Norman Levitt on Nadia Abu el Haj and "Science Studies"

(Professor Levitt) I think that it was shameful of Barnard to retain her as a tenured faculty member, but that her political views, as well as those of her opponents, are not especially relevant to the issue... Abu el Haj tries to engage with archaeology on the basis of the assumptions and theories that are regnant in "science studies"... the attitude that knowledge claims are, perforce, political claims, that "objective knowledge" is an oxymoron, and that modern science, in particular, is a repressive ideological edifice designed to bolster the hegemony of western capitalist patriarchal societies, not least by demeaning and displacing the "alternative ways of knowing" that are embedded in non-western cultures or are simply more appropriate to marginalized sub-populations (women for instance!)... [as claimed by] Michel Foucault, David Bloor, Bruno Latour, Karen Knorr-Cetina, Helen Longino, Steven Shapin, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Pickering. The unifying theme of all these theorists is that the manifest content of scientific discoveries is not determined by the relevant physical facts of the universe but is "socially constructed" by some kind of murky alchemy that synthesizes the social and political interests of scientists into scientific theories. Almost all scientists, as well as philosophers of science in the traditional sense, find this overarching theory of the nature of science to be highly unconvincing, to say the least. I cite some well-known critiques, to some of which I have contributed: "Levitt and Gross, "Higher Superstition," Boghossian, "The Fear of Knowledge', Haack, "Defending Science--Within Reason", Sokal and Bricmont, "Fashionable Nonsense", Koertge (ed.), "A House Built on Sand", and Gross, Levitt and Lewis (ed.), "The Flight from Science and Reason."

Oh, my gracious yes - this is what postmodernism has to offer science. This goes back to the very inception of that convoluted field of study - science, or rather "scientism" here, is what is termed a metanarrative, no more or less valid than other metanarratives, which are in turn merely constructs intended to link otherwise unconnected events. It is ironic that Marxism is specifically mentioned (by Lyotard) as such a metanarrative, inasmuch as it seems to be adhered to by a fair majority of postmodernists who properly ought to regard it with skepticism.

The real difficulty is that postmodernism itself constitutes such a metanarrative, and it shows. The notion that the above-named philosophers and critics are attempting to provide merely another descriptive model is entirely false; these are activists and advocates whose purpose is to change the society sinning enough to consider scientism neutral, and the reason this becomes obvious is that in application they are providing their own normative model, that is, a metanarrative purporting to supply means for remediation.

It is the descent of linguistic analysis into gobbledygook, whose root claim is that scientism was nothing more than gobbledygook to begin with. There is no real provision within the postmodern approach for that not to be the case. Unfortunately the modern world is built under the presupposition that it is not the case, and to change that is to change some rather basic cultural underpinnings. That is, of course, the point here, but one ought to be more careful what one wishes for.

The difficulty is that a tree may not be divorced from its fruit, and a culture that produces skyscrapers, pennicillin, and space travel is not the same as one whose principal product is campfire drumming and telling fortunes by chicken bones. It may be equally "valid" judged from a sufficiently lofty set of intellectual pretensions, but equal it is not. One need only ask the participants in either if they'd prefer the other. That preference tends to be a one-way affair in practice (although there is no shortage of skyscraper denizens who would like to imagine they'd be happier dancing around a campfire and shaking chicken bones, that number tends to shrink when they actually try it and discover that pennicillin and modern dentistry do have their attractions).

This is gross silliness, the conviction by a witch doctor who cannot pass engineering calculus that it's all some sort of a plot to keep him down. Ten times out of ten it's a reach for your wallet.

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