(rueylin@mail.scu.edu.tw) 1996 ( ) 1996 ( ) ( ) Abstract: Social Text, an American Journal for Cultural Studies, in 1996, published an issue, titled as Science Wars, whose goal is to react Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science, authored by two scientists, P. Gross and N. Levitt. A Trojan Horse, Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity written by a physicist Alan Sokal, was included within the issue. Sokal soon revealed that Transgressing is only a hoax with Social Text in another paper titled as A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies, which
was published in Lingua Franca. Sokal claimed that paper consists of many nonsense sentences. Then, the Sokal affair triggered and fired a grand debate about the nature of science and scientific knowledge. The science wars in mass media was exaggerated as wars between the scientists and the humanities or sociologists. The goal of this study is to understand the Science Wars and its focus: the issue about how do sciences work between social constructivism and scientific realism. It consists of four chapters: (1) A brief history of the Science Wars: to give an epitome of debates from 1994 to 2002. (2) The focus of the debate: how do sciences work at all? The representative literatures will be examined in details. (3) Scientific Knowledge, nature and society: to search a way out beyond social constructivism and scientific realism. Keywords: Science Wars, Science Studies, Philosophy of Science, Social Constructivism, Scientific Realism 1. 2. 3. 4. 2
* 1996 (Science Wars) 1 (I. Hacking) 84,772 (Sokal Affair) (Ludwig Wittgenstein) 7767 11,334 (1997, 14) 2 2001 3 (Jardine & Frasca-Spada 1997, * (NSC90-2411-H-031-013) http://sts.nthu.edu.tw/scholarlist/index.php STS 1 2 Lynch(2001), Is a Science Peace Process Necessary?, in Labinger, J. & Collins, Harry (eds.), The One Culture?, p.54 3 Brown(2001), Bibliography, p. 229 Jardine & Frasca-Spada(1997), Splendours and Miseries of the Science Wars 9 http://weber.u.washington.edu/d09/jwash/sokal/index.html 380 (The Science Wars Homepage: http://members.tripod.com/sciencewars/ mailing list 1998 10 31 ) 3
Giere 1999, Brown 2001, etc.) 1997 4 1998 2001 2002 1996 (Social Text) (Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science) 2002 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) 4 1997 3 24 4
5 (7) (sociology of scientific knowledge) (social constructivism) 6 (negotiation) (anti-enlightenment) (Gerald Holton) 1993 (Science and Anti-Science) 7 (Sandra Harding) 8 (delegitimation) (Lewis Wolpert) (The Unnatural Nature of Science, 1992) 9 1994 (N. Levitt) (P. Gross) (The academic left) 10 1995 5 Ullica Segerstrale(2000) (Beyond the Science Wars: The Missing Discourse about Science and Society) (Science and Science Studies: Enemies or Allies?) 1999 2000 2000 6 Bloor, Barnes, Latour, Woolgar, Pikering, Schaffer & Shapin, Collins, Pinch, Lynch, Callon, Keller, etc. 7 (social myth) (Mary Hesse) (Holton 1993, 153) 8 (parasciences). (Ibid., 181) 9 RNA DNA (1992, 115) 10 http://sts.nthu.edu.tw/tsts/higher_superstition.htm http://sts.nthu.edu.tw/~transws/index.php?pageset=critics 5
(New York Academy of Science) (The Flight From Science and Reason) 1996 (Mario Bunge) (In Praise of Intolerance to Charlatanism in Academie) 11 (Stephen Cole) (Voodoo Sociology: Recent Developments in the Sociology of Science) (Noretta Koertge) (Feminist Epistemology: Stalking an Un-Dead Horse) 12 (Trojan Horse) (Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity) 13 14 11 (Post-Mertonian sociology of science) 12 (PSA, Philosophy of Science Association) (Philosophy of Science) 1980 (Daphne Patai) (Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women s Studies, 1992) (paradisciplines) (academic separatism) (ethos of affirmation action) (1996, p. 413) 13 1998 (1999) (pp. 91-98) 14 http://www.physcis.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/ 1999 6
(Lingua Franca) (Sokal Hoax: The Sham that Shook the Academy, 2000) 15 16 (Stanley Aronowitz) (N. Katherine Hayles) 17 1997 (Jean Bricmont) Impostures Intellectuelles (J. Lacan) 1998 Fashionable Nonsense 2001 18 1998 (A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths about Science) (Harry Collins) (A. Pinkering) (S. Schaffer & S. Sapin) (B. Latour) 19 (2002 9 28 ) 15 Bruce Robins Reality and Social Text (In These Times, Juli 8, 1996) On Being Hoaxed (Tikkun, Aug. 1996) Anatomy of a Hoax (Tikkun, Sep/Oct. 1996) Just Doing Your Job: Some Lessons of the Sokal Affair (Yale Journal of Criticism, Fall 1997) 16 Dorothy Nelkin s The Science Wars: Responses to a Marriage Failed Sarah Franklin s Making Transparencies: Seeing through the Science Wars Joel Kovel s Dispatches from the Science Wars Stanley Aronowitz s The Politics of the Science Wars 17 (Elizabeth Lloyd, 1996) Science and Anti-Science: Objectivity and its Real Enemies, in Feminism, Science and The Philosophy of Science (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers) 18 19 7
