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Science Under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America
Americans have long been suspicious of experts and elites. This new history explains why so many have believed that science has the power to corrupt American culture.
Americans today are often skeptical of scientific authority. Many conservatives dismiss climate change and Darwinism as liberal fictions, arguing that "tenured radicals" have coopted the sciences and other disciplines. Some progressives, especially in the universities, worry that science's celebration of objectivity and neutrality masks its attachment to Eurocentric and patriarchal values. As we grapple with the implications of climate change and revolutions in fields from biotechnology to robotics to computing, it is crucial to understand how scientific authority functions--and where it has run up against political and cultural barriers.
Science under Fire reconstructs a century of battles over the cultural implications of science in the United States. Andrew Jewett reveals a persistent current of criticism which maintains that scientists have injected faulty social philosophies into the nation's bloodstream under the cover of neutrality. This charge of corruption has taken many forms and appeared among critics with a wide range of social, political, and theological views, but common to all is the argument that an ideologically compromised science has produced an array of social ills. Jewett shows that this suspicion of science has been a major force in American politics and culture by tracking its development, varied expressions, and potent consequences since the 1920s.
Looking at today's battles over science, Jewett argues that citizens and leaders must steer a course between, on the one hand, the na�ve image of science as a pristine, value-neutral form of knowledge, and, on the other, the assumption that scientists' claims are merely ideologies masquerading as truths.
Americans today are often skeptical of scientific authority. Many conservatives dismiss climate change and Darwinism as liberal fictions, arguing that "tenured radicals" have coopted the sciences and other disciplines. Some progressives, especially in the universities, worry that science's celebration of objectivity and neutrality masks its attachment to Eurocentric and patriarchal values. As we grapple with the implications of climate change and revolutions in fields from biotechnology to robotics to computing, it is crucial to understand how scientific authority functions--and where it has run up against political and cultural barriers.
Science under Fire reconstructs a century of battles over the cultural implications of science in the United States. Andrew Jewett reveals a persistent current of criticism which maintains that scientists have injected faulty social philosophies into the nation's bloodstream under the cover of neutrality. This charge of corruption has taken many forms and appeared among critics with a wide range of social, political, and theological views, but common to all is the argument that an ideologically compromised science has produced an array of social ills. Jewett shows that this suspicion of science has been a major force in American politics and culture by tracking its development, varied expressions, and potent consequences since the 1920s.
Looking at today's battles over science, Jewett argues that citizens and leaders must steer a course between, on the one hand, the na�ve image of science as a pristine, value-neutral form of knowledge, and, on the other, the assumption that scientists' claims are merely ideologies masquerading as truths.
288 pages, Hardcover
Published June 9, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 25, 2021
امروزه دانشگاه‌های غربی-متاسفانه حتی دپارتمان‌های علوم طبیعی-در چنبره‌ی ایدئولوژی‌هایی ضدعلم اسیرند که سرچشمه‌هاشان تا پست‌مدرنیسم آکادمیک دهه‌ی 90 عقب می‌رود. رشته‌های علوم انسانی، کاملا یکدست و یک‌شکل، در جبهه‌ی چپ پروگرسیو اردو زده‌اند. این رشته‌های من‌درآوردی که هرروز به شمارشان اضافه می‌شود، با درست کردن ژورنال‌های علمی و به‌کارگیری متظاهرانه و دست‌وپاشکسته‌ی چندتایی از روش‌های علمی، وانمود می‌کنند که رشته‌هایی حقیقتا علمی‌اند و همان اعتباری را دارند که علوم طبیعی دارد. عجالتا باید گفت امروز وقتی می‌شنوید فلانی متخصص مطالعات زنان یا مطالعات جنسیت یا مطالعات فرهنگی است، باید فرض را بر این بگذارید که گفته‌ها و نوشته‌هایش به اندازه‌ی ارزنی با واقعیت نسبت ندارند، مگر این‌که خلافش ثابت شود. این کتاب نمونه‌ی گویایی‌ست از محصولات همین جریان
تصویر: تفاوت بین دانشمند علوم طبیعی و دانشمند علوم انسانی
February 7, 2021
Not quite sure how to rate this book. The subject is important, the historical threads traced interesting, and Jewett obviously did a lot of research. It really did help me, as a scientist, understand modern rejection of science and the century of intellectual turmoil underlying that. But the book is a bit of a soporific slog.
Part of the issue is that Jewett wants to make very clear to you that he did a lot of research. I’m sure he thinks he’s being selective about who he names, but it’s an enormous number of people. One paragraph is mostly just a list of 26 names in a row.
