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2005 35: 250Philosophy of the Social SciencesMario Bunge

Book Review: Who Rules in Science? An Opinionated Guide to the  

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10.1177/0048393105275282PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES / June 2005BOOK REVIEW

Book Review

James Robert Brown, Who Rules in Science? An Opinionated Guide to theWars. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001. Pp. xvi +236. $26.

This is an interesting and highly readable book centered on the so-calledScience Wars prompted in recent decades by constructivism-relativism, thecomponent of postmodernism that views science as a power tool rather thanas the search for objective truths. Brown handles important problems, and it istimely, clearly written, and fun to read.

Unlike Brown’s four previous books, this one is mission oriented. Notcontent with espousing a traditional view of science, and defending effec-tively rationality and realism from the distortions of the social constructivist-relativists, the author defends the thesis that the political Left should return toits traditional pro-science stance. Brown also wishes to democratize science:to have it made by scientists, surely, but in the public interest rather than inthat of corporations.

I find Brown’s criticisms of social constructivism-relativism correct andpersuasive, but some aspects of his philosophy of science remote from realscience, and his sociology of science nonexistent. I also believe that some fea-tures of Brown’s science-policy project are hazardous to science.

The book starts by evoking the notorious Sokal scandal of 1996, whichexhibited the utter scientific ignorance and illogic of the social constructivist-relativists, as well as the intellectual decadence of what is left of the AmericanLeft. As will be remembered, the postmodernist review Social Text was fooledby the nonsensical paper entitled, “Transgressing the Boundaries: The Trans-formative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” submitted by Alan Sokal, aphysicist who sympathizes with the traditional Left.

Brown argues convincingly that nature does not need observers and theo-rists to exist: he espouses a version of scientific realism. His treatment of theincompetent accounts given by Bloor, Collins, Forman, and Latour are partic-ularly brilliant: Brown shows clearly that they are ignorant of science, con-fused, and sometimes self-contradictory as well. I plan to recommend thisbook for some of my courses.

Brown believes that the connection between social constructivism and thepolitical Left is accidental (pp. 109-10). I beg to differ. To begin with, as Brownhimself reminds us, Marx was an early if inconsistent constructivist-relativist:in fact, he held that the material (economic) infrastructure determines the

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ideal superstructure—in contemporary parlance, that “interests,” rather thancuriosity, drive research. Secondly, the contemporary phase of constructivism-relativism erupted in North America and Europe in the mid-1960s, as a com-ponent of the student “revolution.” The thesis of the ideologists behind thismovement (mainly Marcuse, Habermas, Althusser, and Foucault) is that sci-ence is the ideology of late capitalism. And since this is the enemy, sciencemust be rejected. Remember also that the Frankfurt school (“critical theory”),to which Habermas belonged, had always opposed the Enlightenment, whichhad been enthusiastic about science.

Regrettably, Brown does not always get the scientific story right. For exam-ple, in recounting the history of Brownian motion, he claims that Einstein“wasn’t really aware of Brownian motion in 1905” (p. 88). But Einstein’s foun-dational papers on the subject, published in the Annalen der Physik in 1905 and1906, happen to deal explicitly with “the so-called Brownian molecularmotion.” Furthermore, Brown confuses Boltzmann’s statistical mechanicswith the much simpler and far older kinetic theory of gases.

Brown also claims, on Feyerabend’s authority, that the existence of Brownianmotion contradicts classical thermodynamics. It does not, because this theoryrefers to matter in bulk and its macrophysical properties: it is simply not con-cerned with particles. Thermodynamics is so general that it refers to materialsystems of any kind. What is true is that, as Einstein noted in his 1905 paper,“Classical thermodynamics can no longer be looked upon as applicable withprecision to bodies even of dimensions distinguishable in a microscope.” Inother words, classical thermodynamics, although not invalidated by Brownianmotion, as Feyerabend and Brown claim, does not account for it. Art criticslook firsthand at art works. Why do not science critics look firsthand atscience?

Incidentally, contrary to Brown’s assertion, classical thermodynamics isnot said to be phenomenological because it contains only “observable notions”(meaning predicates denoting observable properties). In fact, the characteris-tic variables of this theory, namely, energy, temperature, and entropy, are notdirectly observable. Phenomenological is not the same as phenomenal: in the sci-entific literature, the word means “descriptive” rather than “explanatory interms of mechanism.”

Besides, the accurate measurements, by Jean Perrin and his associates, onBrownian particles did not confirm statistical mechanics, which is a hyper-general theory: what they confirmed was Einstein’s particular model ofBrownian motion, which contained a number of special hypotheses in addi-tion to general statistical mechanics. In particular, it uses the kinetic theory ofthe ideal gas, which Brown confuses with statistical mechanics, to calculatethe osmotic pressure.

