Who should rule in science? “The people, of course,” says James Robert Brown. The sentiment will warm the hearts of many of the “academic left” who have entered the “science wars” with the stated aim of democratizing science. How to give scientific power to the people? By taking it away from scientific elites, seems to be the answer of the recent postmodernist and social constructivist science critics. As these critics see it, science enjoys an illicit image of superior objectivity and rationality—an image which scientific elites have carefully contrived in order to rationalize various forms of hegemony. Though their jargon is often opaque, the aim of the science critics is clear. They seek to democratize by debunking. By derogating scientific claims and methods they aim to show that science deserves no privileged epistemological status. This deflationary project has taken a number of forms. For instance, Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar have argued that “nature” and “reality” are nothing but what scientists agree to regard as natural and real (Latour and Woolgar Reference Latour and Woolgar1986, 236–237). Thus, contrary to the traditional image of science, science does not discover truths about an antecedently-given reality; it constructs its “facts.”

Brown also wants science to serve democracy, but he has no sympathy for the would-be debunkers. His is the view of a hopelessly out-of-date Old Leftist. He holds that the people are served best when good science is used to attack socially pernicious bad science. For Brown, Stephen Jay Gould's critique of Herrnstein and Murray's notorious The Bell Curve is a prime instance of such public service. Science therefore is a representative, not a direct, democracy. The people rule in science when their interests are represented by socially responsible scientists like Gould.

Surely Brown is right that good science has been the most potent corrective to the noxious pseudoscientific props of oppression and bigotry. It is not surprising that T. H. Huxley was “the gun in the liberal armoury” (Desmond Reference Desmond1997, 385). Those who affirm left/liberal values while disparaging the objectivity and rationality of science are therefore engaging in unilateral intellectual disarmament. Still, those on the left might have to bite the bullet occasionally when good science goes against them. Daniel Dennett (Reference Dennett1995) issued a salutary warning about Darwinism: It is universal acid. If we take Darwinism to its logical conclusion, we might find that it undermines ideologies of the left as well as the right—feminism as well as fundamentalism. The extremely intemperate reactions of some on the left to even the mildest and most carefully qualified forms of sociobiology or evolutionary psychology warn us that partisan rejection of science is not only a problem of the right.Footnote ¹ Brown acknowledges this and offers the example of William Jennings Bryan, a social progressive who incurred ignominy when he repudiated science in favor of majoritarian populism.

Brown's first chapter focuses on the famous Sokal hoax of 1996.Footnote ² Sokal, an old-fashioned leftist like Brown, said that his aim was to save the left from antiscientific irrationality. He thought that he had revealed the scientific ignorance and general intellectual insouciance of the science critics. Brown thinks that Sokal failed to show this, but he does see the episode as raising a standard around which defenders of science might rally (24).

Rallying to the cause, Brown criticizes both what he calls the “nihilist wing” and the “naturalist wing” of social constructivism. The former are those who completely repudiate scientific ideals of objectivity and rationality and who defend some form of epistemological anarchism or relativism. The latter are those, like David Bloor, who accept the naturalistic methods of science and apply those methods to the study of science itself (Bloor's Principle of Symmetry). Bloor concludes that even the most successful science must be explained in terms of social causes rather than rational reasons (Bloor, Reference Bloor1991). Brown's criticisms of both wings of social constructivism are clear, cogent, and concise. Actually, they are a bit too concise.Footnote ³ The reader should consult two of Brown's earlier works, The Rational and the Social (Reference Brown1989) and Smoke and Mirrors (Reference Brown1994) for more thorough analysis and critique.

For the sake of fairness, Brown also criticizes some of Sokal's supporters. For instance, he chides Steven Weinberg (19) for saying that we should expect that intelligent extraterrestrials would discover the same laws of nature that we have (Weinberg Reference Weinberg and Franca2000, 155). Brown replies that extraterrestrials would have formulated the same laws only if they had undergone the same historical development (19). How likely is it, Brown asks, that they would ever have developed phlogiston theory (20)? But I do not think Weinberg is making the preposterous claim that the history of alien science would have unfolded in the same way as ours. Rather, he is saying that if we do think that we have discovered some true laws of nature (and Weinberg thinks we have), we should expect that scientifically advanced aliens, through the course of a very different history, would have eventually settled on those same ones. Thus, we would expect that their understanding of magnetism and electricity would entail something translatable into Maxwell's equations (Weinberg Reference Weinberg and Franca2000, 168–169). This seems to me an eminently reasonable expectation.

Though his critique of constructivism covers some rather well-trodden ground, Brown's treatment is fresh and insightful. He sheds light on the issues by clarifying key terms and by reminding us of how the development of philosophy of science in the twentieth century led to our present predicament. His admirable commitment to fairness and evenhandedness, even when dealing with extreme positions, should gain a hearing for his arguments even in the opposing camp. Preaching to the choir has been all too common in the science wars. Nevertheless, there seems to me to be a curious blind spot in his defense of scientific rationality. Though he rightly dismisses the effusions of postmodernist feminists such as Luce Irigaray and Katherine Hayles (196), he defends Sandra Harding (195–196). He thinks that Harding has been unfairly criticized for her infamous remark about Newton's Principia as a “rape manual,” and that her overall claims about the role of metaphor in science are sound (195–196, but see Klein Reference Klein1996, 46 for a counterpoint). In general, he regards feminist philosophers of science as science-friendly and as striving to improve science by removing sexist bias. Perhaps this holds in many cases, but in their critiques of Harding, Cassandra Pinnick and Ellen Klein make a strong case for thinking that with friends like Harding science needs no enemies (Harding Reference Harding1991; Pinnick Reference Pinnick1994; Klein Reference Klein1996).

