The Umpire Strikes Back

`I am arguing that we should all be fairly subject to the rules, demands and disciplines of reason and scholarship, and that none of us should be at the mercy of lazy, careless, uninformed and destructive prejudice.'

Suppose that I were invited to give an after-dinner address to a convention of major-league pitchers, on the topic of `The Relevance of Modern Physics to Baseball'. The idea is not bizarre: there is a distinguished literature; [1] I am at least triply qualified (I know a bit about physics, I was a BBC Third Programme producer, [2] and I'm a fan); and I would give my eye-teeth for the chance to meet so many of my heroes at someone else's expense. So I accept. I decide that the best way to entertain my audience would be to describe some of the concepts that theoretical physicists use, and that would, in terms of pitchers' specialized `commonsense', be obviously `absurd' to them. So, for example, I describe the neutrino: a particle with no rest mass or electric charge, but which can still impart `spin' as it hits the bat. The audience falls about laughing: `Gee: I never knew that these guys were so crazy!'. The next day, the Washington Post carries the story: `Hardball Pitchers Deride Crazy Physicists'. Over their business lunches, the Washington locker-room fraternity of baseball junkies (aka the US Senate and Congress) chew the cud on this alarming news: `We'd no idea they were so flaky: we can't go on wasting public money on that kind of thing!'. An instant cross-party cabal moves an amendment to the NSF appropriations bill, `ring-fencing' next FY's cash allocations so as to deny theoretical physicists access to NSF grants. Understandably, these scientists would be absolutely furious at my cavalier behaviour, and I would have to lie low for the rest of the season. [3]

Sounds familiar? Yes: for there is an international group of scholars which finds itself, unjustly, in a closely analogous situation. I am referring to the growing community of those who extend the empirical scope and practical application, and develop the theoretical perspectives, of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK). A powerful group of American scientists, apparently for political reasons, have chosen to mount a vicious attack on those scholars whom they take to be `flying from science and reason'. One of their prime targets is `social constructivism', in which category they include `the "strong programme" in sociology of science associated with the Edinburgh school'. [4] Consider, for example, this claim:-

There is also a really radical social constructivist view - associated, for example, with the Strong Program initiated at the University of Edinburgh (Sidney Coleman calls it the Strong Pogrom). According to this view, scientific theories are nothing but social constructions - which seems to me absurd. [5]

No support for this claim is offered: no references, not even any authors' names. Given the context, it is quite clear that use of the phrase `nothing but' implies that this `radical' view is one that the `science wars' claque loves to hate: namely, the idea that `reality has nothing to do with what it is believed to be'. In other words, indeterminate numbers of anonymous `constructivists' are accused (without evidence) of peddling idealist nonsense, and come to be labelled as people `who would reject reason and take up the cudgels against science'.[6] Thus are prejudices reinforced, and myths perpetuated.

Now: there are two things that can be said, quite clearly, about this claim: (a) it is untrue; and (b) its language is unacceptably offensive. For over twenty years, the Edinburgh position has been a matter of unequivocal public record: this group of scholars has always maintained that reality plays a central role in what comes to be believed about it, [7] and anyone who had spent even one hour in any reputable campus library searching for that record, and had then taken any care to read the evidence, would have discovered that fact. All this material has been distilled into a monograph, and set out in concisely and cogently argued, clear and lucid English, [8] so not even that level of research is now necessary. Readers can quickly confirm my counter-claim. [9]

As to the offensive tone, this sample, I am afraid, doesn't even reach par for the course.[10] Contempt and snickering derision are a constructivist's lot. This self-righteous crusade is supported by a (US) body calling itself the `National Association of Scholars' (NAS): by an astonishing irony, claims of this kind are advanced in defence of scholarly standards; respected academies have lent their weight to such activities. [11] The emotional climate at these conventicles can be judged by this account:-

Recently, I spoke at a meeting of [the NAS], which has been formed to oppose these and other antiscience trends. I remarked that I didn't think antiscientific sentiment was really much of a problem affecting support of science in Congress, and the audience got angry with me for not seeming sufficiently scared, until to make peace I had to say that I was scared too. [12]

This, remember, is intended to be a remedy for the `flight from reason'! Here be Dragons and Demons. Colleagues are not just angry: they are absolutely furious - like the physicists in my opening parable. They find it very difficult to know how to mount any effective rational defence in this slippery `contest'. The result is a sense of insidious harassment which comes close to constituting an offence against natural justice. Worse: the `science wars' claque, by acting in such an arrogant, dogmatic and domineering manner, is actively fomenting the very thing from which they claim to be protecting society - namely, antipathy towards `science'. The damage being done by this tedious blood sport among the American intelligentsia grows by the day. The level of `debate' on issues concerning SSK is low: tired old arguments and misunderstandings are recycled, [13] and authors' appeals that they are being `seriously misrepresented' fall on deaf ears. It is demeaning even to read some of the poorer diatribes, [14] let alone to try to `engage' their authors. If this is meant to exemplify what `reason' can offer, then God help us all. Much of the current fracas strikes me as a grotesque parody, indeed at times a corruption, of the scholarly process: and when that process fails, everything is at risk - any hope of a `progressive politics', [15] of the communal pursuit of reason and truth, of a just and fair society - and, of course, of science itself.