Incidentally, Brown does not draw the distinction between general theo-ries and theoretical models. In the advanced branches of science, the latter arebuilt by adding subsidiary assumptions to the former. Thus, although Newto-nian body mechanics is a linear theory, contrary to Brown’s assertion, some of

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the models in celestial mechanics and elasticity theory are nonlinear. Thenonlinearities occur in some of the subsidiary assumptions (such as the con-stitutive equations) that are conjoined with the general equations of motion.The distinction between general theories and theoretical models is method-ologically important because only the latter are sufficiently specific to beempirically testable.

To go back to Perrin and Einstein: they eventually got to shake hands withthe sovereign of Sweden because their work on Brownian particles had con-firmed the atomic hypothesis, not because it confirmed what Brown calls thekinetic theory. Hence, what Brown calls “Feyerabend’s wonderful example”of theory evaluation is not such. Still, Brown is right in noting that Feyerabendwas right, against the standard view, in asserting that empirical adequacy isnot sufficient in evaluating scientific theories. However, Feyerabend was notthe first to say so: Henry Margenau had said it in 1941 in the Reviews of ModernPhysics, and I elaborated on it in the second volume of my Scientific Research(1967).

Besides, it is not true that theories have observable consequences: thesecan only be derived by enriching the former with indicators, such as the linearrelations of temperature to thermometric height (directly readable), or of agri-cultural production (hard to get because there are many farms) to ammoniaproduction (easy to obtain because there are few ammonia manufacturers).There is no mention of indicators in this book: Brown buys the standard storythat scientific theories have observational consequences. But of course he can-not be faulted for not having read my Scientific Research.

Let us now take a quick look at one of the stormiest ménages à trois: thescience-epistemology-politics triangle. Since Brown loves both science andsocial justice, it is not surprising to find that he holds that science (meaningtechnology?) should be used to improve life. And this is also why he asks, Whoshould rule in science?

As Joseph Agassi has eloquently argued in two of his best books, while weneed freedom of basic research, technology should be subjected to democraticcontrol because its use by industry or government is bound to alter humanlife, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.

Any proposals to control basic science, which is a search for truth, not forpower or profit, evoke the specters of totalitarianism and religious funda-mentalism. I am sure that any of the hundreds of basic scientists I have inter-acted with in my long life, two decades of which I have spent doing and teach-ing physics, would give the following answer to Rose’s questions admittedby Brown: we want the truest and deepest science, as much of it as possible,done by the most talented people, and controlled exclusively by the scientificcommunity. Anything else invites thought control, mediocrity, and waste ofboth talent and material resources. Anything else involves what A. N. White-head would have called “the fallacy of misplaced democracy.”

Brown thinks otherwise: he proposes that “research should be carried outby a more democratically selected group of researchers” (p. 188). To this end,

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“Future hiring must change the proportions so that a larger number offemales, minorities and others with different biases are included in the groupof theorists [and experimentalists and field workers as well?]” (p. 187). Inshort, “Affirmative action is needed for the sake of improving the growth ofknowledge; pluralism for the sake of epistemology” (p. 187). My own for-mula would rather be as follows: hire the best regardless of provenance. I con-fess that, if I ever needed my brain examined and repaired, I would prefer toput it in the hands of specialists trained in the good old elitist tradition, whichassigns priority to talent and experience.

Nevertheless, I agree that science (and the arts and the humanities andmuch else as well) should be democratized, although in a different sense: sci-ence education at all levels should be vastly improved, the access to sciencefaculties should be encouraged, and the public funding of basic researchshould be greatly increased because science is the engine of modern cultureand an input to technology. Brown goes to the point of claiming, “Science isthe single most important institution in our lives” (p. 212).

In short, this book is worth reading and discussing. One seldom encoun-ters such clear, instructive, topical, and funny texts in contemporary sciencestudies. Its only flaw is common to that of the bulk of contemporary philoso-phy and sociology of science, namely, remoteness from real science.

REFERENCES

Bunge, Mario. 1967. The search for truth, vol. 2 of Scientific research. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

Einstein, Albert. 1905. Über die von molekularkinetischen Teorie der Wärme gefordeteBewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen. Annalen derPhysik 17:549-60.

Margenau, Henry. 1941. Metaphysical elements in physics. Reviews of Modern Physics13:176-89.

—Mario BungeMcGill University

Lowe, G and T Hujanen eds. (2003). Broadcasting and Convergence. New Articu-lations of the Public Service Remit. Goteborg. Nordicom. P 335. ISBN 91-89471-18-0

This collection of papers from the 2002 biennial RIPE (Re-visionary Inter-pretations of the Public Enterprise) Conference reflects RIPE’s commitmentto re-validate public service broadcasting (and public media generally) andits character as a forum for dialogue between academics and media workers,

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