Furthermore, an Aussie biologist, “Walter Starck[, suggests] the problem is that the postmodernists using their position of influence in academia and their predominance in the government funded education sector are levelling the playing field and demanding that there be no objective truth anywhere so my truth can be as good as your truth.”
MORE AT
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/05/postmodern-physics/

For PoMo’s political power is “the final solution,” according to Dr Starck.

I think what is happening here is a historian writing provocatively and in a kind of in-your-face way–although not actually espousing full relativism–and then a pro-science reviewer overreacting. Both are, I suspect, at fault…

PoMo was powerful. In a recent article critical of the humanities posted at Inside Higher Ed, English profs reacted dismissively, sounding just like global warming “climate scientists,” stating “we’ve moved on,” even as a grad student contradicted the chorus.

“Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose.”

Pissing contests between tenured 50 year old adolecents seems to interest ‘scientists’ more than science.

All this can be brushed under the table if one adopts a pragmatic approach, which is resistant to the post-positivist critique because it more-or-less accepts that it has force. This is largely the approach of people who take Anderson’s “More Is Different” approach to Physics, say (ZapperZ recently re-affirmed Anderson’s point of view in an interesting way, http://physicsandphysicists.blogspot.com/2009/05/more-really-is-different.html; Zz cannot be accused of being post-modernist, but his attitudes show a quite sophisticated accommodation in response to the post-modernist critique).

Alternatively one can assert that your choice of theory /is/ uniquely preferred, which is the approach that string theorists have taken, say. This is resistant to the post-positivist critique because one’s head is so obviously in the sand that almost no-one else can be bothered to point out that one should open one’s eyes. This approach seems unlikely to be resistant to the continuing detailed evolution of the post-positivist critique for ever.

The PoMo critique, however, goes too far, because it gives no weight (or at best minimal weight) to the relationship between theory and experimental data. This is a step too far, because there is a pragmatic relationship, albeit it is difficult to characterize, which is why the PoMo challenge has faded. The PoMo challenge is remarkably non-constructive, or even destructive of pragmatically useful approaches, which even people who might be generally critical of some of the hegemonic attitudes expressed by Physicists could not fail to notice.

So, are there still some scientists looking for a theory of everything? Take a look at those involved with string theory and filling in the holes of the Standard Model. Maybe they are.

If this claim in that review is true: “Fara writes, for example, that the ancient Greeks’ attempts to understand the cosmos were inextricably entwined with their view of it as a divine, therefore mathematically perfect, creation.” then the book is absolutely a waste of money because it is obviously a matter of the author’s own personal opinions and unsubstantiated beliefs rather than an objective work on history.

The term “science” also appears to be abused. Humans, when they have time to think, generally try to learn new things. In the past few hundred years that fuzzy thing we call the “scientific method” has been generally acknowledged to be the best way to establish hypotheses. You come up with an idea and a means to test it, then perform experiments. If your conclusions are correct then others can perform tests of their own and should come up with corroborating evidence. I do not know to what degree hypotheses would have been tested 2000 years ago, but even in contemporary society there are many ridiculous claims made from a point of authority rather than based on evidence and it is likely that such nonsense was far more prevalent in ancient society and its meager educational systems. If one can claim that the ancient Babylonians had ‘science’, they had better distinguish it from our modern understanding of what science is.

I also find it absolutely bizarre that the reviewer would make this statement: “Science is an impressive antidote to the idea of scientific endeavour as a straight line of progress.” I am not aware of any scientist who has such a silly belief that scientific endeavor is a “straight line of progress” (whatever the hell that means). Is the reviewer implying that there are people who believe in a “Big Plan” for science and that all scientists are following that magical plan? Rubbish! The closest to such nonsense that I can imagine are bestseller managers (people who buy the latest bestseller book on management and become a better manager overnight) spouting nonsense such as “we will only fund successful projects”.

Both of us need to go back and read the words of the actual author.

On Amazon, the product description for the book by Fara includes the following two sentences (again not the words of the author):

“Finally, this provocative volume challenges scientific supremacy itself, arguing that science is successful not because it is always indubitably right, but because people have said that it is right. Science dominates modern life, but perhaps the globe will be better off by limiting science’s powers and undoing some of its effects.”

I think that we need to draw a line between “Science” and human interpretation. What people have claimed is right and what people have done with the knowledge that they have acquired or that portion of their knowledge that they are willing to use is not necessarily scientific. I think that this concept is key to combating scientific illiteracy.

It seems to me that saying one is going to limit science’s powers and undo some of its effects is sort of like trying to reduce the possibility of nuclear war by deciding not to have atoms.