where we can get empirical data, and with model-based predictions such as those for climate change.

Posted by No Longer a Urinated State of America | February 5, 2007 6:15 PM

Nolonger,

Nobody is saying you aren't justified in believing in Japan, or the authorship of the Inferno. I personally think superstition is too strong a term for these beliefs, but the point is we all cleave to innumerable "unscientific" cognitions. We invest faith in our authorities, or certain select groups of them; society could not function if we had to verify every datum. That's not postmodernism, that's just logic.

One of the things postmodernism draws our attention to is the way we externally define untoward cultural traits, like superstition, in order to better believe our own myth of ourselves as rational. Baudrillard's examples were Watergate, which is set apart as an abberation as though our political systems didn't incubate that kind of abuse of power, and Disneyland, which is set apart as though our whole late capitalist culture wasn't built around disposable, two-dimensional, oversimplified, storybook reality.

And so the scientific mind likes to flatter itself for having overcome all that faith and begorrah. That's not to say it's not useful, just that it's not absolute.

Posted by Deets | February 5, 2007 6:37 PM

"The key difference between science and other beliefs is that you can test scientific assertions. That is what makes them valid and scientific. You can go to Japan to see if it is there for yourself."

You're simply recycling Max Weber's fact / value distinction from the early part of the twentieth century. Weber's fact / value distinction would not have been accepted by eighteenth century scientists (indeed, it would have been extraordinarily unacceptable).

Again, scientists often prove to be totally unable to grapple with the arguments behind what they're doing. They cut n' paste ideas together without any inkling where those concepts came from, or what they might imply. Like slapping together Max Weber together with an Enlightenment depiction of science (hint: it can't work).

Now, Weber might be right, but we also notice that we're primarily talking philosophy and sociology, not science alone now.

Posted by burritoboy | February 5, 2007 7:13 PM

"OK. I believe that the "Inferno" was written by a person named Dante. I have not performed textual analysis on the original to see if it matches La Vita Nuova. Is my belief that Dante wrote the Inferno supersition?"

Yes (or effectively so). But all humans take various things on authority and so on. The question is: "what is important to reason about?" Perhaps it is more important to reason about nature or politics or belly button lint than the identity of the Inferno's author (or, more appropriately, it is probably far more important to learn from Shakespeare's plays than to definitively learn who the author of those plays was).

Posted by burritoboy | February 5, 2007 7:20 PM

In the 18th Century there was less scientific knowledge to undergird any particular scientist's philosophy.

There is no denying that science as it is practiced is a subculture, one that draws people with particular skills and interests, that has its own philosophical underpinnings. It would probably be interesting to examine them but I do not think the culture invalidates results. It influences the directions taken and the questions asked but the method itself, when practiced with rigor and honesty, is capable of producing the closest thing people can manage to an accurate description of causes and effects.

Posted by ellenbrenna | February 5, 2007 8:52 PM

Science may be rational but university departments in the Sciences certainly are not. I have had "colleagues" reject a premise in a paper from my lab only to publish an almost identical theory six months later.

Posted by labrat | February 5, 2007 9:28 PM

"It influences the directions taken and the questions asked but the method itself, when practiced with rigor and honesty, is capable of producing the closest thing people can manage to an accurate description of causes and effects."

Stop peddling the propaganda - none of this verbiage is generated from within science itself. It may be true or false but most scientists wouldn't have a clue about how to investigate your claims' truth or falsity. I.E. very few scientists bother to understand the grounding of what they're doing (and many in fact don't have minds capable of doing so). In this respect, they're no different from medieval peasants burning witches.

Posted by burritoboy | February 5, 2007 9:57 PM

Propaganda? Interesting.

I know one person who studies soils and hydrology and another who studies evolutionary biology. They believe they are using a process to accurately describe reality. As accurately as people can, considering how imperfect human beings are. But then again one of them started out in Anthropology and the other plays music, reads literature regularly and keeps a journal but please explain again how scientists think about their discipline and what the limits of their worldviews are.

Richard Feynman certainly had pointed things to say about what he thought the purpose of science was as did Stephen Hawking and Stephen Jay Gould. The idea that there is no interdiscipline discussion strikes me as strange.