(What the Social Text Affair does and does not prove: A critical look at science studies ) 20 (Libération) (Le Monde) 1997 1998 (Dissent) (Le Recherche) (Physics World) (Physics Today) (Metascience) (Economic and Political Weekly) 21 1995 STS (Handbook of Science and Technology Studies) 1999 (The Science Studies Reader) 36 (David J. Hess) 1997 (Science Studies: An Advanced Introduction) 22 (The Public Image of Science) 23 1997 2 3 (University of Kansas) (Strong Programme) 20 Y a-t-il une science aprés la guerre froide? ( 1998, p. 48) (Sokal et Bricmont ne sont pas sérieux) 21 22 1990 (p.1) SS 23 8
(Science and Its Critics) (Steve Fuller) (After the Science Wars, 2001) 24 (D. Mermin) (Travor Pinch) (The Golem: What Everyone Should Know about Science, 1993) (B. Barnes & D. Bloor) (Scientific Knowledge: A Sociological Analysis, 1996) 25 26 1997 (Southampton University) (peace workshop) (Micheal Lynch) (The One Culture? 2001) (Jay Labinger) (Conversing Seriously with Sociologists) 24 (Philip S. Baringer) (2001, p.2) 25 SS 26 1997 5 Mike Neuenberg. 1997 7. (p. ix-x) 9
1996 (Philosophy of Science Association) (Cleveland) (Arthur Fine) (Philip Kitcher) (Ron Giere) 27 (A Plea for Science Studies) (social-historical studies) 28 (1998, p. 49) 29 2001 (Science, Truth, and Democracy) (Studies in History and Philosophy of Science) 1997 (Splendours and Miseries of The Science Wars) (Ian Hacking) 1999 (Social Construction of What?) vs 1999 (Science without Laws) (James Robert Brown) 2001 (Who Rules in Science?) 27 Brown (Brown 2001, pp.15-16) 28 (The Theory Ladenness of Observation) (The Underdertermination of Theory by Evidence) (The Variety of Belief) ( Actor s Categories and the Writing of History) Martin Rudwick s The Great Devonian Controversy Peter Galison s How Experiments End Ronald Giere s Explaining Science David Hull s Science as a Process Helen Longino s Science as Social Knowledge John Dupre s The Disorder of Things The Advancement of Science 29 (1998, 17) 10
(Prometheus Bedeviled: Science and the Contradictions of Contemprory Culture, 1999) (Is Science Multi-Cultural? 1998) (H. Longino) (The Fate of Knowledge) (the social) (the rational) (C. P. Snow) (Sokal 1998, Baringer 2001, Brown 2001, Lynch 2001a, etc.) 30 31 (2001a). 30 (Beyond the Science Wars, 2000) (p. ix) 31 11
(p. 53). (p. 54) vs. (1998: 34-36) (The Realist-Rationalist Cluster) (The Socio-Historical Cluster) (1998, pp.) (reality) 1998 (Sokla & Bricmont 1998, 2001a, 2001b) 12
( p. 63) ( pp. 71-72) (underdetermination thesis) 32 (2001a) (methodological relativism) (Defense of a Modest Scientific Realism, 2001b) 33 (1) (radical skepticism) (theories underdeterminated by evidences or data) 32 (p. 89) 33 2001 9 Bielefeld STS (World and Knowledge) ( http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal ) (theoretical entities) NSC89-2411-H-031-012 13
(2) p. 96-97, 2001a, p.34 (R. Rorty) ( Sokal 2001a, p. 35) (3) (a) (b) (c) (d) (Bloor 1991, p. 7) (b) (c) (really) (4) (2001a, p. 39) 14
(theoretical entities) 34 (Peter Saulson) 35 (SSKers) (1) (2) (3) (caused) (Collins 2001, p. 184) (Giere 1999, p. 19) SSKers 34 (coarse-grained) (derived entities) 35 15
1700 1750. (Sokal & Bricmont 2001a, p. 40) 36 (1996, pp. 13-17) (Ibid., p.76) 36 16
(p. viii) (p. 16) (p. 17) (1998a) (p. 604) 37 (working philosophies). (2001, p. 240) (2001b, p. 272) 37 17
(-ism) (approximately true) (social factors) 38 (cognitive constructivism) 38 (crude) (subtle) (p.1) ( http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal ) 18
(constructivist realism) 39 (Brown, 2001) (nihilist wing) (naturalist wing) (localism)(p. 76) 40 (SSkers) 39 Ron Giere (Expalining Science, 1988) 40 (Actor-Network theory), 2001 19
1. (A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies) (Sokal 2000(1996), p. 50) 41 (some sense of reality) (B. C. Griffith 1997, p.13) (J. F. Dolan 1997, p. 11) (Dr. Sammuel Johnson) 2. 41 (Dowkins 1994) (airplane argument) Lynch 2001a 1970 (I. Lakatos) (P. Feyerabend) (1987) 17 20
(Boghossian, 2000) 42 42 Brown (2001, p. 78) 21
P B C Q C B D P Q D 3. 43 43 Giere 1999, p. 20 22
44 (1999, p. 20) 4. 44 Brown p. 124 23
24
(1) (2) (metaphysics of science) 45 A B C 45 Testing through Realizable Models ( ) 25
(working philosophies) Joseph Doylan (predication) Belver Griffith (reasonable) Alfred Kracher Roger Burnley (Physics Today, p. 13, 15, 92) 26
(1981) 27
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