Whereas Brown seeks the high ground and his outlook is ultimately hopeful, Norman Levitt is an unabashed science warrior and his view is pessimistic. Levitt sees our culture as deeply conflicted about science and with no clear prospects for resolving these clashes. Most obviously, we live in a society that both craves and fears the technological products of science. Deeper and more troubling than this ambivalence, however, is a profound and perhaps irremediable ignorance of science. Worse still in Levitt's view is a pervasive intellectual laziness, underwritten by trendy academic ideology, that repudiates the standards of rigor and precision underlying all critical inquiry, most especially natural science. Things were not always this way, says Levitt. At one time, before the leveling mania of postmodernity, there was a widespread highmindedness—a conviction that even ordinary people could and should achieve some degree of intellectual refinement. Popular orators and writers of the nineteenth century did not shy from an elevated style and diction that our sound-bitten, dumbed-down culture will not tolerate.

Now Levitt realizes that many will dismiss his sweeping indictment as a jeremiad. A jeremiad it may be, but it is hard to dismiss. Reports from the trenches, like Peter Sacks’ hilarious and horrifying Generation X Goes to College (Reference Sacks1996), confirm that suspicions of intellectual decay are more than curmudgeonly grousing.Footnote ⁴ Sacks recounts his efforts to instruct the invincibly apathetic products of an educational system that inculcates relativism and practices a pedagogy of spoon-feeding. Within academe itself, it is hard to imagine that some of the worst inanities, like Irigaray and Hayles, would have been tolerated had not elements of academic society come to value declamation over logic and ideological rectitude over scholarship (see Patai and Koertge, Reference Patai and Koertge1994).

For Levitt the signs of disaffection from science are everywhere. For instance, highly organized and aggressive systems of pseudoscience, like UFOlogy and creationism, continue to flourish though their doctrines defy some of the best-supported claims of science. Equally paradoxical is the flourishing of natural science in a culture that is intensely math-phobic.Footnote ⁵ Levitt holds that the roots of our cultural alienation from science run deep. Perhaps the deepest root is human craving for teleology in a universe that science treats as aimless and purposeless. Levitt notes correctly that this craving not only afflicts religious conservatives, but also is evident in the quasi-deification of nature by nominally secular persons. Levitt also argues that the egalitarianism of democratic societies conflicts with the ineluctable elitism of science. Very few people can become professional mathematicians or physicists, and many will resent the exclusivity and privilege that goes with the nurturing of such rare talents. The lack of progress made by some minorities in achieving proportionate representation in scientific fields certainly exacerbates such resentment.

Critics of Levitt's earlier work written with Paul Gross, Higher Superstition (Reference Gross and Levitt1994), charged the authors with shallowness and unfairness (e.g., Lynch Reference Lynch and Ross1996; Hart Reference Hart and Ross1996). They were accused of deploying pious bromides about the value and reliability of science rather than addressing the deep questions raised by skeptics. Further, said the critics, their treatment of alleged antiscientists (like Sandra Harding) was superficial and dismissive. Such critics will no doubt regard Prometheus Bedeviled as guilty of the same sins. While I am very much on the same side of the science wars as Levitt, I do not think these criticisms are completely groundless. He does sometimes speak as though skepticism about science were merely an excrescence of muddleheadedness or ideological perversity. But, as all readers of Philosophy of Science know, skepticism about science runs deeper than the sillier musings of New Age gurus, ecofeminists, or postmodernists. Such skepticism arises from some very deep problems—such as underdetermination, incommensurability, and the theory-ladenness of perception. These points were pondered by the likes of W. V. O. Quine, Norwood Russell Hanson, and Thomas Kuhn—hardly intellectual lightweights. Levitt either ignores these issues or gives them brisk and inadequate attention. He should at least have acknowledged the work of philosophers (e.g., Dretske Reference Dretske1969; Laudan Reference Laudan and Savage1990; Newton-Smith Reference Newton-Smith1981; Scheffler Reference Scheffler1982) who have labored to take the sting out of these skeptical challenges.

The science wars have dragged on for several years now, and ennui may be setting in on both sides. The more cynical or bored among us might want to dismiss the conflict as yet another of those academic disputes which, as Henry Kissenger observed, are so vicious because so little is at stake. But I think it would be a grave error to view the science wars with such cynicism. Einstein famously said that, though the known is infinitesimal compared to the unknown, the little we know is our most precious possession. Despite our deep cultural unease, will we regard science as our most precious possession, uniquely worthy of the high honors we have given it? Or will future generations be taught that science is, at best, just one of many equally valid ways of conceiving the world? This choice will profoundly affect the course of our civilization, and so the science wars are far more significant than the usual academic teapot tempest. Brown ends his book with the assertion: “Science is the most important institution in our lives” (212). Levitt concludes: “All of us, scientists and nonscientists alike, must ultimately create and sustain a society and a culture that is mature enough and brave enough to handle the gifts—and the uncomfortable truths—that science affords” (315). The end of the science wars is not yet in sight. Those who agree with Brown and Levitt have a duty to keep fighting.