Are you familiar with John Rawls, René Dubos, Chinua Achebe, Antonio Gramsci, and the Port Huron Statement? If so, good, because Jewett will assume you are. As a reasonably well-educated person, I was familiar with some of these unexplained people and events, but hardly all. (And yes, some of this is perspective. I didn’t bat an eye when Jewett rattled off “Melville, Proust, and Joyce” as a reference, but that’s just my perspective as a traditionally well-educated white American born in the late 20th century. And to be fair, my undergrad also made sure I was familiar with Toni Morrison and Chinua Achebe, with whom Jewett contrasts the earlier trio. But Jewett is, I think, expecting your education to not just be of a similar level to his, but actually to have had similar content. This book was written by Jewett of 2020 for Jewett of 2012.)
Jewett does explain many of the characters, though. Often by extensively quoting them, which may be good scholarship for convincing other experts in your field, but makes for less-than-compelling reading for a lay audience. When I explain basic mechanics to my students, I don’t quote Newton. I explain the ideas.
Jewett does do a nice recap synthesis at the end of each chapter, but I was left wondering if maybe I would have been better off reading only those and skipping the rest. Did I really care about books Henry Regnery thought about publishing but didn’t? Jewett does, and boy does he want you to know that he plowed through all the boxes in the Regnery archives, but I… find myself not caring so much.
But for those wondering why on Earth otherwise-intelligent people might reject a logical, empirically grounded, uniquely successful approach to understanding the world, this book is worth a look. Although frankly it largely boils down to a single concept: there are a lot of people who want to think humans are super special, and science says humans are animals made out of particles obeying the laws of physics. Now, I think that an animal obeying the laws of physics uncovering that there are laws of physics and what many of them are is pretty darn special, but Catholic conservatives in the 1920s, humanities scholars in the 1950s, left-wing radicals in the 1970s, and evangelical Christians in the 1990s apparently all disagree with me.
Science discovers; it doesn’t confirm what you already believe. This is its greatest strength, but also the reason many people reject it.
This book focuses almost entirely on “intellectual” critics of science. It spans the gamut of political persuasion, and ranges across academia and well beyond, but these are mostly people who publish scholarly articles and book-length arguments. The anti-intellectual thread that's so strong in the modern Republican party, with its denigration of all scholarly pursuits, is not much found in this book. Reinhold Niebuhr yes, Alex Jones no.
Defenders of science and rationality are also almost never mentioned. And when people like Bertrand Russell, Clarence Darrow, and Alan Sokol are mentioned, it’s typically to discuss the criticism they provoked or the criticism to which they were reacting. John Dewey, however, is discussed at great length. Indeed it partially is to set up the reaction against him, but it certainly seems like Jewett has a preference for Dewey himself (the contrast between how he presents Dewey and Bertrand Russell is vast).
Despite this focus on critics, I, as a staunch defender of science who is easily upset by silly criticism of it, was nonetheless fine. I think it’s because Jewett ably surveys so many critics of science, making clear how little coherency there was in their critiques. Pro-communist and anti-communist, liberal and conservative, New Age and evangelical, radical feminist and religious Right, there’s just no unified coherency or consilience of the critiques.
If not science, then what? The answer, even in one specific time and place, was nothing coherent. For all their power and persuasion, the critics of science have never created even a half-satisfactory alternative.
Part of the issue is that Jewett wants to make very clear to you that he did a lot of research. I’m sure he thinks he’s being selective about who he names, but it’s an enormous number of people. One paragraph is mostly just a list of 26 names in a row.
Are you familiar with John Rawls, René Dubos, Chinua Achebe, Antonio Gramsci, and the Port Huron Statement? If so, good, because Jewett will assume you are. As a reasonably well-educated person, I was familiar with some of these unexplained people and events, but hardly all. (And yes, some of this is perspective. I didn’t bat an eye when Jewett rattled off “Melville, Proust, and Joyce” as a reference, but that’s just my perspective as a traditionally well-educated white American born in the late 20th century. And to be fair, my undergrad also made sure I was familiar with Toni Morrison and Chinua Achebe, with whom Jewett contrasts the earlier trio. But Jewett is, I think, expecting your education to not just be of a similar level to his, but actually to have had similar content. This book was written by Jewett of 2020 for Jewett of 2012.)
Jewett does explain many of the characters, though. Often by extensively quoting them, which may be good scholarship for convincing other experts in your field, but makes for less-than-compelling reading for a lay audience. When I explain basic mechanics to my students, I don’t quote Newton. I explain the ideas.
Jewett does do a nice recap synthesis at the end of each chapter, but I was left wondering if maybe I would have been better off reading only those and skipping the rest. Did I really care about books Henry Regnery thought about publishing but didn’t? Jewett does, and boy does he want you to know that he plowed through all the boxes in the Regnery archives, but I… find myself not caring so much.
