Facing Up: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries

by Steven Weinberg

In a recent New York Times profile, James Glanz remarked, "Steven Weinberg is perhaps the world's most authoritative proponent of the idea that physics is hurtling toward a 'final theory,' a complete explanation of nature's particles and forces that will endure as the bedrock of all science forevermore. He is also a powerful writer of prose that can illuminate--and sting...He recently received the Lewis Thomas Prize, awarded to the researcher who best embodies 'the scientist as poet.'" Both the brilliant scientist and the provocative writer are fully present in this book as Weinberg pursues his principal passions, theoretical physics and a deeper understanding of the culture, philosophy, history, and politics of science. Each of these essays, which span fifteen years, struggles in one way or another with the necessity of facing up to the discovery that the laws of nature are impersonal, with no hint of a special status for human beings. Defending the spirit of science against its cultural adversaries, these essays express a viewpoint that is reductionist, realist, and devoutly secular. Each is preceded by a new introduction that explains its provenance and, if necessary, brings it up to date. Together, they afford the general reader the unique pleasure of experiencing the superb sense, understanding, and knowledge of one of the most interesting and forceful scientific minds of our era.

Genres: Science, Physics, Philosophy, Religion, History, Astronomy

306 pages, Hardcover

First published October 31, 2001

About the author

Steven Weinberg (1933-2021) was an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles.

He held the Josey Regental Chair in Science at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a member of the Physics and Astronomy Departments. His research on elementary particles and physical cosmology was honored with numerous prizes and awards, including in 1979 the Nobel Prize in Physics and in 1991 the National Medal of Science. In 2004 he received the Benjamin Franklin Medal of the American Philosophical Society, with a citation that said he was "considered by many to be the preeminent theoretical physicist alive in the world today." He was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences and Britain's Royal Society, as well as to the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Weinberg's articles on various subjects occasionally appeared in The New York Review of Books and other periodicals. He served as consultant at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, President of the Philosophical Society of Texas, and member of the Board of Editors of Daedalus magazine, the Council of Scholars of the Library of Congress, the JASON group of defense consultants, and many other boards and committees.

Reviews

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Defending science

This collection of twenty-three essays by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist are drawn from various publications and talks that Professor Weinberg has given over the last few years. The subjects range from defenses of reductionism and Zionism to spats with social constructionists (including his essay on the Sokal Hoax), to debates about the history of science and the prospects for utopia to the anthropic principle and final theories in physics. They have in common, besides Weinberg's well-mannered and modest (but not self-deprecating) prose, a belief in the advancement of scientific knowledge, and a criticism of mysticism, religion and ignorance. I found myself in substantial agreement with Weinberg on almost every subject, and in admiration of his measured, fair and very wise expression.

In the essay, "Confronting O'Brien" (that's the O'Brien of Orwell's 1984), Weinberg makes it clear where he stands on the possibility of two plus two equaling five, or on the so-called "strong" social constructionist view of scientific knowledge. He writes that while "there is no such thing as a clear and universal ‘scientific method’", nonetheless, "under the general heading of scientific method" there is "a committment to reason...and a deference to observation and experiment," and "Above all...a respect for reality as something outside ourselves, that we explore but do not create." (p. 43)

In the chapter, "The Non-Revolution of Thomas Kuhn," Weinberg writes that "the task of science is to bring us closer and closer to objective truth." It is here that I demur. I think it would be better to say that science more and more allows us to better manipulate the environment to our advantage (or disadvantage!) and to see further into that environment--to smaller phenomena, more distant objects, and more clearly into the past and the present--rather than to speak of "objective truth," which in this context is little different from "ultimate truth," or a "final theory of everything." The dream of "objective truth" is the dream of religion and is anathema to Weinberg's sentiments elsewhere in the book. Note, however, that he carefully writes, "closer and closer to objective truth." That's a nice qualification, but I think he should have qualified the notion of "objective truth" as well.

But Prof. Weinberg is not without the means for having fun with his listeners and readers. He writes on page 87 from a talk to the National Association of Scholars about the scientific method, that "There is one philosophic principle that I find of use here...[that] there is a kind of zing--to use the best word I can think of--that is quite unmistakable when real scientific progress is being made." Clearly he is playing with the notion of a "philosophic" principle. Indeed, on the last page of the book he confesses, "I don't believe it is actually possible to prove anything about most of the things (apart from mathematical logic) that they [philosophers] argue about."

Proving that he is not hopelessly locked into a finite but unbounded universe, he notes several times in the book that the universe may be infinite; indeed one of the chapters is entitled, "Before the Big Bang." He also writes, "Chaotic inflation has in a sense revived the idea of a steady state theory in a grander form; our own Big Bang may be just one episode in a much larger universe that on average never changes." (pp. 176-177)

Weinberg's sense of humor is rather dry. While scolding journalists for writing that the Big Bang theory is unravelling, he observes (p. 175), "Journalists generally have no bias toward one cosmological theory or another, but many have a natural preference for excitement." Or, his take off on Kuhn's repeated and grandiose use of the word "paradigm" (after noting a paradigm shift from Aristotelian to Newtonian physics): "Now that really was a paradigm shift. For Kuhn it seems to have been the paradigm of paradigm shifts..." (p. 204)

Also: "Any possible universe could be explained as the work of some sort of designer. Even a universe that is completely chaotic...could be supposed to have been designed by an idiot." (p. 232) Or (same page), "The human mind remains extraordinarily difficult to understand, but so is the weather."