I call on readers to join me in conducting a modest experiment, in the hope that this will trim a few sails, and limit the mischief. Now that members of the Edinburgh School have published their introductory graduate textbook, Scientific Knowledge: A Sociological Analysis, I think we have a suitable opportunity. I invite you all to read that book, and to ask yourselves whether it might justly be covered by descriptions such as these: `a body of work founded on silly philosophy, sloppy history, anemic research, boundless ignorance, and just plain lousy scholarship'; [16] and work that contains `a deeply disapproving stance towards science, sometimes combined with a profound ignorance of it'. [17] I think you will agree that the book cannot, by any stretch of the imagination [sic], be so described and classified. Right then: the `science wars' claque now finds itself in a painful dilemma. For, on the one hand, if the growing body of evidence from the real world leads them to alter their beliefs about, and/or evaluation of, the Strong Programme (and of SSK in general), and to conclude that they were mistaken in misrepresenting and deriding this work, they will then, ipso facto, be led to admit that their own previous scholarship has been at least as `lousy' as the `lousiness' they attribute to the work which they so delight publicly to pillory, and summarily to dismiss. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. And if, on the other hand, they choose to continue to affirm their contempt for this work, repeating claims like the one I have quoted, despite the clear evidence the book presents that that claim about the Edinburgh `view' is false, [18] they will find themselves in the position they effect most to despise, demonstrating that `the real world plays no part in their beliefs about it' - for the (real) book sits there, decisively proclaiming the falsity of their present beliefs about SSK. Either way, they are mercilessly hoist with their own petard. One final pitch. The nature of this crusade leads me to raise the question of how those who have become caught up in it, and have then (perhaps, in some cases, inadvertently) so offended against quite basic academic and scholarly values, standards and behaviour, might best be treated in the future. I am anxious that the bloodletting should not continue: we have had enough pain already, and it is vital that we restore the equity and symmetry of reason. I suggest that, where the cap fits, those involved in so demeaning what they claim to be defending should be shamed (at least momentarily) into an appropriate and respectful silence. Perhaps we could `send them all to Coventry'? Or even better: how about downtown Detroit? The home pitching at Tiger Stadium is so lousy these days that even the catcher says so in public. Now, yes: let these sluggers try to rescue Detroit's bullpen - that would be a just reward! Three strikes and you're out. [19] The umpire's decision is final, and we are all subject to it. Reason Rules, OK? Keep the faith. [20]

David Edge, FRSE, FRAS, FAAAS (Reader Emeritus, Edinburgh University, and Editor, Social Studies of Science) 25 Gilmour Road, EDINBURGH EH16 5NS, Scotland, UK. d.edge@ed.ac.uk

NOTES

1. For example, Robert K. Adair, The Physics of Baseball (New York: HarperCollins, 2nd rev. edn, 1994); George F. Will, Men At Work: The Craft of Baseball (New York: Macmillan; London: Collier Macmillan, 1990).

2. For those unfamiliar with the Third Programme's output, try the talk by R.A. Lyttleton (later FRS), `On the Swerve of a Cricket Ball', broadcast in August 1956, published in both Weather (May 1957), 140-46 and (with `Swing' for `Swerve') Discovery (May 1957), 186-91, and since widely anthologized.

3. I hasten to reassure readers that I cannot imagine circumstances in which I would feel able to encourage any audience to laugh at the serious work of another bona fide scholar, of whatever discipline or nationality. To my mind, this is a basic principle of academic conduct: a stable climate of mutual trust, respect and confidence is a necessary (but not, of course, sufficient) condition for the communal pursuit of reason and understanding. I suppose that, in my role as a UK HEQC Quality Assurance Auditor, it would be within my remit, on any British campus, to enquire into whether any routines are in place to encourage and monitor such an ambience, and any guidelines for grievance procedures that might come into effect if it broke down. However, my observation is that, in Britain, such mutual trust and respect is (probably quite rightly) taken for granted, and no formalities are needed. This may not be the case in other countries.

4. Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt, Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 25. No citations are given, and no work by the key members of the Edinburgh School (Barry Barnes and David Bloor) is listed in this book's References, although `a certain David Bloor... a sociologist identified with the Edinburgh School of unyielding cultural constructivists' (52) makes a brief appearance, and his logic (as recounted by a certain Stanley Aronowitz) is duly derided. For a withering critique of the scholarship underlying this book, see M. Norton Wise, `The Enemy Without and the Enemy Within', Isis, Vol.87, No.2 (June 1996), 323-27; Wise accuses Gross & Levitt of `a willful strategy of distortion and demonization' (323). Gerald Holton, in his Science and Anti-Science (London & Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 153, quoting a phrase from Bruno Latour, refers in passing to `a new wing of sociologists of science who wish...to "abolish the distinction between science and fiction"': but again, no further reference is made to any SSK literature and, if there be any `guilt' in this matter, it is assigned by innuendo and association.

5. This quotation is from a `Stated Address' to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, MA, on 8 February 1995, by the distinguished physicist Steven Weinberg: `Night Thoughts of a Quantum Physicist', Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol.49, No.3 (December 1995), 51-64, at 61. Later in the same paragraph, referring to the `various versions of social constructivism', he makes another `joke', endorsing the dictum that `madness is the ability to make fine distinctions among different kinds of nonsense'. The remark would hardly encourage hearers/readers to take this work seriously. The passage is a relatively small part of the whole address, and is prefaced by a disclaimer by Weinberg that this is not his area of expertise; later, he acknowledges that `social constructivists are serious people who I think are wrongheaded but who do a lot of good work in following the history of individual scientific developments - in fact, some of their articles are really quite illuminating...' (61). I have been assured that this article was not a serious scholarly report, but an informal talk at a dinner meeting; that the published version is ephemeral, sent only to members of the Academy, and generally thrown away after reading; that the jokes were just that - jokes - which no one could suppose were serious accusations; and that my name was not mentioned (as if that mattered). But all this (even if true) only strengthens my case. My aim is to give readers a sample of the kind of discourse which passes muster among cud-chewing American scientists in their natural habitat. This one has leaked into print. I have no reason to think it unrepresentative. Readers can make up their own minds about what's going on. I have no need to argue (or imply) that Weinberg spoke with any specific malice, and can happily believe he did not.

6. These words are used freely by the New York Academy of Sciences in publicizing the conference they sponsored (see note 11, below), its published proceedings, and a WWW forum on the theme. We are promised `a critical look at arguments advanced' by these people. But how can those who `reject reason' be said to be `advancing arguments'? Surely, to advance (and respond to) arguments is to `reason'?

7. See, for example, Barry Barnes, Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), esp vii; David Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), esp 4-5; Barry Barnes, Interests and the Growth of Knowledge (London: Macmillan, 1982), esp 25-26. But there is an abundance of such material. See Social Studies of Science, Vol.26, No.4 (November 1996), 725-26, for some further details of the Edinburgh `track-record' in this matter.

8. Barry Barnes, David Bloor and John Henry, Scientific Knowledge: A Sociological Analysis (London: Athlone Press; Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1996).

9. Ibid., esp 73-76.

10. A particularly repulsive sample can be found in the contributions by Norman Levitt and Paul Gross to a so-called `Debate' in Technoscience (Newsletter of the Society for Social Studies of Science), Vol.9, No.2 (Spring 1996), 29-31. Normally, I give references with relish, in the firm belief that readers who pursue them will there find pleasure and enlightenment (see notes 1 & 2); in this case, I do so with no enthusiasm at all, knowing what distress reading these pieces will cause.

11. For example, on 31 May - 2 June 1995, the New York Academy of Sciences sponsored a conference, the proceedings of which are contained in Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt and Martin W. Lewis (eds), The Flight from Science and Reason, Annals of the NYAS, Vol.775 (24 June 1996). They subsequently mounted a WWW `On-Line Forum' on the theme (15 September - 31 October 1996).

