Antiscience

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Antiscience is a position critical of science and the scientific method. People who hold antiscientific views tend to do so for a variety of reasons and often see science as a non-objective method generating non-universal knowledge. Moreover, these thinkers see scientific reductionism as flawed and criticise what they believe to be the excessive power & influence of science. Many also object to what they perceive as an arrogant or closed-minded attitude amongst scientists. Antiscience has been used to refer to both the New Age and postmodernist movements associated with the political Left, and to socially conservative and fundamentalist movements associated with the political Right.

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[edit] Political antiscience

[edit] Left-wing antiscience

One way the antiscience view is expressed is in the "denial of universality and... legitimisation of alternatives,"[1] and that "the results of scientific findings [do]... not represent any underlying reality, but are purely the ideology of dominant groups within society."[1]

In this view, science is associated with the political Right and is seen as a belief system that is deeply conservative and conformist, that suppresses innovation, that resists change and that acts dictatorially. This includes the view, for example, that science has a "bourgeois and/or Eurocentric and/or masculinist world-view... and [that] various ethnic groups... would have to develop their own forms of science which need not be as intellectually demanding as the Western male variety."[1]

Some of these impressions about science arise from its preference for quantification, (counting and measuring) and the implication that true knowledge can only be obtained in that way. Another source is its preference for averaging that can be perceived, which is seen as a denial of the validity of individual experience. Some of these impressions also arise from the stream of cynical or dismissive rhetoric that flows from some members of the scientific community against religion, feminism, the arts, some areas of philosophy, relativism, pluralism, cultural diversity, alternative medicine, post-modernism, etc.

These comments are seen as inflammatory and are seen by some as evidence of an arrogant unitarianism within science and of its attempts to annexe fields outside its natural domain. Such comments can also give science an appearance of a lack of humanity and serve to reinforce the impression that it has no interest in exploring complex solutions to complex matters, preferring instead to stress an undue oversimplification in all its investigations.

[edit] Conservative antiscience

In this context, antiscience may be considered dependent on established moral and cultural arguments. There are many modern examples of conservative antiscience, primary among these are arguments against stem cell research, abortion, evolutionary theory, and environmental protection issues such as global warming. As the basis for any particular conclusion, an individual who holds these beliefs may cite ethical/religious/economic concerns; in comparison to liberal views, which pronounce human rights, women's rights, and altogether more libertarian perspectives, as those issues which deserve primary attention.

[edit] Religious antiscience

Main article: Relationship between religion and science

A frequent basis of antiscientific views is literalist or fundamentalist theism. Here, any scientific findings that conflict with what is seen as divinely-inspired knowledge are regarded as flawed. Over the centuries such conservative thinkers have opposed such ideas as heliocentrism, planetary motion and, more recently, the theory of evolution.

In the modern world, major theistic conflict still exists in the area of evolution, with such schools of thought as creationism and its offshoot intelligent design remaining popular beliefs.[2]

[edit] Three areas of antiscience

Historically, antiscience first arose as a reaction against scientific materialism. The 18th century Enlightenment had ushered in "the ideal of a unified system of all the sciences,"[3] but there were those fearful of this notion, who "felt that constrictions of reason and science, of a single all-embracing system... were in some way constricting, an obstacle to their vision of the world, chains on their imagination or feeling."[3] Antiscience then is a rejection of "the scientific model [or paradigm]... with its strong implication that only that which was quantifiable, or at any rate, measurable... was real."[3] In this sense, it comprises a "critical attack upon the total claim of the new scientific method to dominate the entire field of human knowledge."[3]

Three major areas of antiscience can be seen in philosophy, sociology and ecology. The following quotes explore this aspect of the subject.

[edit] Philosophy

Philosophical objections against science are often objections about the role of reductionism. For example, in the field of psychology, "both reductionists and antireductionists accept that... non-molecular explanations may not be improved, corrected or grounded in molecular ones." [4] Further, "epistemological antireductionism holds that, given our finite mental capacities, we would not be able to grasp the ultimate physical explanation of many complex phenomena even if we knew the laws governing their ultimate constituents."[5] Some see antiscience as "common...in academic settings...many people confuse science, scientism and pseudoscience, resulting in an antiscience stance. Some argue that nothing can be known for sure." [6]

Many scholars are "divided as to whether reduction should be a central strategy for understanding the world."[7] However, many agree that "there are, nevertheless, reasons why we want science to discover properties and explanations other than reductive physical ones." [7] Such issues stem "from an antireductionist worry that there is no absolute conception of reality, that is, a characterization of reality such as... science claims to provide." [8] This is close to the Kantian view that reality is ultimately unknowable and all models are just imperfect approximations to it.