No one is asserting that scientists are perfect or should be trusted with all policy decisions but only that information produced through scientific methods is eventually found to be more reliable and rational than "if she floats burn her at the stake".

Posted by ellenbrenna | February 5, 2007 10:58 PM

Scott E. wrote:

"I gotta say, it speaks to what a doorknob Sokal is that he treats pomo trends in literature and sociology from a decade ago as threats even remotely as serious as the stuff that Mooney's on about. Like a few poetry profs are really going to bring science to its knees."

Here is what Jean Bricmont and I wrote in Chapter 1 of our book _Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science_ (entitled _Intellectual Impostures_ in the UK), replying in advance to a number of possible objections to our ideas:

10. _Why do you write a book on this and not on more serious issues?
Is postmodernism such a great danger to civilization?_

First of all, this is an odd question. Suppose someone discovers documents relevant to the history of Napoleon and writes a book about it. Would anyone ask him whether he thinks this is a more important topic than World War II? His answer, and ours, would be that an author writes on a subject under two conditions: that he is competent and that he is able to contribute something original. His subject will not, unless he is particularly lucky, coincide with the most important problem in the world.

Of course we do not think that postmodernism is a great danger to civilization. Viewed on a global scale, it is a rather marginal phenomenon, and there are far more dangerous forms of irrationalism --
religious fundamentalism, for instance. But we do think that the critique of postmodernism is worthwhile for intellectual, pedagogical, cultural and political reasons; we shall return to these themes in the Epilogue.

Posted by Alan Sokal | February 6, 2007 6:12 AM

atkaoua wrote:

"Look, there are two different things going on here. One is the sociological approach to science, going back to Kuhn, the Strong Program, etc. ...

"The second thing is that an elite French education includes both a great deal of philosophy and a great deal of math and science, so those who end up aggregating in philosophy know a superfluous amount of math, and vice-versa. So French theorists throw out metaphors from topology and analysis the way your or I might throw out metaphors with algebra, like "Bush + Iraq = Disaster". ...

"Sokal, full of wisdom, managed to conflate these two separate issues in a variety of self-aggrandizing dicta about his hoax."

Here, in fact, is what Bricmont and I write in the preface to our book _Fashionable Nonsense_, describing what we intend to show in the book:

But what exactly do we claim? Neither too much nor too little. We show that famous intellectuals such as Lacan, Kristeva, Irigaray, Baudrillard and Deleuze have repeatedly abused scientific concepts and terminology: either using scientific ideas totally out of context, without giving the slightest justification -- note that we are not against extrapolating concepts from one field to another, but only against extrapolations made without argument -- or throwing around scientific jargon in front of their non-scientist readers without any regard for its relevance or even its meaning. We make no claim that this invalidates the rest of their work, on which we suspend judgment.

...

A second target of our book is epistemic relativism, namely the idea -- which, at least when expressed explicitly, is much more widespread in the English-speaking world than in France -- that modern science is nothing more than a "myth", a "narration" or a "social construction" among many others. ...

This book is therefore made up of two distinct -- but related -- works under one cover. First, there is the collection of extreme abuses discovered, rather haphazardly, by Sokal; this is the "fashionable nonsense" of our title. Second, there is our critique of epistemic relativism and of misconceptions about "postmodern science"; these analyses are considerably more subtle. The connection between these two critiques is primarily sociological ... [AND WE GO ON TO EXPLAIN]

Enough said? Far from "conflating" these two critiques, we take pains to keep them separate.

As for the abuses of scientific language by Lacan, Kristeva, Deleuze et al, our criticism does not concern elementary metaphors like "Bush + Iraq = Disaster", but rather passages invoking highly technical terminology such as:

[I]n the syntactic operations following the mirror stage, the subject is already sure of his uniqueness: his flight towards the "point \infty" in the signifying is stopped. One thinks for example of a set C_0 on a usual space R^3 where for every continuous function F on R^3 and each integer n > 0, the set of points X where F(X) exceeds n is _bounded_, the functions of C_0 tending to 0 when the variable X recedes towards the "other scene". In this topos, the subject placed in C_0 does not reach this "center exterior to language" about which Lacan speaks and where he loses himself as subject, a situation that would translate the relational group that topology calls a _ring_. [Kristeva 1977]