Weinberg's critique of religion takes no prisoners. He writes (p. 241), "...on balance the moral influence of religion has been awful." He adds, "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil--that takes religion." (p. 242) He got a lot of flak for that, but considering the situation in the Middle East, his words seem prescient, although he was merely glancing back at history.

My favorite essays are the ones on the argument from design, the critique of Thomas Kuhn's thought, and the chapter on utopias. In the first he makes a neat distinction between anthropic reasoning that is "mystical mumbo jumbo," and that which is "just common sense." (p. 238) In the latter, while denigrating the prospect of a technological utopia, he writes that a world without work, a world in which people instead pursue the arts, science, etc., would be unsatisfactory (actually he mentions "general misery") because "there is only so much new literature...only so much new music," etc. to see and hear, and with so much competition, our work would get but scant notice. I really didn't understand this because people will make work where there is none, even if it is only working on their psyches and those of their friends, their bodies, etc. And besides, where is the end of exploring and of learning? Furthermore, the real joy is in the doing, not in the being noticed.

Perhaps this reveals part of Steven Weinberg's personality to us. He is a man who has done the very best work while being noticed at the highest level. What he writes is very much worth our time and consideration.

--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”

[Rex · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the very best book solely focusing on the methodology of Science; scientific Research as an academic as well as a social institution; and relationship between social progression and scientific advancement. If reflects why some basic knowledge we took it for granted may not be that obvious (such as naive anti-vaccine movement right now.) Epistemology needs promotion. Knowledge did not come from nowhere but the research and development of great minds, scientists, technologists, researchers, teachers, communicators, and students.

[Brett Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a series of essays from the 1980s and ‘90s. It starts slow and a bit nostalgic, protesting Reagan’s SDI without realizing, maybe ever, that products of that program’s success have been among us for decades. The PAC-3 missile interceptor, now defending Ukraine from Putin’s (not) “undefeatable” “Mach 10” Dagar missile, is one example (starting with 13 out of 13 kills on Day One). PAC-3 was the first SDI program developed as SR-HIT in the early 80s. Once Weinberg addresses the title of his book, “Science and Its Cultural Adversaries,” it picks up, but it takes a while, and for me, with a bit too much decorum for the anti-science movement on the New Left.

When Weinberg discusses scientific “consensus,” it can sound like he’s addressing that talking point of the New Right in their denials of manmade global warming. Whereas the New Right casts “consensus” as a matter “of opinion” rather than a consensus of the measured data about the real world as it is. But this is also a talking point of the New Left, where all of science and its facts are “social constructs” with no relation to reality. “Even though a scientific theory is in a sense a social consensus,” writes Weinberg, “it is unlike any other sort of consensus in that it is culture-free and permanent… One of the things about the laws of nature like Maxwell’s equations [or any other] that convinces me of their objective reality is the absence of a multiplicity of valid laws governing the same phenomena, with different laws of nature for different cultures… Whatever cultural influences went into Maxwell’s equations or other laws of nature have been refined away, like slag from ore. Maxwell’s equations are now understood in the same way by everyone with a valid comprehension of electricity and magnetism. The cultural backgrounds of the scientists who discovered such theories have thus become irrelevant to the lessons that we should draw from their theories… Others may be upset by such distinctions because they see them as a threat to their own ‘agenda,’ which is to emphasize the connections between scientific discoveries and their cultural context, but that is just the way the world is.”

How New Left scholars can be as ignorant about scientific consensus as the New Right is a fact of each side’s scientific illiteracy. However, one aspect the Left possesses that the Right does not is captured by Weinberg’s assessment: “You have to be very learned to be that wrong,” while the New Right proves the inverse.

[DeterminedStupor]

Status: have only read these chapters:
-- Science as a Liberal Art
-- Confronting O’Brien
-- The Heritage of Galileo
-- Nature Itself
-- The Boundaries of Scientific Knowledge
-- Sokal’s Hoax
-- Science and Sokal’s Hoax: An Exchange
-- Zionism and Its Adversaries
-- The Red Camaro
-- The Non-Revolution of Thomas Kuhn
-- T. S. Kuhn’s Non-Revolution: An Exchange
-- Five and a Half Utopias

[Nate · Rating 2 out of 5]

High points were the essays defending reductionist science and the push back against his understanding of Kuhn. Low points were most of the time he moves outside his expertise. I was leaning towards three stars but the second to last essay "Five and a Half Utopias" secured two.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clear presentation of ideas, by a scientist who can write well but has no literary pretentions. Mostly insightful. A bit repetitious, but that's to be expected from a collection of essays.

[John P · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are a few good ideas in this compilation of previously published papers and lectures. I was expecting something different and ended up disappointed.

[Momo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A concise collection of essays. Very fun.