[edit] Sociology

Sociologist Thomas Gieryn refers to "some sociologists who might appear to be antiscience."[9] Some "philosophers and antiscience types," he contends, may have presented "unreal images of science that threaten the believability of scientific knowledge,"[9] or appear to have gone "too far in their antiscience deconstructions."[9] The question often lies in how far scientists can be said to really conform to the standard stereotype of "communalism, universalism, disinterestedness, originality, and... skepticism."[9] Unfortunately, "scientists don't always conform... scientists do get passionate about pet theories; they do rely on reputation in judging a scientist's work; they do pursue fame and gain via research."[9] Thus, they do show inherent biases in their work. Many "scientists are not as rational and logical as the legend would have them, nor are they as illogical or irrational as some relativists might say."[9] On very rare occasions, they have also been shown to invent false data. Example, Sir Cyril Burt (1883-1971), "the British psychologist widely accused of publishing a fraudulent series of separated-twin studies, among other unethical practices." [10]

[edit] Ecology and health sphere

Within the ecological and health spheres, Levins identifies a conflict "not between science and antiscience, but rather between different pathways for science and technology; between a commodified science-for-profit and a gentle science for humane goals; between the sciences of the smallest parts and the sciences of dynamic wholes... [he] offers proposals for a more holistic, integral approach to understanding and addressing environmental issues." [11] These beliefs are also common within the scientific community, with for example, scientists being prominent in environmental campaigns warning of environmental dangers such as ozone depletion and the greenhouse effect. It can also be argued that this version of antiscience comes close to that found in the medical sphere where patients and practitioners may choose to reject reductionism and adopt a more holistic approach to health problems. This can be both a practical and a conceptual shift and has attracted strong criticism: "therapeutic touch, a healing technique based upon the laying-on of hands, has found wide acceptance in the nursing profession despite its lack of scientific plausibility. Its acceptance is indicative of a broad antiscientific trend in nursing." [12]

Glazer also criticises the therapists and patients, "for abandoning the biological underpinnings of nursing and for misreading philosophy in the service of an antiscientific world-view,"[12] On the other hand, these practices can be regarded as simply means to make people feel better, rather than with any wholesale abandonment of biological underpinnings and the objections of such critics can be regarded as deriving from their adherence to accepted theories and science norms.

Brian Martin provides a view of the conflict between science and antiscience: "Gross and Levitt's basic approach is to attack constructivists for not being positivists."[13] Science is "presented as a unitary object, usually identified with scientific knowledge. It is portrayed as neutral and objective. Second, science is claimed to be under attack by 'antiscience' which is composed essentially of ideologues who are threats to the neutrality and objectivity that are fundamental to science. Third, a highly selective attack is made on the arguments of 'antiscience'."[13] Such people allegedly then "routinely equate critique of scientific knowledge with hostility to science, a jump that is logically unsupportable and empirically dubious."[13] Having then "constructed two artificial entities, a unitary 'science' and a unitary 'academic left', each reduced to epistemological essences, Gross and Levitt proceed to attack. They pick out figures in each of several areas -- science studies, postmodernism, feminism, environmentalism, AIDS activism -- and criticise their critiques of science."[13]

The writings of Young serve to illustrate more rhetorical antiscience outpourings: "The strength of the antiscience movement and of alternative technology is that their advocates have managed to retain Utopian vision while still trying to create concrete instances of it."[14] "the real social, ideological and economic forces shaping science...[have] been opposed to the point of suppression in many quarters. Most scientists hate it and label it 'antiscience'. But it is urgently needed, because it makes science self-conscious and hopefully self-critical and accountable with respect to the forces which shape research priorities, criteria, goals."[14]

[edit] Opposition to reductionism and positivism

The limitations of the quantitative scientific approach are apparent when it steps into the social and human sphere with an overly simplistic mathematical and reductionist approach.

[edit] Failure to appreciate subtle complexity

The formulas of mathematical models are "artificial constructions, logical figments with no necessary relation to the outside world." [Berlin, 2000, 123]. These models always "leave out the richest and most important part of human experience...daily life, history, human laws and institutions, the modes of human self- expression." [Berlin, 2000, 110] A failure to appreciate the subtle complexity of social worlds, means they get excluded from the formulas, even though, “no easy reductionism will do justice to the material.” [Coleman] This approach often fails to concentrate “on social structures, processes, and actions in a specific sense (inequality, mobility, classes, strata, ethnicity, gender relations, urbanization, work and life of different types of people, not just elites),” [Kocka] and so tends to generate mostly meaningless oversimplifications.

