Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science

367 Pages·1997·2.12 MB·English

by  Paul R. Gross

Higher Superstition
Higher
Superstition
The Academic Left and
Its Quarrels with Science

PAUL R. GROSS
University of Virginia
NORMAN LEVITT
Rutgers University
© 1994, 1998 The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
Johns Hopkins Paperbacks edition, 1998
4 6 8 9 7 5 3
The Johns Hopkins University Press
2715 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363
www.press.jhu.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data will be found at the end
of this book.
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Gross, Paul R.
Higher superstition: the academic left and its quarrels with science / Paul
R. Gross, Norman Levitt.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8018-4766-4 (alk. paper)
1. Science–Social aspects. 2. Humanities. I. Levitt, N. (Norman), 1943–
II. Title.
Q175·5·G757 1944
500–dc20 93-32914
ISBN 0-8018-5707-4 (pbk.)
To our wives, our children, and our students, with gratitude
Contents

Preface to the 1998 Edition
Acknowledgments
ONE The Academic Left and Science
TWO Some History and Politics: Natural Science and Its Natural Enemies
THREE The Cultural Construction of Cultural Constructivism
FOUR The Realm of Idle Phrases: Postmodernism, Literary Theory, and
Cultural Criticism
FIVE Auspicating Gender
SIX The Gates of Eden
SEVEN The Schools of Indictment
EIGHT Why Do the People Imagine a Vain Thing?
NINE Does It Matter?
Notes
Supplementary Notes to the 1998 Edition
References
Index
Preface to the 1998 Edition

