"For all the recent inflammatory talk of supposed 'anti-science' tendencies in contemporary culture, a critique of scientific knowledge is not the same as criticism of modern science. Greenberg is utterly unconcerned with the status of scientific knowledge: he's not a sociologist or a philosopher and he's quite content to take it for granted that science is true, powerful and frequently productive, just as scientists often say it is. Greenberg loves science, too. But, like very many scientists, he is fiercely critical of many aspects of current financial, political and ethical arrangements bearing on the conduct of American science, arrangements which, if unchecked, have the capacity to undermine the integrity and authority of scientific knowledge."

redux [09.05.01]
The Third Culture Science and the Psychology of Beliefs

"The one thing we've learned from the last three decades of research is that science is socially and culturally embedded and thus biased. Still, it's the best system we have for understanding causality in all realms, in all fields. So despite the fact that it's loaded with biases, there is a real world out there that we can know and the best way to know it is through science. The reason for that is because there's at least a method, an attempt to corroborate one's own subjective perceptions. There's a way to find out if you and I are seeing the same colors when we see red. There's actually a way to test these things, or at least try to get at them. That's what separates science from everything else."

redux [07.21.01]
The New York Times Coming to Blows Over How Valid Science Really Is
[requires 'free' registration]

"Sometime in 1962, to paraphrase Virginia Woolf, the world changed. That year a physicist and historian of science, Thomas S. Kuhn, did for conceptions of science what Copernicus and Einstein did for astronomy and physics. He led a revolution, at least if one accepts the analysis in his book, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," which has sold over a million copies in 20 languages."

"Despite the assertions of some of his followers, Kuhn insisted in "The Road Since Structure" that the world had an objective existence, that it was "not invented or constructed." Indeed, he said, scientific exploration is bound by the nature of that world. But Kuhn's attempts to reconcile those views with the implications of his earlier views created their own controversies."

redux [09.13.00]
Scientific American A New Paradigm for Thomas Kuhn

"Kuhn wrote: "The very existence of science depends upon vesting the power to choose between paradigms in the members of a special kind of community." Fuller has confidence in the intelligent good sense of ordinary folks and properly calls for "the right to be wrong." But do statements such as "the universe is light-years wide," "the earth is billions of years old," "all life is related by common descent," "organisms are composed of cells that contain double-helix DNA," and so on really have no greater claim on "reality" than the Genesis stories of creationists or the popular consolations of astrology? If the answer is no, as Fuller comes dangerously close to asserting, then most scientists would throw in the towel and get jobs flipping burgers.

Fuller underestimates the highly evolved "fitness" of the methodologies, sociologies and conceptual paradigms of normal science. The deprofessionalization of science and the establishment of a citizen marketplace of ideas are not likely to happen without the sociopolitical equivalent of an asteroid impact, and no such potential upheaval looms on our intellectual radar screens. Certainly, science studies lacks the weight to do it."