Originally at
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu:80/sci_cult/TwoCultures.html
TWO CULTURES OR ONE?
Over thirty years ago, C.P. Snow, in his book Two
Cultures , eloquently expressed concern about what he saw
as a widening and worrisome gap of misunderstanding and
mistrust between scientists and non-scientists. While the terms
of the dichotomy have evolved over the years since, and bridges
have been built, the concern remains a significant one in a
number of spheres, including those of academic organization and
precollege instruction.
One indication of the continuing significant of Snow's concern
is that flareups of the two culture controvery persist. A
recent one was triggered by the mathematical physicist Alan
Sokal, who published in the humanities journal Social Text
(Spring/Summer 1996) an article which Sokal himself, in a
second article published in the humanities journal Lingua
Franca (May/June 1996), revealed to be a hoax (both articles,
as well as some web links to commentary by others, have been
made available on the web by
Sokal ) . Sokal wished to call attention to "an apparent
decline in the standards of intellectual rigor in certain
precincts of the American academic humanities." Whether
appropriate or not in his particular concerns and methods (see
the
Social Text editorial response ) , Sokal's articles clearly
revealed a continuing two culture controvery by triggering a
barrage of accusatory publications by scientists and
non-scientists alike.
Among the publications triggered by Sokal was "Sokal's Hoax", an article by the
physicist Steven Weinberg which appeared in the New York Review of Books (8 August
1996). Weinberg seems to share with Sokal a belief that science needs to defend
a claim to primacy of intellectual rigor over that of other forms of intellectual
activity. The following letter, sent to the editors of the New York Review for
possible publication, suggests that a less exclusive and more realistic conception
of the scientific enterprise would not only better help to bridge the two cultures
gap, but better serve as well to defend science and assure its important contribution
to human culture generally. Whether in response to this suggestion, or with other
thoughts, you're invited to join an ongoing discussion of issues related to the
two cultures controversy.
To the Editors:
With defenders of science like Steven Weinberg (NYR, August
8), scientists like myself need no enemies. At the least, we
would have fewer were it not for decades of the kind of
agressive posturing which Weinberg replicates in his article.
Is Weinberg honestly puzzled about why "the gulf of
misunderstanding between scientists and other intellectuals
seems to be as wide as when C.P. Snow first worried about it
three decades ago?" Let me use Weinberg himself to try to
explain and, in so doing, to see if I can offset some of the
potential damage to a bridge along which a number of us would
like to walk, for the health of both science and humanity.
It seriously pays everyone, even scientists, to listen to and
and learn from others, a cause which is not well served by the
rearing of imaginary bogey (wo)men in a reflex defense against
any perceived critique of science. "If we think that scientific
laws are flexible enough to be affected by the social setting
of their discovery, then some may be tempted to press
scientists to discover laws that are more proletarian or
feminine or ...". And so we're supposed to avoid thinking that
scientific laws may sometimes reflect (among other things)
cultural influences, despite demonstrable evidence that this
has frequently been the case? That kind of dismissal of
evidence is pointlessly incendiary, to say nothing of simply
being bad science. Even worse is the misrepresentation of what
actually assures the health of science. It is not stubborn
adherence to a particular world view, but rather a persistant
willingness to continually re-create world views so as to
accomodate a continually increasing body of observations (a
process in which cultural influences are almost certainly an
asset rather than a liability).
Cultural relativism is bad enough to Weinberg, but what really
provokes him are two additional deeper challenges to a sacred
"objective reality of science". One is the idea that the
observed and the observer are interdependent, and the other is
the possibility that knowledge is actually a construction by
the observer rather than a discovery of a pre-existing external
reality. Both, significantly, provoke gratuitous attacks not
only on non-scientists but on thoughtful members of Weinberg's
own professional community of physicists as well. Which is to
say that neither they, nor many other scientists (myself
included) are anywhere near as certain as Weinberg that we are,
or ever will be, in a position to prove that "nature is
strictly governed by impersonal laws".
Here too, Weinberg's defenses of science are not only
destructive of the potential for useful sharing of perspectives
and ideas (and hence of respect for science), but also both
misleading about science itself and wholely unnecessary. As
comfortable and productive as it has been for Weinberg and
others to believe that they can stand apart from their subject
matter and uncover external truths, science itself does not
depend on the validity of either of those beliefs. Neither
neutrality nor external reality are concepts essential to the
process of continually remaking world views to accomodate new
observations (a process which predates science as a profession
and may well outlive it). Nor is either necessary to legitimize
scientific understanding, the validation of which derives
instead from the increasing breadth of observations effectively
summarized as time goes on. Both neutrality and external
reality are instead concepts which arose from science itself,
concepts which may or may not prove of continuing usefulness as
the ongoing process of summarizing observations and testing
those summaries continues.
More generally, science and humanity can both be perfectly
healthy without Weinberg's "objective reality of science".
Indeed, both can probably be healthier without it, since the
phrase triggers an appropriate but unnecessary deep suspicion
of and hostility toward science from non-scientists, who quite
legitimately challenge the the claim that scientists have
privileged access to understanding and reality. Many of us
don't make that claim, and would be more than happy to meet our
colleagues, scientific and otherwise, in the various
netherworlds none of us have yet well explored, to do what
science is really about (and humanity needs): increasing the
range and number of observations being made sense of, by all of
us.
Paul Grobstein
Eleanor A. Bliss Professor of Biology
Bryn Mawr College