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In the philosophy of science, the science wars were a series of scholarly and public discussions in the 1990s over the social place of science in making authoritative claims about the world. Encyclopedia.com, citing the Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, describes the science wars as the

"complex of discussions about the way the sciences are related to or incarnated in culture, history, and practice. [...] [which] came to be called a 'war' in the mid 1990s because of a strong polarization over questions of legitimacy and authority. One side [...] is concerned with defending the authority of science as rooted in objective evidence and rational procedures. The other side argues that it is legitimate and fruitful to study the sciences as institutions and social-technical networks whose development is influenced by linguistics, economics, politics, and other factors surrounding formally rational procedures and isolated established facts."[1]

The science wars took place principally in the United States in the 1990s in the academic and mainstream press. Scientific realists (such as Norman Levitt, Paul R. Gross, Jean Bricmont and Alan Sokal) accused many writers, whom they described as 'postmodernist', of having effectively rejected scientific objectivity, the scientific method, empiricism, and scientific knowledge.[citation needed]

Though much of the theory associated with 'postmodernism' (see post-structuralism) did not make any interventions into the natural sciences, the scientific realists took aim at its general influence. The scientific realists argued that large swathes of scholarship, amounting to a rejection of objectivity and realism, had been influenced by major 20th-century post-structuralist philosophers (such as Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard and others), whose work they declare to be incomprehensible or meaningless. They implicate a broad range of fields in this trend, including cultural studies, feminist studies, comparative literature, media studies, and especially science and technology studies, which does apply such methods to the study of science.

Physicist N. David Mermin understands the science wars as a series of exchanges between scientists and "sociologists, historians and literary critics" who the scientists "thought ...were ludicrously ignorant of science, making all kinds of nonsensical pronouncements. The other side dismissed these charges as naive, ill-informed and self-serving."[2] Sociologist Harry Collins wrote that the "science wars" began "in the early 1990s with attacks by natural scientists or ex-natural scientists who had assumed the role of spokespersons for science. The subject of the attacks was the analysis of science coming out of literary studies and the social sciences."[3]

Historical background

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Until the mid-20th century, the philosophy of science had concentrated on the viability of scientific method and knowledge, proposing justifications for the truth of scientific theories and observations and attempting to discover at a philosophical level why science worked. Karl Popper, an early opponent of logical positivism in the 20th century, repudiated the classical observationalist/inductivist form of scientific method in favour of empirical falsification. He is also known for his opposition to the classical justificationist/verificationist account of knowledge which he replaced with critical rationalism, "the first non justificational philosophy of criticism in the history of philosophy".[4] His criticisms of scientific method were adopted by several postmodernist critiques.[5]

A number of 20th-century philosophers maintained that logical models of pure science do not apply to actual scientific practice. It was the publication of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962, however, which fully opened the study of science to new disciplines by suggesting that the evolution of science was in part socially determined and that it did not operate under the simple logical laws put forward by the logical positivist school of philosophy.

Kuhn described the development of scientific knowledge not as a linear increase in truth and understanding, but as a series of periodic revolutions which overturned the old scientific order and replaced it with new orders (what he called "paradigms"). Kuhn attributed much of this process to the interactions and strategies of the human participants in science rather than its own innate logical structure. (See sociology of scientific knowledge).

Some interpreted Kuhn's ideas to mean that scientific theories were, either wholly or in part, social constructs, which many interpreted as diminishing the claim of science to representing objective reality, and that reality had a lesser or potentially irrelevant role in the formation of scientific theories.[citation needed] In 1971, Jerome Ravetz published Scientific knowledge and its social problems, a book describing the role that the scientific community, as a social construct, plays in accepting or rejecting objective scientific knowledge.[6]

Postmodernism

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A number of different philosophical and historical schools, often grouped together as "postmodernism", began reinterpreting scientific achievements of the past through the lens of the practitioners, often positing the influence of politics and economics in the development of scientific theories in addition to scientific observations. Rather than being presented as working entirely from positivistic observations, many scientists of the past were scrutinized for their connection to issues of gender, sexual orientation, race, and class. Some more radical philosophers, such as Paul Feyerabend, argued that scientific theories were themselves incoherent and that other forms of knowledge production (such as those used in religion) served the material and spiritual needs of their practitioners with equal validity as did scientific explanations.

Imre Lakatos advanced a midway view between the "postmodernist" and "realist" camps. For Lakatos, scientific knowledge is progressive; however, it progresses not by a strict linear path where every new element builds upon and incorporates every other, but by an approach where a "core" of a "research program" is established by auxiliary theories which can themselves be falsified or replaced without compromising the core. Social conditions and attitudes affect how strongly one attempts to resist falsification for the core of a program, but the program has an objective status based on its relative explanatory power. Resisting falsification only becomes ad-hoc and damaging to knowledge when an alternate program with greater explanatory power is rejected in favor of another with less. But because it is changing a theoretical core, which has broad ramifications for other areas of study, accepting a new program is also revolutionary as well as progressive. Thus, for Lakatos the character of science is that of being both revolutionary and progressive; both socially informed and objectively justified.

The science wars

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In Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science (1994), scientists Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt accused postmodernists of anti-intellectualism, presented the shortcomings of relativism, and suggested that postmodernists knew little about the scientific theories they criticized and practiced poor scholarship for political reasons. The authors insist that the "science critics" misunderstood the theoretical approaches they criticized, given their "caricature, misreading, and condescension, [rather] than argument".[7][8][9][10] The book sparked the so-called science wars. Higher Superstition inspired a New York Academy of Sciences conference titled The Flight from Science and Reason, organized by Gross, Levitt, and Gerald Holton.[11] Attendees of the conference were critical of the polemical approach of Gross and Levitt, yet agreed upon the intellectual inconsistency of how laymen, non-scientist, and social studies intellectuals dealt with science.[12]

Social Text

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In 1996, Social Text, a left-wing Duke University publication of postmodern critical theory, compiled a "Science Wars" issue containing brief articles by postmodernist academics in the social sciences and the humanities, that emphasized the roles of society and politics in science. In the introduction to the issue, the Social Text editor, activist Andrew Ross, said that the attack upon science studies was a conservative reaction to reduced funding for scientific research. He characterized the Flight from Science and Reason conference as an attempted "linking together a host of dangerous threats: scientific creationism, New Age alternatives and cults, astrology, UFO-ism, the radical science movement, postmodernism, and critical science studies, alongside the ready-made historical specters of Aryan-Nazi science and the Soviet error of Lysenkoism" that "degenerated into name-calling".[13]

In another Social Text article, the postmodern sociologist Dorothy Nelkin characterised Gross and Levitt's vigorous response as a "call to arms in response to the failed marriage of Science and the State"—in contrast to the scientists' historical tendency to avoid participating in perceived political threats, such as creation science, the animal rights movement, and anti-abortionists' attempts to curb fetal research.[clarification needed] At the end of the Soviet–American Cold War (1945–91), military funding of science declined, while funding agencies demanded accountability, and research became directed by private interests. Nelkin suggested that postmodernist critics were "convenient scapegoats" who diverted attention from problems in science.[14]

Also in 1996, physicist Alan Sokal had submitted an article to Social Text titled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", which proposed that quantum gravity is a linguistic and social construct and that quantum physics supports postmodernist criticisms of scientific objectivity. The staff published it in the "Science Wars" issue as a relevant contribution, later claiming that they held the article back from earlier issues due to Sokal's alleged refusal to consider revisions.[15] Later, in the May 1996 issue of Lingua Franca, in the article "A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies", Sokal exposed his parody-article, "Transgressing the Boundaries" as an experiment testing the intellectual rigor of an academic journal that would "publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions".[16] The matter became known as the "Sokal Affair" and brought greater public attention to the wider conflict.[17]

Jacques Derrida, a frequent target of anti-relativist and anti-postmodern criticism in the wake of Sokal's article, responded to the hoax in "Sokal and Bricmont Aren't Serious", first published in Le Monde. He called Sokal's action sad (triste) for having overshadowed Sokal's mathematical work and ruined the chance to sort out controversies of scientific objectivity in a careful way. Derrida went on to fault him and co-author Jean Bricmont for what he considered an act of intellectual bad faith: they had accused him of scientific incompetence in the English edition of a follow-up book (an accusation several English reviewers noted), but deleted the accusation from the French edition and denied that it had ever existed. He concluded, as the title indicates, that Sokal was not serious in his approach, but had used the spectacle of a "quick practical joke" to displace the scholarship Derrida believed the public deserved.[18]

Continued conflict

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In the first few years after the 'Science Wars' edition of Social Text, the seriousness and volume of discussion increased significantly, much of it focused on reconciling the 'warring' camps of postmodernists and scientists. One significant event was the 'Science and Its Critics' conference in early 1997; it brought together scientists and scholars who study science and featured Alan Sokal and Steve Fuller as keynote speakers. The conference generated the final wave of substantial press coverage (in both news media and scientific journals), though by no means resolved the fundamental issues of social construction and objectivity in science.[19]

Other attempts have been made to reconcile the two camps. Mike Nauenberg, a physicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, organized a small conference in May 1997 that was attended by scientists and sociologists of science alike, among them Alan Sokal, N. David Mermin and Harry Collins. In the same year, Collins organized the Southampton Peace Workshop, which again brought together a broad range of scientists and sociologists. The Peace Workshop gave rise to the idea of a book that intended to map out some of the arguments between the disputing parties. The One Culture?: A Conversation about Science, edited by chemist Jay A. Labinger and sociologist Harry Collins, was eventually published in 2001. The book's title is a reference to C. P. Snow's The Two Cultures. It contains contributions from authors such as Alan Sokal, Jean Bricmont, Steven Weinberg, and Steven Shapin.[20]

Other significant publications related to the science wars include Fashionable Nonsense by Sokal and Jean Bricmont (1998), The Social Construction of What? by Ian Hacking (1999) and Who Rules in Science by James Robert Brown (2004).

To John C. Baez, the Bogdanov Affair in 2002[21] served as the bookend to the Sokal controversy: the review, acceptance, and publication of papers, later alleged to be nonsense, in peer-reviewed physics journals. Cornell physics professor Paul Ginsparg, argued that the cases are not at all similar and that the fact that some journals and scientific institutions have low standards is "hardly a revelation".[22] The new editor in chief of the journal Annals of Physics, who was appointed after the controversy along with a new editorial staff, had said that the standards of the journal had been poor leading up to the publication since the previous editor had become sick and died.[21]

Interest in the science wars has waned considerably in recent years. Though the events of the science wars are still occasionally mentioned in the mainstream press, they have had little effect on either the scientific community or the community of critical theorists.[citation needed] Both sides continue to maintain that the other does not understand their theories, or mistakes constructive criticisms and scholarly investigations for attacks. In 1999, the French sociologist Bruno Latour—at the time believing that the natural sciences are socially constructivist—said, "Scientists always stomp around meetings talking about 'bridging the two-culture gap', but when scores of people from outside the sciences begin to build just that bridge, they recoil in horror and want to impose the strangest of all gags on free speech since Socrates: only scientists should speak about science!"[23] Subsequently, Latour has suggested a re-evaluation of sociology's epistemology based on lessons learned from the Science Wars: "... scientists made us realize that there was not the slightest chance that the type of social forces we use as a cause could have objective facts as their effects".[24]

Reviewing Sokal's Beyond the Hoax, Mermin stated that "As a sign that the science wars are over, I cite the 2008 election of Bruno Latour [...] to Foreign Honorary Membership in that bastion of the establishment, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences" and opined that "we are not only beyond Sokal's hoax, but beyond the science wars themselves".[2]

However, more recently, some of the leading critical theorists have recognized that their critiques have, at times, been counter-productive and are providing intellectual ammunition for reactionary interests.[25]

Writing about these developments in the context of global warming, Latour noted that "dangerous extremists are using the very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that could save our lives. Was I wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as science studies? Is it enough to say that we did not really mean what we said?"[26]

Kendrick Frazier notes that Latour is interested in helping to rebuild trust in science and that Latour has said that some of the authority of science needs to be regained.[27]

In 2016, Shawn Lawrence Otto, in his book The War on Science: Who's Waging It, Why It Matters, and What We can Do About It, that the winners of the war on science "will chart the future of power, democracy, and freedom itself."[28]

See also

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Notes

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References

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Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Science wars

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The science wars were a series of heated intellectual debates in the 1990s between defenders of —who emphasized empirical validation, , and the objective progress of knowledge through testable hypotheses—and critics from fields like , cultural theory, and , who advanced social constructivist views portraying scientific facts as negotiated products of power relations, cultural biases, and rhetorical persuasion rather than discoveries of an independent reality. These clashes highlighted fundamental disagreements over , with proponents of science arguing that its unparalleled predictive successes in fields from physics to stemmed from methodological rigor rather than mere consensus, while detractors, often drawing on thinkers like and the Edinburgh , contended that laboratory practices and mirrored social dynamics more than universal truths. The disputes intensified with the 1994 publication of Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science by biologist Paul R. Gross and mathematician Norman Levitt, which systematically critiqued what the authors saw as irrationalist trends in humanities scholarship, including multiculturalism's erosion of merit-based evaluation and environmentalist pseudoscience masquerading as critique. A defining controversy erupted in 1996 with the , when physicist submitted a fabricated article titled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative of " to the postmodernist journal ; laden with deliberate nonsense—such as claims that undermines the distinction between nature and culture—the paper was accepted without expert refereeing, prompting Sokal to expose it as a in to demonstrate the field's tolerance for obfuscation over substantive engagement with and physics. This episode, which drew widespread media attention and rebuttals from figures like and , amplified accusations of anti-science dogmatism in academia, where constructivist paradigms had gained traction amid broader cultural shifts questioning Enlightenment rationalism. While the science wars ostensibly subsided by the early 2000s, their legacy persists in ongoing tensions over the demarcation of legitimate scientific inquiry from ideologically driven narratives, particularly in areas like climate modeling and , where continues to affirm realism's causal efficacy against relativistic skepticism. Defenders maintained that science's institutional self-correction through replication and adversarial testing—evident in milestones like the —outweighed critiques rooted in anecdotal , underscoring how the debates reinforced the need for in non-empirical disciplines while safeguarding science's role in technological advancement.

Philosophical Underpinnings

Scientific Realism and Empiricism

Scientific realism posits that successful scientific theories provide approximately true descriptions of the world, including unobservable entities, insofar as they yield accurate predictions validated by . This view holds that theories about phenomena like atoms or gravitational fields refer to real structures, justified by their and consistency with observations, rather than mere instrumental utility. complements this by grounding knowledge in sensory data and repeatable experiments, insisting that claims must be falsifiable through testing; theories that withstand such scrutiny accumulate evidential support, demonstrating progress toward objective understanding. A core tenet involves causal realism, where scientific models must capture underlying mechanisms that produce observable effects, enabling not only prediction but also technological manipulation of nature. For instance, , developed in the 1920s, describes behavior in solids through wave functions and energy bands, directly underpinning the invention of the in 1947 at Bell Laboratories, which revolutionized by controlling current flow via quantum tunneling and band gaps. Similarly, atomic theory, initially proposed by in 1808, gained empirical warrant from spectroscopic observations in the mid-19th century, where discrete emission lines from heated elements—discovered by and around 1859—revealed quantized energy levels consistent with subatomic structure, later formalized in Niels Bohr's 1913 model. Historical milestones underscore this framework's efficacy, as seen in the . Galileo's 1610 telescopic observations of Jupiter's moons and Venus's phases provided empirical evidence for , challenging geocentric models through direct falsification of predictions about planetary motion. Isaac Newton's (1687) unified terrestrial and under laws of motion and universal gravitation, predicting phenomena like orbits with precision verified by subsequent observations, such as Edmund Halley's 1758 return of the named after him. In the , Arthur Eddington's measurement during the May 29, 1919, confirmed general relativity's prediction of starlight deflection by the Sun's gravity—1.75 arcseconds—aligning with Albert Einstein's 1915 theory and diverging from Newtonian expectations, thus validating curved as a real geometric feature. These validations illustrate cumulative, theory-independent advancement, where empirical success transcends cultural or social influences, as predictive accuracy holds regardless of the theorist's background.

Postmodernism and Social Constructivism

, emerging in philosophical discourse during the mid-20th century, challenged Enlightenment notions of objective truth and universal rationality, positing instead that is contingent upon language, discourse, and cultural contexts. In the realm of science, this manifested as a critique viewing scientific facts not as discoveries of an independent reality but as narratives constructed within social and historical frameworks. Michel Foucault's analyses, particularly in works like (1966) and (1975), framed as intertwined with power relations, where scientific discourses serve to classify, control, and normalize subjects rather than neutrally represent nature. Thomas Kuhn's (1962) provided a foundational precursor by introducing the concept of scientific s—shared frameworks of theories, methods, and standards that govern research communities. Kuhn argued that paradigm shifts occur through revolutionary crises rather than cumulative progress, with competing paradigms being incommensurable, meaning adherents operate within fundamentally different worldviews that resist rational comparison. This relativized scientific advancement, suggesting that what counts as "truth" depends on the prevailing paradigm rather than an absolute correspondence to , influencing later postmodern interpretations despite Kuhn's own reservations about extreme . Extending these ideas, Bruno Latour's actor-network theory (), developed in the , rejected the strict between facts and values, humans and nonhumans, by conceptualizing science as emerging from dynamic networks of associations involving instruments, texts, and social actors. In Science in Action (1987) and (1991), Latour contended that scientific "facts" gain stability through processes of translation and enrollment in these networks, blurring boundaries between the social construction of knowledge and purportedly objective phenomena. The strong programme in the (SSK), articulated by David Bloor and the Edinburgh School in the 1970s, formalized social constructivism's application to science through four tenets: (social explanations for beliefs), (equal treatment of all beliefs), (same types of causes for true and false beliefs), and reflexivity (applicable to SSK itself). Bloor's Knowledge and Social Imagery (1976) insisted on explanatory , rejecting science's epistemic privilege by attributing acceptance or rejection of theories to social interests, traditions, and contingencies rather than evidential merit alone. By the 1980s, these constructivist approaches gained traction in science and technology studies (STS), particularly through feminist extensions like Sandra Harding's standpoint epistemology. Harding, in The Science Question in Feminism (1986), argued that knowledge from the standpoint of marginalized groups—such as women—achieves "strong objectivity" by revealing biases inherent in dominant (often male, Western) perspectives, positing that starting from less privileged positions yields less distorted accounts of reality. This normalization reflected broader academic shifts, where STS programs proliferated, emphasizing power dynamics and cultural narratives over empirical validation as primary shapers of scientific consensus.

Precursors to the Conflict

Critiques of Science in Academia (1960s-1980s)

In the 1960s and 1970s, critiques of science's presumed neutrality emerged prominently within academic philosophy and environmental studies, challenging the notion of science as a value-free enterprise. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) exemplified early environmental skepticism by documenting the ecological harms of pesticides like DDT, portraying scientific innovation as often co-opted by corporate interests prioritizing profit over long-term consequences, thereby eroding public trust in unchecked technological optimism. Similarly, Paul Feyerabend's Against Method (1975) advanced an epistemological anarchism, arguing that scientific progress thrives not through adherence to a universal method but via pluralism and counter-induction—"anything goes"—rejecting the rationalist image of science as cumulatively objective and method-bound. These works framed science less as an autonomous pursuit of truth and more as influenced by historical contingencies and ideological commitments, influencing subsequent humanities-based scrutiny. The 1970s saw the institutionalization of such views through the , particularly the Edinburgh School's , articulated by David Bloor in 1976, which demanded symmetrical explanations for both accepted ("true") and rejected ("false") scientific beliefs, attributing their acceptance to social causes like interests and power dynamics rather than epistemic merit alone. This approach treated scientific objectivity as a product of negotiation within scientific communities, not an inherent property, and spread via programs like 's Science Studies Unit, established in 1964 but gaining traction in the decade. By questioning the causal independence of scientific claims from social factors, it laid groundwork for portraying physics and other hard sciences as embedded in cultural paradigms, with early intimations that universal laws might reflect localized biases. The 1980s marked the ascent of Science and Technology Studies (STS) as an interdisciplinary field, proliferating in universities and emphasizing science's social construction, with critiques extending to technology's inherent politics and gendered foundations. Langdon Winner's essay "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" (1980) contended that technical systems, such as urban infrastructure, embed and enforce specific power distributions—e.g., low bridges on New York parkways designed to exclude buses serving lower-class users—thus rendering artifacts politically normative beyond mere functionality. Feminist scholars amplified this by linking mechanistic science to patriarchal dominance; Carolyn Merchant's The Death of Nature (1980) traced the Scientific Revolution's shift from an organic, feminine-coded view of nature to Baconian domination, mechanizing the environment in ways that paralleled women's subjugation. Sandra Harding's The Science Question in Feminism (1986) further argued that modern science embodies "strong objectivity" deficits due to its roots in Western, masculine standpoints, systematically excluding alternative epistemologies and biasing knowledge production. These analyses fueled STS programs' growth, fostering claims—such as those in feminist physics critiques—that foundational laws derive from androcentric assumptions, like prioritizing abstract, hierarchical models over relational ones, thereby depicting science as ideologically laden rather than impartial.

Key Publications Challenging Scientific Authority

Bruno Latour's Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society (1987) posits that scientific knowledge emerges not from isolated discoveries of objective truth but from dynamic processes of , alliance-building, and inscription devices within laboratories and broader networks. Latour describes facts as "stabilized" outcomes of these social constructions, where instruments, texts, and human actors form "black boxes" that obscure the contingent processes behind them, thereby challenging the notion of as a mirror of unmediated . N. Katherine Hayles's Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science (1990) appropriates —a mathematical framework for nonlinear dynamics—from physics and biology into literary and postmodern theory, arguing that its concepts of feedback loops, fractals, and sensitivity to initial conditions reveal inherent instabilities in scientific representations of order, aligning them with deconstructive critiques of stable meaning. Hayles contends that chaos undermines classical , facilitating interpretations where scientific models are seen as culturally bounded narratives rather than universal laws. Luce Irigaray, in works such as her 1987 essay contributing to Le Temps de la différence (published in English contexts around 1989–1990), critiqued Einstein's E=mc² as a "sexed equation" that privileges the invariant —a masculine, abstract constant—over variable speeds associated with fluid, biological, and feminine experiences, thereby embedding patriarchal logic in foundational physics. This argument frames relativity not as neutral but as a product of gendered conceptual hierarchies in scientific discourse. Andrew Ross's Strange Weather: Culture, Science, and Technology in the Age of Limits (1991) advocates for cultural studies of science by treating fringe pursuits like and technocultures as valid "counter-knowledges" that subvert elite scientific authority, particularly in areas like environmental limits and where mainstream expertise enforces ideological constraints. Ross portrays these alternative epistemologies as democratizing responses to technocratic dominance, urging critics to valorize popular skepticism over purported scientific objectivity.

Ignition of the Debate

The Sokal Affair (1996)

In 1996, Alan Sokal, a professor of physics at New York University, submitted a deliberately fabricated manuscript to Social Text, a Duke University Press journal focused on cultural studies and postmodern theory. Titled Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, the 35-page article mimicked the style of postmodern scholarship by interweaving legitimate scientific references with nonsensical claims, such as portraying quantum gravity as a "social and linguistic construct" amenable to liberation through deconstructive hermeneutics, and asserting that physical constants like the ratio of circumference to diameter (π) and Newton's gravitational constant (G) vary locally under chaos theory influences. Sokal intentionally included mathematical errors, including a garbled version of the spin-1/2 wave equation from quantum mechanics, to test whether the journal's editorial process would scrutinize content diverging from ideological conformity. The editors, including Bruce Robbins and Andrew Ross, accepted the paper without external or formal refereeing, instead communicating enthusiasm over its apparent endorsement of their critiques of scientific objectivity; Sokal later noted they viewed it as a timely contribution aligning with the journal's opposition to "." Published in Social Text issue 46/47 (Spring/Summer 1996, pp. 217–252), the article appeared in a special double issue framed around the "Science Wars," a term then denoting tensions between scientific realists and social constructivists. Sokal revealed the hoax on May 15, 1996, via an article in Lingua Franca titled "A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies," where he explained the submission as an empirical test of editorial standards in fields prone to relativist interpretations of empirical knowledge. He argued that the acceptance exposed vulnerabilities in academic publishing where ideological flattery could override factual accuracy, particularly in journals eschewing rigorous verification of technical claims.

Immediate Reactions and Revelations

The revelation of Alan Sokal's hoax article, published in on May 15, 1996, prompted swift responses from the editors of , who issued a statement in the July/August issue of the same magazine. In their reply, editors Bruce Robbins and Andrew Ross acknowledged that they had not subjected the paper to traditional or consulted physicists to verify its claims, admitting a lack of expertise in the relevant scientific fields. They defended the publication by emphasizing its alignment with the journal's ideological goals of challenging boundaries between and , prioritizing "transgressive" content over empirical rigor, which exposed vulnerabilities in the editorial process of journals. Media coverage amplified the affair's implications for academic standards. The New York Times reported on May 18, 1996, detailing how Sokal's mimicked postmodern to critique unsubstantiated claims about quantum physics and , sparking debates on the credibility of interdisciplinary scholarship. Nature magazine, in its coverage of the emerging "science wars," highlighted the as evidence of lax standards in journals, prompting editorials questioning whether ideological commitments could supplant factual verification in scholarly . Sokal followed up with essays, including one in the May/June 1997 Lingua Franca, defending the as an experiment demonstrating the acceptance of nonsensical arguments when cloaked in politically appealing rhetoric. Academic gatherings reflected initial defensiveness among critics. At a 1997 panel discussion hosted by , , a co-founder of , accused Sokal of "scientism"—an overreliance on empirical methods at the expense of social critique—framing the hoax as an attack on progressive intellectual traditions rather than a valid exposure of flaws. This event underscored early admissions within circles of insufficient safeguards against , while defenses pivoted to claims that scientific objectivity itself was a contested , revealing fractures in the field's self-conception.

