Read Andrew O'Hehir's excellent piece on the science wars, i.e., how Republicans have politicized science in order to assist corporate interests and appease the religious right. By politicized, I mean that conservatives have contested the truth claims made by the scientific community in order to advance a parisan agenda that benefits an elite few. They argue, for example, that because no absolute proof exists for ideas such as global warming, it is merely one hypotheses among many and should not influence our public policy.
One aside: As an observer in the humanities with an interest in rhetoric and postmodern literature, I just wish that 'postmodern' (as in postmodern science) wasn't the modifier chosen to describe the pseduo-scientific pap that the conservatives in the anti-science camp spew. I suppose the author equates associating postmodernism with relativism, an equation that is not entirely unjustified. Without launching into a lengthy and complicated genealogy of postmodern thought, I just want to observe that some of America's foremost postmodern fiction writers - Thomas Pynchon, Richard Powers, Samuel Delaney, and Kurt Vonnegut immediately come to mind - and are distinguished by the extent of their scientific knowledge and their ability to integrate complex scientific ideas into their writing.
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3 comments:
onkel eric,
i had the exact same thought reading this article. i found the citation of foucault and wittgenstein as "anti-science" advocates who are intellectual inspiration for the conservative junta to be quite odd. attacking science in the service of two of the metanarratives most targeted by postmodernists (religion and capitalism) does not seem terribly "postmodern" to me. but what do i know? i'm just a dog. one of my favorite postmodern scientist (using this moniker correctly) is donna haraway who is working on a project on the most important object of study--dogs.
love, wully.
wally,
i like donna haraway's work too, but i can already her cries of 'boondoggle' from the anti-pomo crowd.
wuff, wuff.
Politiciized groups cherry pick various scientific discoveries in order to scores points on their behalf. If someone dares to question the validity of the scientific argument they are charged with being universally anti-science. We're supposed to notice how this works one way, when, in fact, it can fairly be applied to any political entity. They same sort of thing happens with the charge of racism. The problem is that people catch on to this game causing it to lose its effect.
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