We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multidimensional machinic catalysis. The symmetry of scale, the transversality, the pathic non-discursive character of their expansion: all these dimensions remove us from the logic of the excluded middle and reinforce us in our dismissal of the ontological binarism we criticised previously. A machinic assemblage, through its diverse components, extracts its consistency by crossing ontological thresholds, non-linear thresholds of irreversibility,
ontological and phylogenetic thresholds, creative thresholds of heterogenesis and autopoiesis. The notion of scale needs to be expanded to consider fractal symmetries in ontological terms. [Guattari 1995]

This displacement of the direct transparence of a material is due primarily ... to the effective use of _undulatory optics_ alongside classic _geometric optics_. In the same way that alongside Euclidean geometry we find a non-Euclidean, topological geometry, the passive optics of the geometry of camera lenses and telescopes is accompanied by the active optics of the _teletopology_ of optoelectric waves. ... Traditional chronology -- future, present, past -- has been succeeded by _chronoscopy_ -- underexposed, exposed, overexposed. The interval of the _time_ genre (the positive sign) and the interval of the _space_ genre (the negative sign, with the same name as the inscription surface of film) are inscribed only by _light_, that interval of the third genre in which the _zero_ sign means absolute speed. [Virilio 1989]

Finally, as Bricmont and I stress in Chapter 1, "our criticism does _not_ deal primarily with [scientific] errors, but with the manifest _irrelevance_ of the scientific terminology to the subject supposedly under investigation."

Posted by Alan Sokal | February 6, 2007 8:59 AM

Weiner:

You said, and I quote,"It wasn't intended as a quote, but as a paraphrase, and stop calling me "Weiner."

Some advice, Weiner: if your paraphrase is not supposed to to be taken as a quote, then for goddsakes don't use quotation marks, idiot.

Also, if you don't like being addressed as "Weiner" then for goddsakes change your name.

Posted by The Fool | February 6, 2007 10:01 AM

"Posted by: Alan Sokal on February 6, 2007 06:12 AM"

:Eyes Boggle:

We're not worthy! We're not worthy!

"I personally think superstition is too strong a term for these beliefs, but the point is we all cleave to innumerable "unscientific" cognitions. We invest faith in our authorities, or certain select groups of them; society could not function if we had to verify every datum. That's not postmodernism, that's just logic."

No argument, and thank you for conceding that superstition is not the term to use for science or for trust in other forms of knowledge. (Perhaps you can have a word with burritoboy. He seems to think scientists are akin to witch-burning peasants, unless they have been ritually purified by reading Derrida. He might at least have recognized that we're professionals and called us witchfinder-generals, for God's sake.)

However, there is a difference between what we know from science and other methods of knowing. Frex, Lysenko was an authority in the Soviet Union on biology up until the mid-1960s. He stopped being an authority. Why? The political infrastructure and underlying did not change, the ideological reasons for the powers in control did not change. Why did Lysenko fall out of favor?

"And what's so damn postmodern about global warming denial? I don't see it."

Read some of the stuff written by global warming deniers (like the stuff I linked to: look for commenter beowulf888) and you'll see what I mean. They borrow heavily from social constructivists as well, but there's also the view that climate science is just a discourse that goes back and forth, hence the claims of "what about global cooling in the 1970s", never mind that the primary scientist who raised concerns about cooling in the 1970s (Stephen Schneider, based on aerosol pollution) retracted his conclusions 18 months later and is now a proponent of global warming. In fairness, this might be inadvertent borrowing (it probably owes more to tactics first honed by the tobacco lobby than the academy).

Posted by No Longer a Urinated State of America | February 6, 2007 11:15 AM

"However, there is a difference between what we know from science and other methods of knowing. Frex, Lysenko was an authority in the Soviet Union on biology up until the mid-1960s. He stopped being an authority. Why? The political infrastructure and underlying did not change, the ideological reasons for the powers in control did not change. Why did Lysenko fall out of favor?"

Sorry, that should have been:

However, there is a difference between what we know from science and other methods of knowing. Frex, Lysenko was an authority in the Soviet Union on biology up until the mid-1960s. He stopped being an authority. Why? The political infrastructure and underlying ideology did not change, the ideological reasons for the powers in control to prefer Lysenko to genetics did not change. Why did Lysenko fall out of favor?

