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Gould, Stephen Jay. "Deconstructing the 'Science Wars' by Reconstructing an Old Mold." - Brief Article
Skeptical Inquirer, May, 2000 by Jodi Chapman, Kendrick Frazier
Gould, Stephen Jay. "Deconstructing the 'Science Wars' by Reconstructing an Old Mold." Science 287:253-261, January 14, 2000. In this provocative essay, Gould examines the human tendency to tell our explanatory stories as dichotomies, or contrasts between inherently distinct and logically opposite alternatives.
The favored dichotomy today, he feels, features a "supposed battle called 'the science wars.' The two sides in this hypothetical struggle have been dubbed 'realists' (including nearly all working scientists), who uphold the objectivity and progressive nature of scientific knowledge, and 'relativists' (nearly all housed in faculties of the humanities and social sciences within our universities), who recognize the culturally embedded status of all claims for universal factuality and who regard science as just one system of belief among many alternatives, all worthy of equal weight.[ldots]" Gould feels these are false dichotomies. "All these dichotomies must be exposed as deeply and doubly fallacious[ldots].A science war can only exist in the minds of critics not engaged in the actua l enterprise supposedly under analysis." Gould calls for a "commonsensical" attitude of "upholding, at the same time and without contradiction, both the continuous social construction and the growing empirical adequacy of scientific knowledge."
COPYRIGHT 2000 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
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