But for those wondering why on Earth otherwise-intelligent people might reject a logical, empirically grounded, uniquely successful approach to understanding the world, this book is worth a look. Although frankly it largely boils down to a single concept: there are a lot of people who want to think humans are super special, and science says humans are animals made out of particles obeying the laws of physics. Now, I think that an animal obeying the laws of physics uncovering that there are laws of physics and what many of them are is pretty darn special, but Catholic conservatives in the 1920s, humanities scholars in the 1950s, left-wing radicals in the 1970s, and evangelical Christians in the 1990s apparently all disagree with me.
Science discovers; it doesn’t confirm what you already believe. This is its greatest strength, but also the reason many people reject it.
This book focuses almost entirely on “intellectual” critics of science. It spans the gamut of political persuasion, and ranges across academia and well beyond, but these are mostly people who publish scholarly articles and book-length arguments. The anti-intellectual thread that's so strong in the modern Republican party, with its denigration of all scholarly pursuits, is not much found in this book. Reinhold Niebuhr yes, Alex Jones no.
Defenders of science and rationality are also almost never mentioned. And when people like Bertrand Russell, Clarence Darrow, and Alan Sokol are mentioned, it’s typically to discuss the criticism they provoked or the criticism to which they were reacting. John Dewey, however, is discussed at great length. Indeed it partially is to set up the reaction against him, but it certainly seems like Jewett has a preference for Dewey himself (the contrast between how he presents Dewey and Bertrand Russell is vast).
Despite this focus on critics, I, as a staunch defender of science who is easily upset by silly criticism of it, was nonetheless fine. I think it’s because Jewett ably surveys so many critics of science, making clear how little coherency there was in their critiques. Pro-communist and anti-communist, liberal and conservative, New Age and evangelical, radical feminist and religious Right, there’s just no unified coherency or consilience of the critiques.
If not science, then what? The answer, even in one specific time and place, was nothing coherent. For all their power and persuasion, the critics of science have never created even a half-satisfactory alternative.
June 28, 2022
I went back and forth on how I wanted to rate this book, after going back and forth on whether I even wanted to bother with finishing it. In the first place, the cover is a little misleading, and this book is not really about the fear of technology. What it's really about is, on one hand, the resentment of religious and humanist figures on what was seen as the challenge to their cultural authority by social science and psychology. On the other, it's about how "SCIENCE," in neon lights, became a stand-in for the perceived ills of mass society and big government.
This is all well and good, but another issue here is that each chapter reads like one run-on sentence, and there is something of a passive-aggressive quality to the whole book. It makes you wonder whether you're actually learning anything.
Probably the best way to read this monograph is to read the introduction and the conclusion and then dip into the chapters that look most interesting. One of the pluses of this book is that the author does radiate a certain earnest sincerity. Ironically, speaking of distrust of science, Jewett did step away from physics because he really didn't want to serve the military-industrial complex as a young man. Two, what Jewett would really like to see is that scientists, as a group, break out of the pose of "disinterest" that public criticism often forces them into, and adopt a stance of engagement, as the best approach to dealing with the down-right dumb and dishonest elements that afflict debates over the role of science and technology in contemporary society.
This is all well and good, but another issue here is that each chapter reads like one run-on sentence, and there is something of a passive-aggressive quality to the whole book. It makes you wonder whether you're actually learning anything.
Probably the best way to read this monograph is to read the introduction and the conclusion and then dip into the chapters that look most interesting. One of the pluses of this book is that the author does radiate a certain earnest sincerity. Ironically, speaking of distrust of science, Jewett did step away from physics because he really didn't want to serve the military-industrial complex as a young man. Two, what Jewett would really like to see is that scientists, as a group, break out of the pose of "disinterest" that public criticism often forces them into, and adopt a stance of engagement, as the best approach to dealing with the down-right dumb and dishonest elements that afflict debates over the role of science and technology in contemporary society.
April 9, 2021
This is a really interesting work of history that documents how American critiques of science (or, more specifically, scientism—an emphasis on science as a basis for society, government, ethics, and knowledge) proliferated from the 1920s onward. Andrew Jewett excels at showing how liberals and conservatives alike took issue with science, and particularly with behaviorism, psychology, and pragmatism. The book is a sequel to Jewett's earlier history of scientific, democratic, and religious thought in the nineteenth-century. Together, they will be very useful for teaching the history of science in the United States.
September 26, 2023
#1 The title is absolutely misleading - It's a grinding list of how people in the 40s and 50s didn't like the growing technocratic state
#2 I have never read anything so absolutely dull in my entire life. It's just a list of grievances.
#3 The notes make it seem like each chapter was written separately and then fixed up into a book, which is never a good look for academic literature.
#2 I have never read anything so absolutely dull in my entire life. It's just a list of grievances.
#3 The notes make it seem like each chapter was written separately and then fixed up into a book, which is never a good look for academic literature.
August 26, 2021
Interesting book
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews