Social construction of an 'attack on science' brian martin

Social Studies of Science

Volumn 26, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 161-173

  Martin, Brian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG   (Australia)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 21344437824     PISSN: 03063127     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030631296026001008     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. See, for example, Wray Herbert.,The PC Assault on Science', US News & World Report (20 February 1995), 64-65.
2. Eric Ashby.,Science and Antiscience', in Paul Halmos (ed.), The Sociology of Science (Keele, Staffs: University of Keele, 1972), 209-26;
3. John Maddox.,Defending Science Against Anti-Science', Nature, Vol. 368 (17 March 1994), 185;
4. John Passmore, Science and its Critics (London: Duckworth, 1978).
5. For reasonably clear articulations of this equation, see pp. 2-3, 8, 14, 23, 27, 108, 148, 220, 223, 237, 238 and 252-53.
6. This point is well made in Tom Oieryn.,Policing STS: A Boundary-Work Souvenir from the Smithsonian Exhibition "Science in American Life" ', Science, Technology, & Human Values (1995, forthcoming).
7. Gross and Levitt refer to the incorporation of science in a revealing passage: 'Science is, after all, well integrated into the technological, industrial, and military machinery of the capitalist system; in turn it relies on that system for the material basis of its continuing progress, at least in those fields where a substantial investment of money is necessary for fruitful research. For working scientists in the belly of the beast, of course, the situation seems far more subtle than that. In fact, from a variety of perspectives, scientists and intellectuals in general might honestly (and correctly) view the present culture as a historical paragon, to the degree that it fosters and encourages autonomy of thought and freedom of ideas' (47). This conclusion can best be understood in terms of an assumption that the essence of science is scientific knowledge, itself a reflection of nature.
8. Gross and Levitt give some nice summary statements of the positivist position, such as that scientific practice is 'driven for the most part by the internal logic of the subject and the unyielding contours of reality' (81) and 'Science is, above all else, a reality-driven enterprise' (234).
9. Gross and Levitt use the term 'academic left' 'with great misgiving' (2); it is a 'troubling term' (3); they apologize if the term causes confusion (9); it is 'not felicitious' (37).
10. Occasionally they use the expression 'postmodern left' instead (175, 250).
11. See, for example, contributions to 7. Papers, Vol. 1, No. 4 (OctoberDecember 1992).
12. Lydia Sargent (ed.), Women and Revolution: A Discussion of the Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1980).
13. Many socialists were for a long time highly critical of environmentalism: a classic early statement is Hans Magnus Enzensberger.,A Critique of Political Ecology', New Left Review, No. 84 (March-April 1974), 3-31. Even today, many radical environmentalists are unsympathetic with state-oriented varieties of socialism. Gross and Levitt focus on 'ecoradicals' who are opposed to modern technology; the distance of this group from any reasonable grouping of the 'left' is enormous.
14. See, for example, Everett Carll Ladd, Jr and Seymour Martin Lipset, The Divided Academy: Professors and Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975).
15. Among many other sources, see Robert Justin Goldstein, Political Repression in Modern America from 1870 to the Present (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1978);
16. Bertell Oilman, Class Struggle is the Name of the Game: True Confessions of a Marxist Businessman (New York: William Morrow, 1983);
17. Michael Parent!.,Repression in Academia: A Report from the Field', Politics and Society, Vol. 1 (August 1971), 52-37.
18. Olga Amsterdamska.,Surely You Are Joking, Monsieur Latour!', Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 15 (1990), 495-504;
19. Stewart Russell.,The Social Construction of Artefacts: A Response to Pinch and Bijker', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 16 (1986), 33146;
20. Pam Scott.,Levers and Counterweights: A Laboratory That Failed to Raise the World', ibid., Vol. 21 (1991), 7-35;
21. Steven Shapin.,Following Scientists Around', ibid., Vol. 18 (1988), 533-50.
22. Another sentence from the same article is quoted on p. 286.
23. It is with this framework that Gross and Levitt clinch their rebuttal of constructivism with the familiar claim that 'science works' (49, emphasis in the original; see also 112, 141).
24. Sal Restivo, The Social Relations of Physics, Mysticism and Mathematics (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1983).
25. In my own case, I cannot help but agree, among other points, with aspects of Gross and Levitt's criticisms of exaggeration of environmental dangers within the environmental movement. For an environmentalist critique of environmental doomsdayism, see Alan Roberts, The Self-Managing Environment (London: Allison & Busby, 1979), Chapter 1.
26. David Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976). Bloor is mentioned in passing -'a sociologist identified with the Edinburgh School of unyielding cultural constructivists' (52) -but only through the work of Stanley Aronowitz, whose method, according to Gross and Levitt, is to present the views of philosophers of science 'briefly and cryptically' (51). Indeed.
27. Gross and Levitt: 'One can attribute the popularity of relativism, for instance, as much to the traces of omnivorous credulity that linger from the sixties as to the dialectical skills of influential thinkers' (223). They do not make any effort to use psychological insights to help understand the operation of science: see, for example, Michael J. Mahoney, Scientist as Subject: The Psychological Imperative (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1976);
28. Mahoney.,Psychology of the Scientists: An Evaluative Overview', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 9 (1979), 349-75;
29. lan I. Mitroff, The Subjective Side of Science: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Psychology of the Apollo Moon Scientists (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1974). They assume that 'ideological commitments' undermine the work of those undertaking a critique of science, but make no similar observation concerning the commitments of natural scientists.
30. Gross and Levitt: 'as seems to have been forgotten in the current rise of antifoundationalism, assertion is not evidence' (112).
31. Billie Wright Dziech and Linda Weiner, The Lecherous Professor: Sexual Harassment on Campus (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1984);
32. Martha R. Fowlkes, Behind Every Successful Man: Wives of Medicine and Academe (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980);
33. Michèle A. Paludi (éd.), Ivory Power: Sexual Harassment on Campus (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990);
34. Diana E.H. Russell, Sexual Exploitation: Rape, Child Sexual Abuse, and Workplace Harassment (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1984).
35. See the journals Radical Science Journal, Science for People, Science for the People and Rita Arditti, Pat Brennan and Steve Cavrak (eds), Science and Liberation (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1980),
36. Hilary Rose and Steven Rose (eds), The Political Economy of Science: Ideology of/in the Natural Sciences (London: Macmillan, 1976);
37. Rose and Rose (eds). The Radicalisation of Science: Ideology of/in the Natural Sciences (London: Macmillan, 1976).
38. Political critiques of science are also commonly ignored in science studies, as I have argued in Brian Martin.,The Critique of Science Becomes Academic', Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 18 (1993), 247-59.
39. Gross and Levitt accept that the focus of scientific research and the direction of scientific advance can be affected by social factors (43-44, 234). Yet this 'weak cultural constructivism1 is adequate grounding for nearly all the challenges to prevailing science and technology by feminists, environmentalists and other social activists.
40. Thomas F. Gieryn.,Boundaries of Science', in Sheila Jasanoff, Gerald E. Markle, James C. Petersen and Trevor Pinch (eds), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995), 393-443.