klaus@17 – Latour’s interventions are interesting – he had a debate with Steve Fuller a while back that’s worth a gander if you want to understand more about their respective approaches. Latour argued that it’s not the job of science studies scholars to tell people how they should live with technology, nature etc but rather to make public the work of their subjects (science and technology, their proponents and historical context). Fuller argued for a maintenance of the nature/culture distinction. Latour countered that ‘going against the flow’ of nature has, historically, been associated with imperialist, colonialist interventions.

To return to # 13: Jasanoff correctly identifies something that has always disturbed me, and that is the conflation, in debates of this nature, of the methodological relativism of SSK with all sorts of other things that can be put under the heading ‘relativism’. It’s the kind of slippage and conflation that occurs all over the place (relativism is just one term so altered) refiguring quite reasonable and justifable claims into monstrous epistemological bugbears.

“A culturalist position that prescribes non-Western science for non-Western peoples ..”

Ignoring who is or is not advocating it, I’m not even sure what this means. What is non-Western science? What would be an example?

When some people hear the term Western science, they think first of Hiroshima, Agent Orange and the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal — and not, say, of the discovery of neutrino oscillation. This mordant skepticism about the benefits of Western science is then underlined by a dogmatic conviction that the Enlightenment was little more than a stalking horse for imperialism. As for why postmodern intellectuals would champion “local knowledges” and the “heterogeneity of language games” against the universalist aspirations of the Enlightenment, my sense is that when academic leftists in the humanities speak glowingly about “local knowledges,” they’re thinking of all the warm and fuzzy feelings we lefties have about “the local” — from our local independent bookstore to our local independent food co-op. These are good things by every measure (local and universal), but they seem to have obscured the fact that many of the world’s “local knowledges” are parochial, reactionary and/or theocratic…

This maintenance of ‘local’ and ‘universal’ knowledge boundaries is at the heart of much discussion about ’social construction’ that has been going on in the academy for the best part of 4 decades, so if Berube’s ‘best guess’ is simply to reinforce the separation through some ham-fisted Gemeinschaft, I’m afraid he’s either not taking those enormously rich varieties of constructionism seriously or he’s making a play in his own culture wars. Similarly, the squib that Hist and Phil of Science is “conducted by people who are rigorously indifferent to the question of whether a scientific theory is actually true” is a poor caricature.

2. On the pedestal both Berube and Sokal place Meera Nanda’s work, Here’s Sheila Jasanoff from a 1999 review of House Built on Sand in ST&H:

Meera Nanda’s complaint against social constructivism demands attention not only because hers is a fresh voice in the science wars, nor yet because she actually does seek to locate science studies on the wider canvas of politics and society, but because she claims the highest of possible high grounds in her rejection of relativism and her embrace of Enlightenment values. Science and rationality, Nanda argues, are the only effective weapons against the religious, military, and economic fundamentalisms that fuel the repressive regimes of the developing world. A culturalist position that prescribes non-Western science for non-Western peoples smacks, in her view, of the worst form of colonial condescension. Cultural relativism is doubly reprehensible when it allies itself with quack medicine, outmoded technologies, and ideologically motivated readings of the historical record, such as those championed by India’s resurgent Hindu nationalists. Nanda (correctly) does not accuse science studies of favoring a different science for India, but she does suggest that relativism of the sort associated with the field gives aid and comfort to Indian neoromantics and their American supporters who would turn away from the benefits of Western science in favor of premodern, indigenous ways of knowing.

These are grave charges, but they are also flawed. Nanda seems strangely inattentive to the widespread misuses of science and rationality to perpetuate authoritarian policies in many parts of theworld, not excluding India. More to the point, her accusations are directed to the wrong mailbox—at least insofar as she includes the “Strong Programme” of the Edinburgh school of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) among her addressees. SSK’s methodological relativism has never provided warrants for the normative conclusion that all knowledge claims are equal or deserve the same respect from external observers. Rather, the symmetrically skeptical probing into the foundations of competing belief systems has offered a possible basis for deciding not only which claims one should believe in but also why, in a controversial situation, one may be both morally and intellectually justified in doing so. A key point of constructivist analysis is to try to understand how black-boxed categories such as “Indian science and technology” acquire meaning and power. In this analytical framework, unexamined claims to cultural superiority would neither be exempt from scrutiny nor be endorsed as a suitable basis for action. Nor, of course, on the other side, would essentializing notions of “modernity,” “development,” “progress,” or rationality.”

3. On Steve Fuller as a representative for ’science studies’/’social construction’ etc. As I said on Berube’s blog at the time:

Jesus this is getting past its use-by date. I pray for a decent admissibility challenge the next time Fuller takes the stand – not just on his knowledge of the science, but his expertise in STS.

One thing remarkable in the literature on the philosophy of science is that the distinction between discovery and justification is often not made clear – is it because it’s too obvious to mention, or that it was debated for a long time? Certainly much of the literature in the late 19th and 20th century tried to link the two, rather than treat them as complementary but different. Perhaps if more was made of this difference, the waters in which public debates take place (a long way from any scholarship), wouldn’t be so muddy.

There is a serious angle for climate studies in all of this. When integrating physical and social aspects in climate, for example in climate and human responses tied up in adaptation to climate change, the spectrum of justification of relatively solid facts to absolute relatavism in value-based norms can be encountered. What Bérubé (and presumably Sokal but would need to read the book) are offering seems a sensible way to negotiate this (and accords pretty much with my own views but states it much better than I ever could).

Even that little word risk can contain both ends of the spectrum, with some parts that can be rigorously justified and other parts that are totally relative, and need to be elicited from those who are vulnerable with the greatest of skill.

I don’t take a strong anti-realist position, but some of the issues in that area of inquiry don’t seem to be resolved. However, I’m not an expert. There are others who comment and post on this blog who know more about the philosophy of science, science studies and, obviously, science itself (or sciences themselves). They may have something to say on this.

The Berube work I can recommend wholeheartedly has more to do with my own area of expertise: his interventions on literary and cultural studies are very interesting. ‘Public Access’ and ‘The Employment of English’, as well as the edited collection ‘The Aesthetics of Cultural Studies’ which includes his introduction and a number of challenging papers by other authors.