Who Rules in Science?: An Opinionated Guide to the Wars [Hardcover]

Brown's reviews the famous "Sokal Hoax" in which a physicist scathingly exposed the limits of "postmodern" language and philosophy. He explains how the Sokal Affair raised the public consciousness about views of what science is and how it works. Brown presents and illuminates the issues with admirable clarity and logic. He is a Professor of Philosophy with a deep respect for rational thinking. Unlike some, he doesn't view "cultural relativism" as a fad. Instead, he's aware of its impact in education and the wider world of social and political life. We are daily confronted with decisions to be made. We must make them on a rational basis and not be misled by "charlatans" who would obfuscate the issues. We make decisions on the basis of the values we hold. Brown enjoins us to be clear on our values - their foundations and how they are derived. This all sounds familiar, even redundant. Brown demonstrates how easily we can be misled if we fail to pay attention to what we are encouraged to believe and how we act on those beliefs.

Brown's answer to the query in his title seems simplistic - you do. You should rule science through democracy. We all believe in democracy [at least most of us reading this book do] and we all feel we know what it means. Brown wants you to reconsider what you believe about democracy and how it should be practiced. In short, he understands that in our form of democracy, knowledge, not emotion or mythology, should rule. Brown demonstrates how "expertise" already plays a significant role in political decisions. Expertise is derived by those who employ scientific methods to increase our knowledge. Our job is to sort through differing views to determine which is most applicable to issues under consideration. He recognizes the difficulty of the task, offering step-by-step solutions to ease the burden. People need to hear "more intelligent and informed voices" in Brown's view. How to find those voices? The starting point is this book. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Brown is just as capable as the extremists at dismissing those he disagrees with as "mushy-minded", "bad scientists" whose views are "laughable" and whose sanity should be doubted. All those who think moral norms might have divine origin? According to Brown, they're "naively religious". All those who disagree with Brown about capital punishment? According to Brown, they just must not have studied the matter as much as he has. (For Brown, this is apparently an issue on which it is impossible for there to be an honest, informed difference of opinion.) As someone who sympathizes with both Brown and Norman Levitt on many issues but disagrees with them each on others, I have to say that it's a lot more fun to be insulted by Levitt because he does it with such style! (Incidentally, Brown's analysis of Gross and Levitt's book only seems to make sense if Levitt is on the political Right. My reading of Levitt's _Prometheus Bedeviled_ leads me to believe that that is far from the case.)

One last item: Brown writes: "Most people could achieve a high-level understanding of any branch of science, but only if several years have been devoted to its intense study." I'm not sure whether Brown classifies mathematics as a branch of science, but I see no more evidence that sufficient training could provide most people with a high-level understanding of mathematics than that sufficient training could provide most people with the ability to high jump 7 feet. I used to tell my students that intense study would undoubtedly make them successful; after seeing several hard-workers earn D's, I stopped saying that.

It is this combination of explaining philosophical terms and political problems in a clear manner that makes this book the good read that it is. It has better explanations about the philosophy of science and such terms as naturalism, realism, rationalism, and even underdetermination than I've seen elsewhere. All this in a book written for the layman, not the expert.

The one problem I had with the book was its treatment of realism. I don't think Brown brought out the problems inherent in realism. Realism not only posits that objects exist; it posits we can know and describe their properties. What is wrong with this line of thought? Parmenides said "a thing is or it is not." Give it a linguistic turn, and one might say "description describes what is or it is not description." The complaint against realism is that historically, realistic descriptions of objects have not endured and so are not descriptions.

Look at Brown's definition of realism (96):
1. The aim of science is to give a true (or approximately true) description of reality.
2. Scientific theories are either true or false.
3. It is possible to have evidence for the truth (or falsity) of a theory. (It remains possible, however, that all the evidence supports some theory T, yet T is false.)

Accepting definition (2) as the bedrock axiom, definition (1) immediately contradicts it. "Approximately true" is false to anyone except a pragmatist. The whole point of realistic description is a complete, accurate rendering of the object. Approximation might "work," but it is not "true." Second, Brown's definition (3) is at some point arguable. What if evidence itself is conceived as a set of particular objects or relations that make up the larger object of description? Inquiring into them, one could ask what's the evidence for the truth (or falsity) of the evidential facts. The realist avoids this regress by referring to some axiomatic definition or other sort of "given." This works most of the time, but not always.

Consider Brown's statement (102) that, "One thing that cannot be overstressed here is fallibility. Objectivity does not imply certain truth. Evidence can mislead. The ancients were objective in believing in an earth-centered universe, because the available evidence strongly supported this view." Brown is wrong here. Objectivity does imply certain truth (or certainly did among ancient Greek philosophers who invented realism). I think what's being confused here is rationality and objectivity. It is a rational strategy to believe what everyone else believes. What is believed, however, is not necessarily objectively true. It was rational for ancients to believe in an earth-centered universe. It was not, however, an objective description of the universe, no matter what the "evidence" showed.

Plato made a distinction between knowledge and true belief. If I recall correctly, the philosopher-kings had objective knowledge, the enforcers had true belief. The philosopher-kings were right. They knew they were right and why they were right. The enforcers knew they were right, but didn't know why. Consequently, they were fallible in their explanations and, without the philosopher-kings to guide them, in their beliefs. Now, if scientists are fallible, what is it that allows them to know when they are right? The evidence? Brown said earlier in his definition that the evidence could all be right but the theory wrong. The realist who believes in fallibility has nothing to knowingly connect to the object. He is like the enforcer who has true belief, but not knowledge.