A Minor Episode in the Science Wars

Jonathan Marks (2009) describes a minor episode in the science wars that illustrates the problem that arise when discussing the socially constructed aspects of scientific knowledge and meanings.

The Journal of Molecular Evolution in 2000 includes a minimally referenced “Opinion” essay, written by the editor in chief, the distinguished biochemist Emile Zuckerkandl. The essay – titled “Social constructionism, a lost cause” – protests strongly against an article published in Science that same year by the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. Something Gould said about the “science wars” (described below) caused Zuckerkandl to self-publish a response defending the objectivity of science.

Zuckerkandl (2000) “defends science” by making a distinction between “the process of discovery” and the later stages of maturity and stability of scientific knowledge. “Society does intervene in some important ways in the acquisition of scientific knowledge,” he concedes, “yet, at the end of the day, none of these ways affects the content of the scientific product.” The claim is not referenced. We cannot know whether he believes that what he is saying is common knowledge, or if he is simply making it up, oblivious to the difficulties in making such broad declarations.
Jonathan Marks, Why I Am Not a Scientist, pp. 14-17.

Notice that Zuckerkandl – a prominent natural scientist (biochemist) – is making a claim about the socio-historical analysis of science. He is not speaking from his domain of expertise. His essay is an “opinion” piece, after all, not a research article.

What did Gould say to provoke the Zuckerkandl’s passionate defense of scientific objectivity? Basically, he described the “science wars” as based on a false choice between being a scientist (realist) and humanities or social science scholar (relativist).

Here is how Gould describes the “science wars”:

The two sides in this hypothetical struggle have been dubbed “realists” (including nearly all working scientists), who uphold the objectivity and progressive nature of scientific knowledge, and “relativists” (nearly all housed in faculties of the humanities and social sciences within our universities), who recognize the culturally embedded status of all claims for universal factuality and who regard science as just one system of belief among many alternatives, all worthy of equal weight because the very concept of “scientific truth” can only represent a social construction invented by scientists (whether consciously or not) as a device to justify their hegemony over the study of nature.
From the first page of Gould, S. J. (2000). Deconstructing the” science wars” by reconstructing an old mold.

Gould’s article then makes an erudite (perhaps long-winded) argument that the battle between realists and relativists is a false dichotomy. He says numerous well-measured things that are either conciliatory or balanced. To give one example:

The very concept of a science war only expresses a basically silly myth, rooted in our propensity for devising dichotomous schemes and supported by the invention of nonexistent, caricatured end-members to serve as straw men in a self-serving rhetorical ploy that can only generate heat without light. (And I do pronounce a plague on this tendency within both houses. Social commentators may be more guilty in their frequent mischaracterization of working scientists; but some scientists have constructed equally misleading, and basically philistine, images of social critics out to trash any statement about an ascertainable fact in an objective external world.)

Most working scientists may be naive about the history of their discipline and therefore overly susceptible to the lure of objectivist mythology. But I have never met a pure scientific realist who views social context as entirely irrelevant, or only as an enemy to be expunged by the twin lights of universal reason and incontrovertible observation. And surely, no working scientist can espouse pure relativism at the other pole of the dichotomy.

Similarly, and ignoring some self-promoting and cynical rhetoricians, I have never met a serious social critic or historian of science who espoused anything close to a doctrine of pure relativism. The true, insightful, and fundamental statement that science, as a quintessentially human activity, must reflect a surrounding social context does not imply either that no accessible external reality exists, or that science, as a socially embedded and constructed institution, cannot achieve progressively more adequate understanding of nature’s facts and mechanisms.

The social and historical analysis of science poses no threat to the institution’s core assumption about the existence of an accessible “real world” that we have actually managed to understand with increasing efficacy, thus validating the claim that science, in some meaningful sense, “progresses.” Rather, scientists should cherish good historical analysis for two primary reasons: (1) Real, gutsy, flawed socially embedded history of science is so immeasurably more interesting and accurate than the usual cardboard pap about marches to truth fueled by universal and disembodied weapons of reason and observation (“the scientific method”) against antiquated dogmas and social constraints. (2) This more sophisticated social and historical analysis can aid both the institution of science and the work of scientists – the institution, by revealing science as an accessible form of human creativity, not as an arcane enterprise hostile to ordinary thought and feeling, and open only to a trained priesthood; the individual, by fracturing the objectivist myth that can only generate indifference to self-examination, and by encouraging study and scrutiny of the social contexts that channel our thinking and the attracted and innate biases (Bacon’s idols) that frustrate our potential creativity.
Gould (2000)

For Your Notebook: From the quotes above, would you describe Gould’s position on the “science wars” as conciliatory and balanced? If so, what explains Zuckerkandl’s passionate response?