Like most scientists, engineers, and mathematicians, including those who
founded the U.S. National Science Foundation and encouraged its social-science
programs, we have always valued social analysis of science and its history. We
still do. As for antiscience, that is a very old story in our culture. In its
accustomed forms, it would hardly have stirred us to take the trouble to study
and write about it. The writing of Higher Superstition was undertaken only when
it became clear to us, from separate but remarkably similar experiences at our
respective universities, that something new and unwelcome had found its way
into the academic bloodstream and thence into lecture rooms, journals, books,
and faculty chit-chat: the systematic disparagement of modern science. A public
response was clearly needed. Even the silliest criticisms of science, dressed up as
social analysis, hermeneutics, or emancipatory politics, were going largely
unanswered. Neither scientists as individuals, nor scientific organizations, nor
scholars within the disciplines whence issued the disparagement, showed any
inclination (might it have been any courage?) to rebut the kinds of antiscientific
nonsense and flawed scholarship we were encountering in the academy. We
didn’t know what sort of response the book we considered writing would evoke.
In fact, we rather feared, since the argument would necessarily alternate between
broad-brushing and technical detail and between polemic and analysis, that it
would slip unremarked from new release to backlist to remainder without
stirring much interest one way or the other.
The fear turned out to be groundless: it was dispelled by astonishing
numbers of allies and opponents promptly having their say in conferences,
seminars, journals, and on the internet. We found ourselves in the eye of a storm
generated by the book. Predictably enough, in the flood of reviews, most of
those from scientists were strongly positive, while most of the antagonism came
from the “science-critique” academic subculture and its allies. Interestingly,
however, some of the most hostile criticism appeared in journals affiliated with
the scientific community, which lent their pages (as they have been doing for
some time) to anxious apologists for the antiscientific, pseudo-sociological fads
that are the subject of this book. It was lauded in some conservative journals of
opinion despite our disclaimer of any wish to advance conservative political
causes—or indeed any political program. Most of the indignant huffing and
puffing came from the circled wagons of what we called, with repeated
misgivings, the “academic left,” which tried to encourage the perception that we
are deep-dyed conservatives (closeted or otherwise) pursuing reactionary
agenda, and protecting our fat research grants.
As it happened, the instinctive dislike of science that lurks historically in
the conservative woodwork was mostly dormant when we wrote the book. Since
then it seems to have begun scratching again, in the form of new denunciations
of “Darwinism” (which is not to suggest that there is no anti-Darwinism on the
left). If, therefore, we were writing this book ab ovo, the “academic right” would
have to join the academic left in its subtitle and there would have to be a chapter
on “Intelligent Design Theory.” Indeed, “right” and “left” are curiously united
on these issues, with leftist adherents of identity politics just as comfortable with
the doctrine of special creation—in its “Native American” version—as are
rightist defenders of biblical orthodoxy. We know at least one public incident in
which a senior and greatly esteemed member of the science studies
establishment, fashionably leftist in most respects, defended the right of
fundamentalist school boards to mandate the teaching of creationism in science
classrooms. Apparently, for her (a noted scholar not mentioned in our original
text), the intrusion of religion into the science classroom is less troubling than
the idea that natural science gets at truths about nature that transcend socio-
cultural particulars.
For us, however, the greatest surprises have been pleasant ones. Chief
among them was the international uproar occasioned by the publication of Alan
Sokal’s now-famous hoax, “Transgressing the Boundaries: The Transformative
Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” in the trendy cultural studies journal Social
Text. The ongoing saga of Sokal’s pleasantry is instructive on several levels. The
joke arose from Sokal’s reading of our book. Originally, as a principled leftist,
he suspected that we two might be conservatives as charged, advancing
antiliberal agenda under the pretext of defending science. However, he
ultimately found much of our argument persuasive. In fact, his own researches
convinced him that we had in some respects understated the case. His dismay at
the clear evidence that a once-vigorous intellectual tradition of radical dissent is
slipping into irrationality prompted him to put aside physics for a few weeks in
the fall of 1994 in order to compose his delightful parody. It was submitted to
Social Text, in all apparent seriousness, early that winter. Unknown to Sokal at
the time, that publication, under the leadership of Prof. Andrew Ross (see
Chapter 4), was preparing a special issue on what it dubbed “the science wars.”
The intention was to vindicate assorted poststructuralist, multicultural, and
feminist critiques of science and to denounce their critics, most notably the
depraved Gross and Levitt. Sokal’s piece, with its seconding and fulsome praise
of such intentions, was snapped up by the editors.
The tainted issue appeared in due course (May 1996), Sokal’s revelation of
the hoax appeared a few days later in Lingua Franca, and then all hell broke
loose. Predictably, some conservatives crowed, citing the “Sokal Text” affair as
further proof that left-wing sympathies equate to outright dementia
(notwithstanding Sokal’s own leftist views). But the reaction of a large number
of left-intellectuals was more lasting and perhaps more significant for the
academy. Sokal’s hoax brought into the open a widespread reaction, years in the
making, against the sesquipedalian posturings of postmodern theory and the
futility of the identity politics that so often travels with it. Cutting-edge
celebrities, long used to dictating the tone of political discussion in “progressive”
circles, suddenly found themselves on the hot seat. As of this writing, the
recriminations continue with no sign of abatement.
We had hoped to include in this new edition, as an appendix, the full text of
Sokal’s article, which cites verbatim and to exceedingly comic effect a goodly
collection of postmodernist “authorities” on science and its philosophical import.
Alas, their tender sensibilities intervened to frustrate the hope. Duke University
Press, under the leadership of Prof. Stanley Fish, is the publisher of Social Text
and thus owns the copyright to Sokal’s piece. That scholarly organization
responded to a Johns Hopkins University Press request for reprint permission
with what can only be described as an exorbitant demand for royalties. The
proffered justification was greed: they expected, it was explained, that the Johns
Hopkins Press would make lots of money from such a deal, and they wanted
their cut. The grapevine brings to our ears, however, credible rumors suggesting
that spite, rather than lucre, might have been the chief reason for this dogfish-in-
the-manger attitude. Whatever the case, we apologize to the reader. The text of
Sokal’s highly relevant put-on must be consulted elsewhere.
Interest stirred up by our book convinced us to try to extend the discussion
by organizing a conference under the sponsorship of the New York Academy of
Sciences. This conference, held in New York in the spring of 1995, was called
“The Flight from Science and Reason”; several dozen scholars and writers—
whom we do not blush to call distinguished—contributed to it. It had at least the
virtue of demonstrating that misgivings about the spread of relativism and
antirationalism, or, more broadly, the increasing loss of nerve within an
intellectual community faced with the need to defend logic, evidence, and
rational thought, are not the parochial concern of self-interested scientists. The
wide spectrum of political views and academic disciplines represented
confirmed that the proposition that there is a growing disdain for reason and
science is not simply a bugbear of conservatives looking for a pretext to discredit
the left. The conference proceedings, now reissued by the Johns Hopkins Press,
incorporate a number of essays recruited subsequent to the actual meeting,
expanding the range of topics and perspectives. Whatever else might be said
about this conference, its breadth was, in our age of narrow specialization,
astonishing (at least it astonished us). Where else, in a single volume, can one
find informed debate about editorial practice in preparing editions of King Lear,
on the one hand, and about the implications of the quantum-mechanical
formalism for our view of physical reality, on the other?
By the time those proceedings were published, the “science wars” (we
dislike the term, but the coinage is out there) were in full career, with the Sokal
affair but one obvious stimulant. Radical science studies, with its do-it-yourself
epistemologies, had long enjoyed a certain immunity from serious challenge or
criticism. That immunity began to melt away as more and more scientists
became aware of the breadth and depth of the misconceptions about science
being propagated by constructivist historians, sociologists of scientific
knowledge, and feminist epistemologists, among others. Benchmarks in this
process included Nobelist M. F. Perutz’s astringent New York Review of Books
article on Gerald Geison’s The Private Science of Louis Pasteur and the ensuing
correspondence. The Sokal parody generated its own large literature, including
essays by another Nobel laureate, physicist Steven Weinberg, also in the New
York Review of Books, and philosopher Paul Boghossian, in the Times Literary
Supplement. The science studies establishment seems divided about how to
respond to such arguments. Heavy manifestos in defense of the absolute truth of
relativism and the permanent ephemerality of scientific knowledge issue from
some quarters; historian Paul Forman and literary theorist Barbara Herrnstein
Smith have provided paradigmatic samples of the genre. On the other hand, there
have been some frantic signals from once-stalwart adherents of the science-as-
social-convention orthodoxy that the time has come to back away from the now-
blunted cutting edge. Angry arguments for the defense, of the “nobody ever
believed that” variety, erupt from time to time into print—M. Norton Wise has
provided important type-specimens. These come to grief, however, as time and
again something else pops up in print to prove that someone pretty famous in the
science studies game does indeed believe exactly that.
The issues now reverberate in elite scholarly institutions. Stanford
University, for instance, raised serious questions about its own science studies
program. Even more striking, the Institute for Advanced Study, at Princeton
University, perhaps the most prestige-laden academic research facility in the
country, has been in the thick of the argument. Unknown to us, shortly before
this volume was written, there was conflict when “anthropologist of science”
Bruno Latour (see Chapter 3) was proposed as a permanent member by the
Faculty of Social Science. The Institute’s mathematicians and physicists,
acquainting themselves with Latour’s writings, raised the roof, and the
nomination was withdrawn. Our own comments on Latour were written in
ignorance of these events; in fact, owing to the institute’s code of silence, nearly
a year passed following the publication of Higher Superstition before rumors of
the fracas were confirmed. Quite recently (within the past few weeks) the issue
has flared anew in the same place. M. Norton Wise, a cultural historian of
science at Princeton, was proposed for the institute position once denied Latour,
and rejected. Readers of Wise’s review of this book (in Isis) and of The Flight
from Science and Reason (in American Scientist) will perhaps understand why
we are not as disheartened by this event as the social-scientist commentators say
we ought all to be. It is among the signals that scientists and mathematicians
have begun, finally, to take notice of what some of the leading figures of science
studies have been writing and teaching for nearly two decades.
Conferences and seminars throughout the United States and Western
Europe, as well as a flood of new publications, now reflect the argument, or
struggle: in that sense, the flippant coinage “science wars” can be justified.
Many notable historians and sociologists of science have long held misgivings
about the intellectual nihilism that offers itself as “cultural constructivism”; but
they have been reluctant to challenge it for fear of gaining a reputation as sissies,
too weak-kneed to play the exhilarating game of “epistemological chicken.” Just
as often, they have been cowed by fear of the academically fatal accusations:
political conservatism, sexism, disdain for the Other. Moreover, in order to
commit themselves publicly to professional conflict, honest scholars need time
to do painstaking research, and they usually need to feel that they won’t be just
wasting breath. Now, however, some of them seem to be in a fighting mood.
Highly touted works of the science studies avant garde have recently come under
systematic scrutiny and have been found lacking, not only because of perverse
philosophical assumptions but also for flaws in methodology and for serious
historical inaccuracies. As evidence of this new mood, we cite A House Built on
Sand, a compilation of such critiques soon to appear from Oxford University
Press. If the publication of Higher Superstition played some catalytic role in
these reactions, then we are pleased to have written it.
A word about changes and supplements to this second edition. We have
corrected some typographical errors in the text and a few awkwardnesses in
wording, without altering the underlying meaning. A few minor factual slips
have been corrected. We have had second thoughts about some points, often at
the prompting of well-informed readers; a new set of Supplementary Notes sets
those forth. The notes also include evidence on matters whose further
investigation has made our case stronger than it was when first examined. A few
new, relevant facts complete the addenda.
During the preparation of this new edition, we have had deeply appreciated
support for it and related projects: N. L., from the Open Society Institute’s
Individual Project Fellowships Program, and P. R. G., via a grant from the
Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Fund to the New York Academy of Sciences.
Finally, we thank Douglas Armato and the Johns Hopkins University Press staff
for their expert assistance in bringing this paperback edition to timely printing.
Acknowledgments