Core Arguments in the Wars

Defenses of Objective Knowledge

Defenders of objective knowledge in the science wars emphasized the methodological rigor of science, particularly its reliance on as articulated by in (1934, English edition 1959), which posits that genuine scientific theories must be testable and potentially refutable by , enabling systematic error correction and theoretical advancement. This criterion demarcates science from pseudoscientific or ideological assertions, many of which, critics argued, evade scrutiny through vague or unfalsifiable propositions. Popper's framework underscores science's self-correcting nature, where hypotheses are repeatedly confronted with observational data, discarding those that fail tests while refining successful ones, a process that has driven cumulative progress absent in narrative-driven epistemologies lacking empirical accountability. Complementing , provides a formal mechanism for updating scientific beliefs in light of new evidence, treating probabilities as degrees of confidence revised via , which incorporates prior knowledge with likelihoods from data to yield posterior probabilities. This evidential updating aligns with science's iterative method, where experiments incrementally refine models—such as refining atomic theory through spectroscopic observations—yielding increasingly accurate predictions, in contrast to static or socially derived narratives that resist quantitative revision. Empirical track records exemplify this superiority: scientific interventions eradicated globally, with the certifying no natural cases after 1977 and declaring eradication on May 8, 1980, through campaigns grounded in virological understanding and controlled trials. Scientific realism further bolsters these defenses by asserting that mature theories approximate truth about an observer-independent reality, where physical laws—such as or the —operate uniformly across contexts, verifiable through reproducible experiments irrespective of cultural observers. Proponents like and Norman Levitt, in Higher Superstition (1994), contended that science's predictive successes, from engineering bridges to developing antibiotics, stem from this causal structure, which transcends subjective interpretation and yields technologies effective worldwide, unlike constructivist accounts that attribute efficacy to social negotiation without predictive leverage. This independence ensures cross-cultural replicability, as measures consistently at 9.8 m/s² near Earth's surface, affirming laws' extrinsic governance over phenomena.

Relativist Counterclaims and Social Determinism

Constructivists countered defenses of scientific objectivity by invoking the thesis, positing that empirical data alone cannot uniquely determine a single theory, as multiple incompatible theories can fit the available evidence equally well, with resolution occurring through social negotiation rather than evidential superiority. This view, rooted in the Duhem-Quine thesis elaborated in science studies, implied that factors like community consensus, rhetorical persuasion, and institutional authority play decisive roles in theory acceptance, as seen in historical episodes where rival paradigms persisted despite overlapping predictions. Helen Longino formalized this in Science as Social Knowledge (1990), arguing that knowledge production is a communal process where diverse critical interactions within scientific groups mitigate individual biases and incorporate contextual values, transforming potential into socially validated objectivity through transformative criticism. Such arguments accused realists of naive realism, overlooking how —ranging from funding priorities to norms—inevitably shape evidential interpretation and choice, rendering claims of value-free untenable. Proponents emphasized that acknowledging these social determinants does not equate to wholesale but highlights the contingency of knowledge claims, drawing on case studies like the prolonged debate over , where geophysical evidence was contested until social shifts in the elevated via institutional endorsement. However, these analyses often depend on selective historical vignettes, such as Edinburgh School examinations of specific controversies, rather than broad, quantitative assessments of scientific decision-making across fields, limiting their generalizability. Power-oriented critiques extended to claim that science sustains hegemonic structures, embedding inequalities of class, race, and gender into its methods and outputs. In postcolonial , scholars portrayed disciplines like during European —exemplified by 18th-century expeditions classifying tropical —as mechanisms for asserting Eurocentric dominance, where taxonomic systems marginalized indigenous classifications and facilitated resource extraction under scientific guise. These accounts argued that such practices reinforced imperial power by naturalizing European superiority, with knowledge production reflecting the interests of dominant groups rather than neutral , as in the Linnaean system's adaptation to colonial . Yet, these interpretations frequently prioritize ideologically framed narratives over comprehensive archival on scientific motivations, which included genuine exploratory aims alongside economic ones. Following the 1996 , relativist scholars rebutted the hoax as a straw-man attack that caricatured fringe excesses in while ignoring rigorous STS work on social contingencies, insisting it exemplified physicists' failure to grapple with the field's nuanced rather than disproving constructivist insights. They contended that Sokal's parody in evaded substantive debate on and power dynamics, instead reinforcing a defensive that dismissed valid inquiries into science's in , though this defense overlooked the hoax's exposure of tolerance for unsubstantiated epistemological skepticism in peer-reviewed outlets. Overall, these counterclaims framed not as undermining truth but as revealing its negotiated, context-bound nature, albeit through arguments that privileged interpretive anecdotes over falsifiable models of influence.

