Disclaimer: Long, (dull?), and speculative post ahead. Proceed with caution.

Recently I started reading Politics of Nature by Bruno Latour.  While reading last week, it sparked  a sudden burst of interest on my behalf into topics related to the so-called “Science Wars” of the nineties. Basically the science wars is the good old story of a conflict between various veins of constructivism (labeled postmodernists in this context) and realists. Basically the former questioned the objectivity of the latter, while the latter ridiculed the former for not really knowing what the hell they were talking about. This, of course, only made the postmodernists hurl the same argument back at the realists. They were deliberately misunderstood, they did not really listen to or read  the criticism, they just instinctively reacted with intense protectionism on behalf of their own subjects (and so on and so forth).

Fair enough, I guess. I don’t think the constructivist actually got their hands dirty with hardcore physics before launching their “attacks”, and I don’t think the realists really dug into and digested the postmodernists arguments before freaking out (allright, speculation on my behalf). And this, I think, might be an explanation for the fierce tone of the debate (war - guess it wasn’t friendly). Because why should this really be an either/or situation? Personally I consider myself a realist. All I mean by this is that at some level I acknowledge that a “real” reality exists (which is not the same as saying that there is one true nature or an essence of all things or anything like that). I think Latour is onto something when he speaks of multiple realities and multiple natures – and that different sciences are differently suited to capture different aspects of these (whoaw – I can use the word ‘different’ so many times in one sentence, it hurts). This is not the “reality” known by Science (or rather the sciences as Latour would point out). Another apprach I have found fruitful in the past is Norbert Elias notion of “reality congruence” as presented in  “the symbol theory” (1991). Elias, a self-declared realist, claimed that theory of reality it self is an evolutionary entity (or rather various evolutionary entities) . And theories can be more or less congruent with the actual realities. Competing theories have histories, histories that are filled with people and actions. This, together with the fact that theories are allways crafted through the use of language implies construction – of everything from birds and bees to “societies”. But enough of this – as Latour writes himself he’s sick of having to convince people that he’s a realist.

So back to the science wars. With what means was it fought? Mostly through intense and heated debate (which was obviously going nowhere..). But there was also instances of more concrete “attacks” where one of the sides tried to prove that they were correct. One of these instances was as rigorus prank from the realists. Hardcore physician Alan Sokal became notoriously known for the “Sokal affair”, a hoax with the readers and editors of the postmoderenist journal social text as a victim. Socal’s scheme was an experiment to uncover if the journal would publish an article “liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good, and (b) it flattered the editors”.  And indeed, the article entitled Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity made it to the journals pages. PWNED!! Laughs Sokal – “Now I have proof that you guys haven’t got a clue!!”.

But his “victory” tasted  sweet only for so long. In 2002 another affair, namely the Bogdanov Affair featured the review, acceptance and publications of nonsensical articles in hardcore physics journals. LOL! Laughs the postmodernists, this proves our point – at the outer reaches of science and knowledge, when new claims are dissiminated it is only naïve to claim that what you present is “Truth” or even worse “Reality”. Obviously the physics-community didn’t really agree.

Tody the science wars is “over”, whatever that means. My guess is that the sides decided that there were better ways to waste their energy, like for example bike cycling or doing some other work. Wikipedia claims that many efforts have been made to reconcile the two warring sides in recent years (Interestingly the wikipedia article intentionally or not boosts the stereotype about who the “real” scientists are, when it claims that the camps that have been saught reconcilled are scientists and postmodernists. Postmodernists, in other words, are not scientists…).

Let’s end this ranting (and I realize now rather pointless) post with a joke about economists that clearly illustrates the postmodernist point of view:

“An economist returns to visit his old school. He’s interested in the current exam questions and asks his old professor to show some. To his surprise they are exactly the same ones to which he had answered 10 years ago! When he asks about this the professor answers: “the questions are always the same – only the answers change!”