[edit] Math can achieve nothing in the moral sphere

Algebra may seem like some "unshakable deductive edifice, but it cannot give us factual information, any more than a game or a piece of fiction, which we have made up can, as such, describe the world to us. Mathematics is not determined by reality outside itself, to which it has to conform, but only by our own fancy or creative imagination, which moulds the material as it pleases." [Berlin, 2000, 36] Mathematics and logic "are not forms of discovery at all but of invention." [Berlin, 2000, 41] There thus exists an irreconcilable "logical gulf between mathematical truths and those of fact," [Berlin, 2000, 198] or, as Goethe said, mathematics "can achieve nothing in the moral sphere." [Berlin, 2000, 287 footnote]

[edit] From reductionism to positivism

This basically comes down to the issue of positivism, which is "the view that all true knowledge is scientific," [Bullock & Trombley] and that all things are ultimately measurable.

Because of its "close association with reductionism," [ibid] it is worth saying that positivism and reductionism involve the view that "entities of one kind...are reducible to entities of another," [ibid] such as societies to numbers, or mental events to chemical events. It also involves the contention that "processes are reducible to physiological, physical or chemical events," [ibid] and even that "social processes are reducible to relationships between and actions of individuals," [ibid] or that "biological organisms are reducible to physical systems." [ibid]

This is precisely why many social and environmental thinkers, historians, philosophers, ecofeminists, etc. roundly condemn the approach of science when it is inappropriately applied in the inherently more complex social sphere. In doing so, they adopt an essentially antiscience stance.

[edit] Sorel's Antiscience

As Berlin has demonstrated, the French philosopher, Georges Sorel was clearly a holder of antiscience views.

[edit] Science is not reality

He dismissed science as "a system of idealised entities: atoms, electric charges, mass, energy and the like–fictions compounded out of observed uniformities…deliberately adapted to mathematical treatment that enable men to identify some of the furniture of the universe, and to predict and…control parts of it." [1; 301] He regarded science more as "an achievement of the creative imagination, not an accurate reproduction of the structure of reality, not a map, still less a picture, of what there was. Outside of this set of formulas, of imaginary entities and mathematical relationships in terms of which the system was constructed, there was ‘natural’ nature–the real thing…" [1; 302] He regarded such a view as "an odious insult to human dignity, a mockery of the proper ends of men," [1; 300] and ultimately constructed by "fanatical pedants," [1; 303] out of "abstractions into which men escape to avoid facing the chaos of reality." [1; 302]

[edit] Science is not nature

As far as Sorel was concerned, "nature is not a perfect machine, nor an exquisite organism, nor a rational system." [1; 302] He rejected the view that "the methods of natural science can explain and explain away ideas and values…or explain human conduct in mechanistic or biological terms, as the…blinkered adherents of la petite science believe." [1; 310] He also maintained that the categories we impose upon the world, "alter what we call reality…they do not establish timeless truths as the positivists maintained," [1; 302] and to "confuse our own constructions with eternal laws or divine decrees is one of the most fatal delusions of men." [1; 303] It is "ideological patter…bureaucracy, la petite science…the Tree of Knowledge has killed the Tree of Life…human life [has been reduced] to rules that seem to be based on objective truths." [1; 303] Such to Sorel, is the appalling arrogance of science, a vast deceit of the imagination, a view that conspires to "stifle the sense of common humanity and destroy human dignity." [1; 304]

[edit] Science is not a recipe

Science, he maintained, "is not a ‘mill’ into which you can drop any problem facing you, and which yields solutions," [1; 311] that are automatically true and authentic. Yet, this is precisely how too many people seem to regard it.

To Sorel, that is way "too much of a conceptual, ideological construction," [1; 312] smothering our perception of truth through the "stifling oppression of remorselessly tidy rational organisation." [1; 321] For Sorel, the inevitable "consequence of the modern scientific movement and the application of scientific categories and methods to the behaviour of men," [1; 323] is an outburst of interest in irrational forces, religions, social unrest, criminality and deviance - resulting directly from an overzealous and monistic obsession with scientific rationalism.