Posted by No Longer a Urinated State of America | February 6, 2007 11:18 AM

I have only skimmed the comments here, so I may be wrong, but no one seems to have mentioned that there is no basis in the editorial for the sub-headline's " something of which both parties are historically guilty."

Where does the LAT get off pulling this crap? What's the point of running the editorial if most people, who will only glance at the headlines, come away with the opposite conclusion from the editorial itself?

Posted by wmr | February 6, 2007 1:33 PM

However, there is a difference between what we know from science and other methods of knowing. Frex, Lysenko was an authority in the Soviet Union on biology up until the mid-1960s. He stopped being an authority. Why? The political infrastructure and underlying did not change, the ideological reasons for the powers in control did not change. Why did Lysenko fall out of favor?

If your point is that Lysenko's science was ideologically motivated, and therefore not "real" science, I agree. But I would reply that ideological bias is not "either/or." Rather, it exists by degree, and the best we can do is be conscious of the fact that we are not able to eradicate it altogether, any more than we're able to look without eyes or hear without ears.

Julian Jaynes talks about consciousness being like a flashlight searching for a spot of darkness, and I think that's a great model for knowledge in general; we can't know what we can't know--by definition. The "postmodernist" critique of science does not argue that we should replace science with some other superior way of knowing. Nor do the mythographers (Armstrong, Campbell, Eliade) argue this. There is a difference among ways of knowing. But none of them are objective in the traditional sense.

Read some of the stuff written by global warming deniers (like the stuff I linked to: look for commenter beowulf888) and you'll see what I mean. They borrow heavily from social constructivists as well, but there's also the view that climate science is just a discourse that goes back and forth, hence the claims of "what about global cooling in the 1970s", never mind that the primary scientist who raised concerns about cooling in the 1970s (Stephen Schneider, based on aerosol pollution) retracted his conclusions 18 months later and is now a proponent of global warming. In fairness, this might be inadvertent borrowing (it probably owes more to tactics first honed by the tobacco lobby than the academy).

I read Beowulf's comments and don't see what you're pointing to. The arguments he makes are: (1) we're at the end of the fossil fuel era, so it's too late to do anything anyway (which is false), and (2) models don't prove anything (defensible; the fact that modern planes demonstrate the principles of aerodymanics as modeled doesn't mean all models are predictive.) I believe in human-made global warming, and I believe we can (and must) still act to mitigate it. But I still fail to see how the deniers are given any ammo by postmodernists.

I know of no philosophers of science who maintain that scientific method doesn't matter, that induction and deduction cannot be used productively, or that all ideas have equal merit or relevance. This is the caricature built up by people who would prefer no doubts were cast on objectivity.

Posted by Deets | February 6, 2007 1:58 PM

"The idea that there is no interdiscipline discussion strikes me as strange."

Again, you don't have good grasps on your terms - why is this necessarily an interdisciplinary discussion? Why are scientists generally unable to critically examine the grounding of their science? Why is such discussion of the theory of science necessarily outside the boundaries of science itself?

"only that information produced through scientific methods is eventually found to be more reliable and rational than "if she floats burn her at the stake". "

You're begging the question. Why is the scientific method (which is only one depiction of science and an idea that itself needs to be critically analyzed)more reliable and rational? What is reliable? What is rational? Why is it important that information be reliable?

I'm not saying that there aren't great answers to these questions (most of which answers I myself accept). The problem is that every scientist needs to be asking those questions as the foundation of their science and needs to be able to critically examine various opinions or claims about these question.

Posted by burritoboy | February 6, 2007 4:12 PM

"Perhaps you can have a word with burritoboy. He seems to think scientists are akin to witch-burning peasants, unless they have been ritually purified by reading Derrida. He might at least have recognized that we're professionals and called us witchfinder-generals, for God's sake"

Geeze, you just keep getting yourself into more and more trouble. The concept of "professional" is one of the most loaded (politically) of modern times. See David F. Noble (or Bourdieu) to understand what that concept really has entailed.

I wouldn't actually reccomend scientists reading Derrida as their first step. Not a great author for novices.

Posted by burritoboy | February 6, 2007 4:17 PM

...every scientist needs to be asking those questions as the foundation of their science and needs to be able to critically examine various opinions or claims about these question.

Why?

Posted by wmr | February 6, 2007