A Flotilla of Somewhat Unhinged Idealists

You may remember Steve Fuller as the sociology professor who testified in the Dover case in favour of Intelligent Design. Here's a fine deconstruction by Norman Levitt of Fuller's recent book:

The anti-science of the contemporary academy is a late and petulant echo of Spiritualism, Anthroposophy, Theosophy, Forteanism, and a dozen other cults that once appealed to the culturally fashionable. But now they are bound up in the knotty and constipated jargon of journals and seminar rooms and lack the high spirits that made the original versions pleasantly whimsical. Anti-science in today's university whines and grumbles when it is not busy bedecking itself with the pseudo-virtue of today's eco-Puritanism: the Animal Rights Movement, fulminant opposition to genetic engineering, Deep Ecology, and so forth.

It is easy to mock this development and hard not to scorn it. But perhaps a little sympathy is in order, providing it stops well short of indulgence. Basically, one is dealing here with a community of people who, by common standards, are quite intelligent and imaginative, and certainly diligent enough to carve out large areas of discourse for themselves wherein their assumptions and modes of analysis remain in the saddle for decades at a time. This is not a trivial achievement, think what we may of the fundamental soundness of the enterprise. We can't really speak of a Ship of Fools here, but rather a flotilla of somewhat unhinged idealists who still can put up a pretty good fight. Yet, ultimately, they are cruelly and fatally hemmed in by their inability to come to terms with the deepest and most penetrating ideas that our civilization, or any civilization, has yet been able to generate: the ideas of science and mathematics.

As an Amazon reviewer, Levitt allows himself to be a little less circumspect:

For years, Fuller has been peddling the line that the superior insight vouchsafed him by his ostensible analysis of the social background of science makes him better able to understand science than mere scientists ever can. But his work is shot through with overwhelming evidence that specific scientific theories are well beyond his competence to understand. No matter; he babbles on ad nauseam, citing himself and his voluminous if redundant writings as the supreme authority at every turn. He provides the ultimate example of the academic careerist who can hector and bully his way to the top in a field where nobody is very eager to call anyone else's bluff....

Worth reading in full.

Comments

[Alcuin]

Most idealists are unhinged. They are also lazy, searching for a panacea for all human ills - other than hard work and technology, that is. That no one has yet found cures for human ills that do not involve hard work and technology never seems to deter such people. There is always a new Marx just around the corner for such people. It usually has a new name with an -ism on the end, but is just a rehashed form of social engineering that involves: them taking your money and spending it less wisely than you do; dealing with those square pegs that do not fit their neat round holes in somewhat less than charitable (and often brutal) ways; and blaming the rest of us when it all goes pear-shaped. And of course the absolute last thing they want to hear is "we already tried that".

[dearieme]

But what's to be done about the anti-Science scientists?
Global Warmmongers, for example.

[TDK]

Levitt isn't particular impressive with his dismissal of Fuller, particularly in the Amazon review. It comes across to me as heavy on ad-hominems and light on actual criticism. The Skeptic article is much better. Christopher Grant's comment "There would have been more room in your review for detailed critique of this book if you'd kept your rhetorical flourishes in check and your remarks on topic." sums up my impression.

I have a particular problem with the argument that the "Intelligent Design movement, as spearheaded by such as P.E. Johnson and W. Dembski, is unambiguously committed to transforming the USA into a theocratic society dominated by fundamentalist Christianity". I'm not disagreeing with the notion that these two men would like such a society, but with the fact that by deploying such an argument Levitt comes across as one of those on the left who have been anticipating the imminent totalitarian takeover of America for the last 50 years. http://volokh.com/posts/1139878045.shtml If Fuller is wrong, and I think he is, then it because he gets the science wrong, not because he lends support to unsavoury characters.

[DaninVan]

"Worth reading in full."
It's now in the 'job jar'.

(I'm in awe of your time management skills, M.H.!) :)