Scandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth, and the Human

Science and Cultural Theory

by Barbara Herrnstein Smith

Throughout the recent culture and science “wars,” the radically new conceptions of knowledge and science emerging from such fields as the history and sociology of science have been denounced by various journalists, scientists, and academics as irresponsible attacks on science, absurd denials of objective reality, or a cynical abandonment of truth itself. In Scandalous Knowledge , Barbara Herrnstein Smith explores and illuminates the intellectual contexts of these crude denunciations. A preeminent scholar, theorist, and analyst of intellectual history, Smith begins by looking closely at the epistemological developments at issue. She presents a clear, historically informed, and philosophically sophisticated overview of important twentieth-century critiques of traditional—rationalist, realist, positivist—accounts of human knowledge and scientific truth, and discusses in detail the alternative accounts produced by Ludwik Fleck, Thomas Kuhn, Michel Foucault, Bruno Latour, and others. With keen wit, Smith demonstrates that the familiar charges involved in these scandals—including the recurrent invocation of “postmodern relativism”—protect intellectual orthodoxy by falsely associating important intellectual developments with logically absurd and morally or politically disabling positions. She goes on to offer bold, original, and insightful perspectives on the currently strained relations between the natural sciences and the humanities; on the grandiose but dubious claims of evolutionary psychology to explain human behavior, cognition, and culture; and on contemporary controversies over the psychology, biology, and ethics of animal-human relations. Scandalous Knowledge is a provocative and compelling intervention into controversies that continue to roil through journalism, pulpits, laboratories, and classrooms throughout the United States and Europe.

Genres: Science

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Barbara Herrnstein Smith is Braxton Craven Professor of Comparative Literature and English at Duke University and Director of its Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory, and Distinguished Professor of English at Brown University.

Reviews

[Andrew Macneil · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a serious and scholarly set of essays that explore a number of related movements in the philosophy and sociology of science, and the reception of these movements in academia and more widely. The author is sympathetic to the ideas discussed and the book explains and distinguishes the different themes well, while maintaining a critical approach that exposes inconsistencies and exaggerations.

If like me you are interested in the philosophy of science but haven't paid too much attention to it for a while, this could be a revelation. It is always entertaining, even - perhaps especially - to a realist who can't take it all too seriously. The message is surely that science, philosophy and debate are human activities, undertaken in a changing environment that we are still trying to understand.

[T · Rating 2 out of 5]

Constructionism/constructivism/relativism = good. Realism/rationalism/objectivisim = bad. This work is highly defensive of the former intellectual enterprise, and it never waivers from an arrogant, demeaning tone. It fails to directly engage realist critiques/concerns, but it does provide potentially workable elucidations of some constructionist/constructivist positions.

[Christina “6 word reviewer” Lake]

Perceptively analyzes silliness of science wars.