Escalation and Key Figures

Science Defenders (Gross, Levitt, Sokal)

Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt published Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science in 1994, critiquing trends in academic fields such as , , and for advancing social constructivist views that portrayed scientific knowledge as merely a product of power dynamics rather than empirical validation. The authors contended that these perspectives exhibited logical inconsistencies, including flawed constructivist analyses of scientific practice and a dismissal of objective standards, which they argued prioritized ideological narratives over verifiable evidence. Gross and Levitt emphasized that such risked undermining the Enlightenment commitment to rational inquiry by equating scientific claims with subjective beliefs, thereby weakening the distinction between evidence-based conclusions and unfalsifiable assertions. To counter these developments, Gross and Levitt co-organized the conference "The Flight from Science and Reason," held May 31 to June 2, 1995, under the auspices of the , featuring presentations from over 50 scientists, philosophers, and historians who defended the primacy of empirical methods against relativistic challenges. The conference proceedings, edited by Gross, Levitt, and Martin W. Lewis and published in 1997 as part of the Annals of the , compiled arguments highlighting how anti-science rhetoric in academia often relied on selective interpretations of scientific history while ignoring the self-correcting nature of empirical testing. Participants stressed that true progress in knowledge requires adherence to and , not deference to social or , which they viewed as eroding the methodological rigor distinguishing science from . Alan Sokal extended these critiques in , co-authored with Jean Bricmont and first published in French as Impostures intellectuelles in 1997, with the English edition appearing in 1998. The book examined specific texts by thinkers including , , and , documenting their erroneous invocations of mathematical and physical concepts—such as and —to bolster relativistic ontologies, which Sokal and Bricmont demonstrated through precise analysis to be misapplications devoid of empirical substantiation. By exposing these as "intellectual impostures," the authors argued that such practices not only misrepresented technical disciplines but also fostered a broader skepticism toward scientific objectivity, substituting hermeneutic speculation for causal explanation grounded in observation and experiment. Gross, Levitt, and Sokal collectively maintained that relativist epistemologies, by denying universal criteria for truth, inadvertently delegitimized expertise reliant on accumulated empirical data, potentially fostering public distrust in institutions like and where ideological overrides could lead to demonstrably harmful outcomes. Their works advocated restoring science's authority through transparent adherence to first-principles reasoning—hypothesis testing against reality—rather than deferring to interpretive frameworks that conflate description with causation.

Prominent Critics (Latour, Harding, Ross)

, through his development of actor-network theory in works such as Science in Action (1987), portrayed scientific knowledge as emerging from heterogeneous networks of human actors, instruments, and inscriptions, rather than isolated objective truths, thereby challenging traditional notions of scientific autonomy. In the wake of the , Latour publicly distanced himself from extreme ; in his 1999 essay "Why Has Critique Run out of Steam?", he acknowledged that relentless of facts had empowered denialists and conceded that robust facts resist full social construction, stating, "The hard facts that scientists invoke to settle their disputes have become harder to deny." Despite this adjustment, Latour upheld the core of his framework, insisting on "hybrid" associations where scientific realities arise from quasi-objects bridging nature and society, maintaining that such networks reveal science's embeddedness without dissolving factual stability. Sandra Harding, in Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women's Lives (1991), championed , positing that epistemologies rooted in the experiences of oppressed groups—particularly women—yield "strong objectivity" by exposing biases in mainstream science and integrating marginalized insights for more reliable knowledge production. She framed (STS) as a democratizing force, advocating for postcolonial and feminist critiques to redistribute scientific authority beyond Western, masculine norms, thereby fostering inclusive methodologies that question universal claims of neutrality. Post-Sokal, Harding persisted in this stance, defending STS against hoax critiques by emphasizing its role in revealing how scientific practices serve hegemonic interests, without retracting her emphasis on standpoint epistemologies as corrective to empiricist deficiencies. Andrew Ross, co-editor of —the journal that unwittingly published Alan Sokal's 1996 hoax article—responded to the affair by dismissing it as a contrived conservative assault on , arguing that it exemplified backlash against ' scrutiny of 's ideological underpinnings. In subsequent reflections, Ross critiqued the ensuing "science wars" as a politicized diversion, defending social constructivism's examination of power in knowledge production while portraying Sokal's stunt as an overreaction to legitimate interrogations of scientific exceptionalism. He maintained that such challenges, including those in 's pages, advanced critical realism over naive , showing no retreat from viewing as intertwined with social hierarchies despite the evidentiary embarrassment of the .

Resolution and Legacy

Academic Repercussions Post-1990s

Following the intense debates of the , extreme relativist doctrines in science and technology studies (STS), particularly the "strong programme"'s insistence on symmetric explanations for scientific truths and errors as socially determined, receded in prominence within STEM fields. By the early , STEM departments and funding bodies increasingly emphasized empirical and , sidelining constructivist claims that equated scientific knowledge with cultural artifacts. This marginalization was reinforced by the practical successes of fields like physics and , where predictive power derived from objective methodologies outpaced interpretive alternatives, leading to a pragmatic in STS toward integration with scientific practice rather than outright opposition. The "" project, led by James Lindsay, , and , extended the original Sokal hoax by submitting 20 fabricated papers laced with absurd premises—such as adapting segments of into or claiming dog park dynamics as models for human rape culture—to journals in , , and related fields. Seven papers were accepted (four published), exposing lax and ideological biases in "grievance studies" subdisciplines, which prompted retractions, editorial soul-searching, and heightened scrutiny of non-empirical scholarship in the humanities. The affair culminated in Boghossian's resignation from in 2021 after investigations and faculty opposition, highlighting institutional resistance to critiques of relativist paradigms despite their empirical shortcomings. Post-2000 institutional shifts included stricter hiring criteria in interdisciplinary programs, favoring candidates with demonstrable empirical grounding over those advancing untestable social determinist theories, as grant agencies like the prioritized replicable outcomes amid rising mandates. In the UK and , governments promoted randomized trials and data-driven assessments for policy, diminishing tolerance for STS-style in advisory roles and funding allocations. While retained space for lingering interpretive approaches, STEM's insistence on causal mechanisms and quantitative validation fostered a bifurcated , with cross-disciplinary claims facing elevated evidentiary bars to bridge the divide.

