Science Wars - The Science Wars

The Science Wars

In Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science (1994), the scientists Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt attacked the anti-intellectual postmodernists, presented the shortcomings of relativism, and proposed that postmodernist critics knew little about the scientific theories they criticized and practiced poor scholarship for political reasons.

The postmodernist science studies critics were identified as "misunderstanding" the theoretical approaches they criticized given their "caricature, misreading, and condescension, than argument." In the event, the book proved a spark for the Science Wars. Moreover, Higher Superstition then inspired a New York Academy of Sciences conference titled The Flight from Science and Reason, organised by Gross, Levitt, and Gerald Holton. The conferees were critical of the polemical approach of Gross and Levitt, yet agreed upon the intellectual inconsistency of how laymen, non-scientist, social studies intellectuals dealt with science.