The following friends and colleagues have helped, beyond the possibility of
adequate thanks, in the writing of this book. All have read, or heard, or discussed
with us at least some part of it. All had blame as well as praise to report—in
varied proportions. In no case have we taken all of someone’s advice; but in
every case we have taken some of it. We owe special thanks to those
correspondents who identified examples and sources we had over-looked, and
who went out of their way to provide us with their own published and
unpublished work and with other documents that might otherwise have eluded
us. We are deeply grateful to the Johns Hopkins University Press, whose director
and staff have from the start displayed the mixture of flexibility and intellectual
seriousness that one does, and should, expect from a university press. Our
gratitude to editors Marie Blanchard and Terry Schutz is boundless.
In this book we speak, at one point, of threats to the essential grace and
comity of scholarship and the academic life. We mean what we say there; but the
generous responses of our colleagues to various versions of our writing show
clearly that threats are by no means equivalent, as yet, to major damage. None of
those listed here bears the slightest responsibility for errors of fact, judgment, or
style in what follows. We alone are culpable. On the other hand, a good many
such errors are not here because the following people graciously gave some
thought to our project: Tony Bahri, Felix Browder, Ralph Cohen, Eric Davidson,
Robin Fox, Sheldon Goldstein, Wendy Gross, Antoni Kosinski, Steven Levitt,
Martin Lewis, Eve Menger, R. L. Norman, Bernard Ortiz de Montellano, Philip
Pauly, Christopher Phillips, R. K. Ramazani, Eugenie Scott, Keith Spurgeon, E.
O. Wilson, and Joe Wisnovsky.