Persistent Influences on Policy and Culture

Relativist perspectives emerging from the Science Wars have permeated public discourse from the 2000s onward, fostering a cultural environment where scientific consensus is often treated as one opinion among many, contributing to the "post-truth" era characterized by diminished regard for empirical evidence in favor of narrative equivalence. This diffusion is evident in media practices that provide undue platform to denialist views, equating them with established expertise despite vast disparities in evidential support, as seen in coverage of anthropogenic climate change where skeptic arguments receive balanced airtime despite overwhelming data from bodies like the IPCC. Such tendencies trace back to constructivist claims that scientific knowledge is socially negotiated rather than objectively derived, undermining policy reliance on verifiable facts. In climate policy debates, these ideas have sustained by framing scientific models as ideologically laden constructs, delaying regulatory actions; for instance, U.S. federal policies under administrations from 2001 to 2008 hesitated on emissions reductions amid amplified doubt, with polls showing persistent minority belief in narratives into the 2020s. Relativist-influenced critiques, initially academic, have been co-opted to question the of peer-reviewed consensus, as articulated by figures like who later reflected on the wars' role in eroding fact-based discourse. Public health policy has similarly been affected, with relativist erosion of expertise contributing to campaigns that portray medical consensus as contested social narratives rather than evidence-based protocols; during the from 2020, this manifested in widespread rejection of efficacy data, correlating with lower uptake rates in regions emphasizing "" over clinical trials showing over 90% effectiveness for mRNA vaccines. Policies mandating vaccinations faced legal challenges framing them as impositions of elite constructs, echoing Science Wars' . Educational policies illustrate direct policy carryover, where constructivist pedagogies parallel debates over teaching versus , treating as a debatable rather than empirically validated mechanism; a 2005 survey found 13% of U.S. high school teachers presenting or as scientifically viable alternatives, influencing curricula in states like and Dover, , where "teach " mandates were proposed to balance evidence hierarchies. Originally rooted in left-leaning academic critiques, these anti-expertise strains have crossed ideological lines, appearing in populist movements distrustful of institutional , as in far-right challenges to environmental regulations or left-leaning qualms with genetic research, broadening a shared that prioritizes affective narratives over causal evidence across the spectrum. This evolution underscores a landscape where relativism's legacy hampers decisive action on empirically grounded issues, from transitions to responses.

Evaluations of Postmodern Critiques' Empirical Shortcomings

Postmodern critiques rooted in and fail to demonstrate empirical superiority in explaining scientific progress, as they cannot predict which socially negotiated paradigms will yield verifiable technologies or therapeutic advances. , conversely, attributes success to theories' approximate correspondence with causal structures in reality, enabling iterative refinement through falsification; for instance, Antoine Lavoisier's 1770s experiments quantifying weight changes in disproved phlogiston's release-upon-burning postulate, establishing oxygen's role and the , which facilitated 19th-century chemical syntheses like production on industrial scales. Constructivist frameworks, by emphasizing and power dynamics over referential accuracy, offer no testable criterion for why such refinements correlate with predictive power, such as relativity's confirmation via 1919 eclipse observations enabling GPS corrections accurate to nanoseconds. Histories advancing relativist views often exhibit by cherry-picking episodes of initial scientific controversy while neglecting data-driven resolution. The 1989 cold fusion announcement by Martin Fleischmann and , hyped as a low-energy nuclear breakthrough, exemplifies this: postmodern accounts portray its acceptance as socially constructed enthusiasm overriding skepticism, yet over 100 replication attempts by 1990 failed to produce consistent emissions or excesses under controlled , leading to consensus rejection based on empirical inconsistency rather than mere persuasion. This self-correction via —absent in relativist explanations prioritizing interpretive negotiation—highlights how constructivism selectively amplifies anomalies to undermine objectivity without accounting for the causal feedback from discrepant data that stabilizes mature sciences. Relativism's empirical deficits manifest in modern policy arenas, where narrative-driven dismissal of causal hypotheses delays evidence-based action. During the origins probe, the laboratory-incident scenario—supported by the Institute of Virology's documented gain-of-function experiments on bat coronaviruses and biosafety lapses reported in 2018 U.S. Department cables—was initially marginalized as conspiratorial or xenophobic, favoring zoonotic spillover narratives despite no identified intermediate host by 2025. This prioritization of social acceptability over hypothesis testing, as critiqued by former New York Times science writer Donald McNeil who shifted from advocacy after reviewing proximal evidence like the virus's engineered-like furin cleavage site, exemplifies relativism's hindrance to causal realism, potentially forestalling reforms in high-risk research oversight.

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