What do philosophically minded scientists like Gould and Marks mean by the cultural construction of a natural fact? What exactly is it that they are acknowledging about scientific knowledge? And why do some other scientists disagree so vehemently?

In an attempt to answer this question, recall that Jonathan Marks (2009) gives an example of the cultural construction of a natural fact: the extraordinary genetic similarity of human and ape. What does it mean that – by some genetic measures – humans are 98% chimpanzee?

It is not entirely clear that the discovery of the genetic near-identity of human and ape is strange or paradoxical in the first place. In fact the genetic relationship basically replicates the anatomical relationship: in the great panoply of life’s diversity, humans and apes are very, very similar, yet diagnosably different, throughout. The idea that the 98% genetic similarity of human and ape is and that this natural fact has a self-evident meaning, which is somehow counterintuitive, is simply the result of two cultural facts: our familiarity with the ape’s body, and our unfamiliarity with genetic comparisons.

In other words, Zuckerkandl’s discovery that human and ape are merely abnormal variants of one another, surprisingly similar from the standpoint of hemoglobin (or protein and DNA sequences more generally), was a highly constructed fact. It is true enough that humans and chimps are more than 98 percent genetically identical, but it is not necessarily true that this is (a) more than, say, the similarity of a human and chimp femur, (b) “realer” than any sort of comparable measurement of the femur, or (c) higher than we should have anticipated.

Where, then, is the logic for assuming that the extent of our DNA matching is a measurement of our “true,” “deep,” or “real” similarity? The DNA matching is an arbitrary measurement – one of many many possible measurements. Direct DNA comparisons will not necessarily be highly informative, not obviously be highly profound. In fact, DNA comparisons of this kind are rendered meaningful or significant only in a cultural context – our current cultural context – that privileges genetic information, mystifies genetic information, and privileges easy-to-understand single variable comparisons like 98%.
Marks (2009)

In my personal opinion, the 98% chimpanzee story illustrates the socio-cultural dimension of the interpretation of a fact more than its production (which would involve explaining numerous technical decisions that influenced the final number).

Given the widespread epistemological problems of our cultural context (alternative facts, mis- and disinformation, science denial, and so on), maybe there are better ways of describing the social and cultural aspects of production of scientific knowledge.

Not the socio-cultural “construction” or “production” of a fact (out of what?), but the socio-cultural “extraction” of a fact (out of nature, our shared external reality). The fact is like a mineral that can be excavated from nature, which is like a mine. Almost everything about the process of extracting the mineral-fact from the mine of nature has a social dimension. Why choose to excavate this particular mineral-fact or mineral-facts of this kind? Can the mineral-fact, once extracted, be properly understood out of context? Is the mineral-fact representative of the contents of the mine?

Gould (2000) argues that the “science wars” is a silly myth: the “realists” (scientists), who uphold the objectivity and progressive nature of scientific knowledge, and “relativists” (humanities and social science faculty), who recognize the culturally embedded status of all claims, and who regard science as just one system of belief among many alternatives. Gould says these represent extreme positions that are not representative of either “side”.

But the debate known as the “science wars” was real. It continued for many years in the academic literature. Interestingly, some of the science studies scholars currently acknowledge that criticism (critical theory) of science may create a basis for antiscientific thinking and contribute to science denial. Bruno Latour said in a 2017 interview by De Vrieze:

Latour: Nothing that happened during the ’90s deserves the name “war.” It was a dispute, caused by social scientists studying how science is done and being critical of this process. Our analyses triggered a reaction of people with an idealistic and unsustainable view of science who thought they were under attack. … I certainly was not anti-science, although I must admit it felt good to put scientists down a little. There was some juvenile enthusiasm in my style. … We’re in a totally different situation now [with science denial]. We are indeed at war. …

De Vrieze: How do you explain the rise of antiscientific thinking and “alternative facts”?

Latour: To have common facts, you need a common reality. This needs to be instituted in church, classes, decent journalism, peer review. … It is not about posttruth, it is about the fact that large groups of people are living in a different world with different realities …

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A Minor Episode in the Science Wars

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