12. Weinberg, op. cit. note 5, 63.

13. For example: that if social constructivists really believed what they say, they would happily jump off skyscrapers and never fly in aeroplanes; that they do not believe that Madame Curie `discovered' radium, but that she `constructed' it; that stubbing one's toe on a rock puts paid to idealism; that mathematics, logic and the laws of nature must necessarily be beyond the reach of sociological analysis; that because science `works', it must be `true'; that social constructivists are `profoundly ignorant' of science, and have no grasp of the character of scientists' struggles with the real world; etcetera, etcetera. These are among the many old chestnuts now being bandied about by people who seem to believe that in doing so they are delivering knock-down arguments and/or expressing profound thoughts - rather than revealing their basic sociological illiteracy (not, of course, confined to natural scientists), and their ignorance of, and/or lack of serious attention to, seminal work in SSK. Elementary errors abound: to be blunt, the rhetoric (by analogy) reads like opinions about physics voiced in class by students who haven't done their homework, and who barely understand Ohm's Law (let alone Maxwell's Equations, my first great true love, as elegantly expounded in Slater & Frank's exemplary textbook on Electromagnetism). There is a lot of slapdash categorizing and stereotypical labelling of authors, some of it ad hominem in tone, and all intended to discredit. Much of the central SSK literature is not mentioned at all. Where work with which I am familiar is quoted or cited, I note that its use is very selective, and intended to score debating points: there is little evidence of any sustained attempt to understand the work in question, or to lay out the arguments - although the scientists involved clearly expect that others will make that sort of effort to understand their work `properly', and they have obviously been practising on the `slip-catcher'. As Gross (op. cit. note 9, 30) says, `We studied and quoted THEIR words'. Quite so. But for `reasoning' to deserve that noble name, the possibilities of learning must be mutual, respectful and symmetrical. And learning is what it's all about, isn't it? Or is all this fracas just a macho political shoot-out? For one righteous, the city is saved: conversely, by one sinner (or one sin), it is not destroyed. We're all learning. Too many people seem to believe that `debating' is synonymous with `thinking'; and the `confrontational soundbite' style of e-mail bulletin boards only compounds that (profound) error.

14. Op. cit. note 10 again, alas. Gross accuses the hapless author with whom he is ostensibly `debating', of `obfuscatory self-advertisement (type A)'. He goes on: `That's a special form of what non-academics often call (or used to call in the days before sensitivity) "falsies". Obfuscatory self- advertisement covers up and reshapes what's really there for purposes different from those of what's really there' (30). No comment. I could cite other examples of such insulting invective, but what's the point? Over the years, David Bloor has convinced me that the cause of reason is best advanced when all concerned take time and care to ensure, not only that they state each others' positions and arguments as fairly and sympathetically as they can, but also that they present other cases in their strongest possible forms, before engaging with them in public. In that spirit, I bring to your attention these samples of discourse: Paul R. Gross, `Reply to Tom Gieryn', Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol.21, No.1 (Winter 1996), 116-20; Steven Weinberg, `Sokal's Hoax', New York Review of Books (8 August 1996), 11-15. Otherwise, make what you can of Gross & Levitt, op. cit. note 4, passim.

15. Alan Sokal, another physicist, prescribes work that is `based on a commitment to logic and standards of evidence and to the incessant confrontation of theories with reality' as `an essential component of any progressive politics': Lingua Franca (July/August 1996), 57. Sokal seems to be unaware that SSK (including the work of the Edinburgh School) fits his prescription precisely. Weinberg (op. cit. note 14, 11) cites Sokal as saying that `his goal was not so much to defend science as to defend the left from postmodernists, social constructivists, and other trendy leftists'. This amounts to saying that he wishes to protect the left from science and reason, since this is what the work of the Edinburgh School promotes: see Barnes, Bloor & Henry, op. cit. note 8, viii, 1, 3, 45, 173, 185, 190, 200. Weinberg (op. cit. note 14, 11) says that `Sokal's hoax served a public purpose, to attract attention to what Sokal saw as a decline of standards of rigor in the academic community'. No comment.

16. Levitt, op. cit. note 10, 29. It is important to stress that my case does not rest on whether or not the reader is led to agree or disagree with all, any or none of the many points and arguments advanced in this book - merely on whether or not the reader comes to judge that book as a serious work of genuine substance, rigorously argued, exemplifying reputable scholarly standards, demanding full, committed attention, and leading to fruitful reflection - in other words, not open to summary dismissal in the terms I have quoted. I am not just arguing, in this missive, the simple propositions that `they've got us wrong', or that `they're wrong and we're right': I am arguing that we should all be fairly subject to the rules, demands and disciplines of reason and scholarship, and that none of us should be at the mercy of lazy, careless, uninformed and destructive prejudice. The exacting academic standards and values exemplified in this textbook are not, of course, confined to Scotland, or to SSK: they can be found throughout the whole field of social studies of science and technology, worldwide. Some of us have devoted our lives to the task of ensuring that this is so. Perhaps I should offer my professional services as a QA Auditor to certain US campuses, learned societies and journals, and academic publishing houses?

17. Gross, op. cit. note 10, 30.

18. Barnes, Bloor & Henry, op. cit. note 8, passim.

19. The claque, of course, will be batting for Detroit, and not for the visiting Angels - otherwise we may have to wait too long to lance this particular, wretched Boyle. (Sorry, fans: only a joke... Hobb[e]s was a cricketer. You'll find him at the slip-catcher cradle.)

20. I dedicate this missive to all who selflessly serve the public purpose of attracting attention to the decline of standards of rigour in the academic community. Uh...uh. Time for a Cool Sharp Harp. Exit left and/or right, pursued by a posse of Francis Bacon's Screaming Popes...