Showing papers on "Antiscience published in 1996"
TL;DR: In this paper, a non-Whiggish framework for narrating the development of human sciences is presented, where knowledge is approached as a social power to be analyzed for its social productivity.
Abstract: The relationship between knowledge, society, and power has been considerably rethought recently. Few defend the idea that knowledges such as the human sciences are merely representational practices. Instead, knowledge is approached as a social power to be analyzed for its social productivity. Assuming a tight link between knowledge and power, this paper aims to sketch a non-Whiggish framework for narrating the development of human sciences. I underscore how the scientization of social knowledge has, on the one hand, produced subaltern interpretative communities and, on the other hand, how these communities-as the repressed unconscious of the human sciences-have continued to shape and trouble the epistemic and social claims to authority by the human sciences. I wish to make the argument that there is a political unconscious to the human sciences. This refers to ways disciplinary conventions operate, often without the explicit intentions of social scientists, to suppress, if not erase, epistemological and social differences. This is a political willfulness that has been alternatively denied or celebrated as the progress of reason and humankind. However, this assault on difference has never been fully successful, for at least some epistemic and social "others" have flourished in nonacademic social spacessometimes on the periphery, other times in the social center. Indeed, and somewhat ironically, subjugated knowledges and communities of discourse have never ceased actively to shape the formation of the human sciences. They do so in part through their inevitable production-and subjugation-as "other" by the human sciences and in part through their equally inevitable mobilization, from time to time, against their marginalized status in relation to the human sciences. This is a history and political willfulness that should be exposed, not to nourish an ethos of antiscience but to make "us" aware of the self-limiting aspects of Western disciplinary culture and to release "us" from the cultural fixations that often unknowingly inflict social harm and occasion human suffering. This dark side to the progress of science has been veiled in the dominant Enlightenment culture, a case perhaps of the victors writing their own story of triumph. We in the West, particularly in the United States, have absorbed a master Englightenment narrative relating a tale of science superseding myth, truth overpowering fiction, freedom triumphing over bondage, and progress installed in place of a tireless cycle of social advancement and decline. The Enlightenment signifies more than a master narrative; its core beliefs and values are woven into Western institutional practices and legitimations. Of course, this culture has been con
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TL;DR: Gross and Levitt's attack on what they consider to be "critics of science" can be understood as a sophisticated form of "antiantiscience" as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: undermine their views, since Gross and Levitt's basic approach is to attack constructivists for not being positivists, adding the spice of a one-sided commentary on intellectuals. For science studies scholars, the interest in the book lies not in the content but the way the argument is constructed, noting its resonance in wider circles.1 For those who are used to studying the political uses of science, Higher Superstition provides an object lesson in the political uses of (a critique of) science studies. Gross and Levitt's attack on what they consider to be 'critics of science' can be understood as a sophisticated form of 'antiantiscience'. Attacks on 'antiscience' have popped up now and again for decades.2 Before looking in detail at Gross and Levitt's book, it is worth spelling out the standard techniques used in 'antiantiscience'. First, science is presented as a unitary object, usually identified with scientific knowledge. It is portrayed as neutral and objective. Second, science is claimed to be under attack by 'antiscience', which is composed essentially of ideologues who are threats to the
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TL;DR: Pugh as mentioned in this paper pointed out that the public's attitude toward science has enormous inertia; whatever you do will not have a measurable national impact for years; and contrary to all the emotional appeals, the United States is not in the grip of an antiscience wave.
Abstract: First, don't kid yourself. The public's attitude toward science has enormous inertia; whatever you do will not have a measurable national impact for years. Second, contrary to all the emotional appeals, the United States is not in the grip of an antiscience wave. By virtually every measure (for instance, the National Science Foundation's Science Indicators) the U.S. public loves and respects science more than nearly every other profession, and to a greater degree than the public of any other Western nation. Third, really educating the public about what they are getting for their money is absolutely no guarantee that they will give us more. Funding for science will almost certainly decrease as decision-makers find out more about how it is really used.
At the 1995 State of the World Forum in San Francisco, my science section co-chair Arno Penzias, a Nobel Laureate in physics and former vice president of the now mutated Bell Labs, said that science cannot remain inwardly focused but must look outward to its national constituency. I agree, and am appalled at the political, social, and budgetary ignorance of the scientific community. It is at least the equal of the scientific illiteracy of the public. Moreover, I find it very disheartening that so few of us, the supposed fountainheads of invention, look out at the real world of deficits and cuts in social programs and then inward to improve our condition by our own actions and innovations.
Before scientists go before the public to persuade them to continue the lavish funding we have enjoyed for nearly five decades, they should prepare themselves for questions such as the following, which they will have to answer sooner or later: (i) The corporate world (not just U.S. companies) has decided that it gets little return from basic research that is unrelated to products and has cut it back drastically. Has academia faced up to a similiar rebalancing? (ii) There is widespread agreement that the entire academic culture has emphasized research at the expense of teaching, but what attempts have been made to rectify this? (iii) How many of the research universities' instrumental “Taj Mahals” would stand up to the scrutiny of the U.S. General Accounting Office in terms of cost-effectiveness or hours per week of use? The track record of the “sealing-wax-and-string” approach in really significant research being so good, can scientists not design systems that share capital equipment and use communications technologies—and thinking—more intensively? (iv) A great deal of the creative energy of faculty, young and old, is consumed by proposal management in the world's most inefficient system for funding of research. Why not try modest experiments or radically redesign the system? (v) We can argue a plausible case before the public for mission-oriented science for defense, the environment, better transportation, more and cheaper energy, and so on. But what honest case can we make for funding totally undirected research at a level of several billion dollars per year? Why not privatize most support for research that is unconnected to useful products, through area-specific appeals such as the March of Dimes; or a check-off on an income tax form; or philanthropy from, for instance, the 100 or so billionaires who made their money from technology. I am certain that, freed from peer-group bureaucracy, such science would be much more creative.
When activist scientists have done their homework on questions such as these, they will be ready to enter the fray of public debate. I hope many will be moved by conviction and high moral purpose, not just by the desire for more research money, because the slings and arrows of peer jealousy and honest disagreement will not be long in coming.
The author is Evan Pugh Professor of the Solid State at The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. There has recently been an enormous increase in appeals—including a Science guest editorial[*][1]—to scientists to become activists in the political process. Unfortunately, this has been occasioned by the perceived threat to stable federal funding of science, not by a broader concern for the “polis.” Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala has said that activist scientists are rarer than the spotted owl. From the perspective of 30 years in the owlish ranks, I wish to share with other scientists three conclusions.
[1]: #fn-1
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