Dr Steve Steve
Another brief item. Something I noticed yesterday when coding Meera’s wonderful article – on the Amazon page for Prophets Facing Backward there is, of all things in the world, a recommendation by (wait for it) Steve Fuller. What does he say?
This first detailed examination of postmodernism’s politically reactionary consequences should serve as a wake-up call for all conscientious leftists.
Uh…hello? This is the same Steve Fuller – the very same Steve Fuller, my darlings – who testified for the defense – for the ID side – at Dover a few weeks ago. So – uh – uh – what can one possibly wonder other than ‘why didn’t he heed his own advice?’ Why didn’t he hear his own wake-up call? If he went back to sleep again, why didn’t he set the alarm? I mean – yo, talk about ‘postmodernism’s politically reactionary consequences’.
Oh well hang on, there’s no date on the reviews. Maybe he just wrote that. After Dover. Maybe he’s sitting at home all pink about the ears, having just read Meera’s book and feeling like a damn fool. Or…maybe he doesn’t include himself among conscientious leftists? Or maybe he thinks ID is about epistemically reactionary consequences but nothing at all to do with politically reactionary ones? Oh who knows. But anyway, it’s a puzzle.
In 1998 Fuller wrote
“What we find is that science is not a clearly defined activity. Rather, it is many different activities that are typically connected more to their social context than to each other. At any point in its history, science could have gone in many directions. The few paths actually taken have been due to ambient political, economic and cultural factors. There appears to be nothing uniquely ‘rational’, ‘objective’, or ‘truth-oriented’ about the activities our society calls ‘scientific’.”
http://members.tripod.com/~ScienceWars/indoo.html
> The few paths actually taken have been due to ambient political, economic and cultural factors.< Notice something missing there. See also his credo at
http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~sysdt/socialepist.html
What is Social Epistemology?
“The question for social episemologists, the, is whether science’s actual conduct is worthy of its exalted social status and what political implications follow from one’s answer. Those who say ‘yes’ assume that science is on the right track and offer guidance on whom people should believe from among competing experts, whereas those who say ‘no’ address the more fundamental issue of determining the sort of knowledge that people need and the conditions under which it ought to be produced and distributed.”
http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~sysdt/socialepist.html
There’s no doubt from the webpage and his writings that Fuller takes the ‘no’ position, what he calls “addressing the more fundamental issue”, i.e., he advocates downplaying the role of “experts” – as he did in the Dover ID court hearing – in favour of determining (by whom? I suspect he would say by democratic means) “the sort of knowledge that people need”.
“There appears to be nothing uniquely ‘rational’, ‘objective’, or ‘truth-oriented’ about the activities our society calls ‘scientific’.””
Absolutely true, as long as we understand that the key word is ‘uniquely’. Typical straw man stuff, in that to say that something isn’t ‘uniquely’ x doesn’t mean that it isn’t x. No scientist would claim that science is the only rational, objective, truth-oriented activity. There are many such activities – e.g. fixing a car engine, looking up the football scores, or consulting a map to find your way somewhere.
The other straw man is science’s alleged exalted social position (if only!).
Still, if such people are finally waking up to the reactionary implications of the stuff they’ve been pushing all these years, so much the better.
Allen Esterson commented on a quote from Fuller:
“> The few paths actually taken have been due to ambient political, economic and cultural factors.< Notice something missing there.
“
It’s not only missing there. Fuller assumes everywhere that his version of how science is done is correct. I wonder on what basis anyone is to make a proper choice between his ideas and the scientists’ own view of what they are about?
Suppose someone said to him that he is not mistaken but untruthful. How could he show this claim to be incorrect? He would have to show that his ideas correspond to reality. Yet he seems to reject the idea that scientific ideas change in accordance with experimental results. So would he too not be acting merely according to “ambient political, economic and cultural factors” ? Where lies the difference between what scientists do and what he thinks he is doing?