And what science confers, "a moral grandeur, bureaucratic organisation of human lives in the light of…la petite science, positivist application of quasi-scientific rules to society–all this Sorel despised and hated," [1; 328] as so much self-delusion and nonsense that generates no good and nothing of lasting value. In essence, something of a Romantic like Blake, Sorel would say, "the artist creates as the bird sings on the bough, as the lily bursts into flower, to all appearance for no ulterior purpose." [2; 196]

Above quotations from:

  • [1] Sir Isaiah Berlin, Against The Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, London: Pimlico, 1997
  • [2] Sir Isaiah Berlin, The Sense of Reality - Studies in Ideas and Their History, London: Pimlico, 1996

[edit] Levins's Antiscience

A significant modern holder of antiscience views is Richard Levins, "whose central intellectual concern has been the understanding and influencing of processes in complex systems...finding the appropriate ways to visualize complex phenomena...[and] concentrating on the whole-system approach." [1]

Like others who have become disenchanted with the limitations of simple reductionism for yielding meaningful answers for complex problems, Levins deliberately seeks complex solutions, and adopts a holistic approach.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Sean Robsville "Postmodernism - a threat to Buddhism?": Personal website
  2. ^ Jon D. Miller, Eugenie C. Scott, Shinji Okamoto Public Acceptance of Evolution Science 11 August 2006: Vol. 313. no. 5788, pp. 765 - 766
  3. ^ a b c d Isaiah Berlin, The Proper Study of Mankind, London: Pimlico, 1997, p328
  4. ^ Alex Rosenberg and D. M. Kaplan "How to Reconcile Physicalism and Antireductionism about Biology" Philosophy of Science 72 (January 2005) pp. 43-68
  5. ^ Nagel T. "Reductionism and antireductionism." Novartis Found Symp. 1998;213:3-10; discussion 10-4, 73-5.
  6. ^ Eileen Gambrill, Evidence based practice, an alternative to authority based practice, Families in Society, the Journal of Contemporary Human Services, 80.4, 1999, 341-350
  7. ^ a b Todd Jones, Reductionism and Antireductionism: Rights and Wrongs, Metaphilosophy, Volume 35, Number 5, October 2004, pp. 614-647
  8. ^ Peter W. Ross and Dale Turner, "Sensibility Theory and Conservative Complacency"
  9. ^ a b c d e f Thomas F. Gieryn, Book Review of John Ziman. Real Science: What it is and What it Means, Cambridge: Cambridge, University Press, 2000, Isis, vol. 93 (2002), pp. 544–545
  10. ^ Raymond E. Fancher "Science, Ideology, and the Media: The Cyril Burt Scandal." Science, Sept 27, 1991 v253 n5027 p1565(2)
  11. ^ Richard Levins, Whose Scientific Method? Scientific Methods for a Complex World, New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy,Vol.13,3, 2003, 261-274
  12. ^ a b Sarah Glazer, "Therapeutic touch and postmodernism in nursing", Nursing Philosophy (2001) 2(3), 196-212.
  13. ^ a b c d Brian Martin, Social Construction of an 'Attack on Science', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 26, No. 1, February 1996, pp. 161-173.
  14. ^ a b Robert M. Young, Science is Social Relations

[edit] Bibliography

  • Burger, P and Luckman, T, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966
  • Collins, Harry and Pinch, Trevor, The Golem. What everyone should know about science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993
  • Gross, Paul R and Norman Levitt, Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994
  • Knorr-Cetina, Karin D, & Mulkay, Michael, Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science, Sage Publications Ltd, 1983
  • Knorr-Cetina, Karin D, Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge, Harvard University Press, 1999
  • Levins, R. "Ten propositions on science and antiscience" in Social Text, 46/47:101–111, 1996.
  • Levins, R. "Touch Red," in Judy Kaplan an Linn Shapiro, eds., Red Diapers: Growing up in the Communist Left, U. of Illinois, 1998, pp. 257-266.
  • Levins, R. Dialectics and systems theory in Science and Society 62(3):373-399, 1998.
  • Levins, R. "The internal and external in explanatory theories", Science as Culture, 7(4):557–582, 1998.
  • Levins, R. and Lopez C. "Toward an ecosocial view of health", International Journal of Health Services 29(2):261-293, 1999.
  • Nye, Andrea, Words of Power: A Feminist Reading of the History of Logic, London: Routledge, 1990
  • Pepper, David, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism, London: Routledge, 1989
  • Vining, Joseph, On the Future of Total Theory: Science, Antiscience, and Human Candor, Erasmus Institute papers, 1999

[edit] External links

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