Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Relatedly, at the same time the chemist Dudley Herschbach insisted that
'science
...
exalts Nature: she is the boss; we try to discover her rules; she
lets us know the extent to which she has done so' (Herschbach, 1996: 12).
It is usually at moments when the existing boundaries between epistemic
communities and their various audiences are being challenged that attempts
are made by insiders to maintain the status quo. After all, whether we're dis-
cussing scientists or any other epistemic community, insiders usually have
a lot invested in what they presently do and will, unsurprisingly, seek to
defend it vigorously.
11
BOX 3.3
By the early 1990s, social studies of science (also known as sociol-
ogy of science and technology or sociology of scientific knowledge
(SSK)) was a mature research and teaching field. It was concentrated
in several departments and units, especially in British and Ameri-
can universities (like Bath and Cornell). Practitioners published their
research in specialist academic journals, such as
Social Studies of Science
(founded in 1971), awarded degrees in their field, and offered mod-
ules for science students studying things like mathematics, engineering
or particle physics. Concerned that SSK people were 'demystifying'
science to the point of undermining its societal credibility, some prac-
tising scientists sought to turn the tables. Though several SSK pioneers
claimed to study science scientifically, thus interrogating it according
to its own standards, by the 1990s many scientists felt that SSK was
misrepresenting what they do.
The opening salvo of what came to be called the 'science wars' was
fired by biologist Paul Gross and mathematician Norman Levitt in their
hard-hitting book
Higher superstition
:
the academic Left and its quarrels with
science
(Gross and Levitt, 1994). This inspired a New York Academy
of Sciences conference titled 'The Flight from Science and Reason',
organised by Gross, Levitt and Harvard physicist Gerald Holton in
1995. At the same time, the New York physicist Alan Sokal submitted a
paper entitled 'Transgressing the boundaries: towards a transformative
hermeneutics of quantum gravity' to the cultural studies journal
Social
Te x t
(Sokal, 1996a). It was accepted and published in a special issue
of the journal entitled 'Science Wars' in May 1996. Later that year,
in an issue of the American literary magazine
Lingua Franca
,Sokal
revealed that 'Transgressing the boundaries' was, in fact, a hoax. He
had, he said, intentionally tested the intellectual rigour of a non-science
academic journal to see if it would 'publish an article liberally salted
with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors'
