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  • Scandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth, and the Human
  • Catherine Hundleby (bio)
Scandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth, and the Human. By Barbara Herrnstein Smith. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006.

Few people get excited about a new book on the science wars, given that the academic battle has persisted for at least thirty years and become quite tired. I am an exception because I work on feminist philosophy of science and face the battle on a daily basis, but I’m also quite exhausted by it all, and almost [End Page 233] cynical. So I was encouraged to see Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s Scandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth, and the Human. A rhetorical analysis by such a distinguished scholar (Braxton Craven Professor of Comparative Literature and English at Duke, and Distinguished Professor of English at Brown) promised fresh insight by taking a step back and considering the debates in a larger historical context.

Herrnstein Smith’s historical approach even accounts for the fatigue of the dialogue that has become known as “the science wars.” The tediousness of the debate of traditional and specifically rationalist against newer, radical, and social accounts of scientific knowledge receives a lively treatment that suggests direction for relief. When we stop making empty gestures toward resolution and reconciliation in attempt to escape imaginary villains, we can move on with exploring the real reaches of what can be said about science.

The scandalous aspects of knowledge begin with traditional epistemological skepticism, which claims that knowledge is impossible. The skeptical skeleton in the closet, which Herrnstein Smith so vividly pictures for us as periodically rattling chains, haunts all epistemological inquiry. But it is, she insists, a mere ghost, not seriously defended by anyone: a “straw herring” (39).

That first scandal underpins the second, which arises from constructivist explanations of scientific knowledge. On that view, objects of understanding do not exist prior to or independently of human cognitive engagement, but rather are “constructed by” this activity. Constructivism differs from the more politicized “constructionism” that feminists among others (such as later Foucault) develop, which “denaturalizes” scientific claims by pointing out their dependence on history and cultural practice.

The fear of constructivism depends on the allegations of relativism and skepticism that trace back at least to the 1960s, but that are nevertheless largely unsubstantiated. This fear is basically a reaction (a “backlash,” I would suggest) that reveals the tenacity of early twentieth-century epistemology more than it reveals any problems with putative successors. Only from a position of dogmatic traditionalism, Herrnstein Smith argues, can constructivist approaches appear to be perverse denials of the possibility of knowledge, and so to be invitations to skepticism.

The third scandal (I think: it’s not clearly named, although promised) is the employment of skeptical ghost stories to excuse the excesses of evolutionary psychology. In particular, Stephen Pinker cries out “relativist” in order to dismiss critics and rivals.

Despite these linking themes, the book reads much like a series of papers, and can be read that way. Chapter 2 traces the history of the relativism scare to the early twentieth century. Observing that charges of “postmodern relativism” usually attack straw figures based on no recognizable person or position is familiar enough, as is criticism of “overheated interpretations and gratuitous [End Page 234] inferences” (30). However, Herrnstein Smith reveals a worrying depth to these appeals to straw herrings, finding them even among Satya Mohanty, Donald Davidson, and Charles Taylor.

Chapter 3 looks back historically to Ludwik Flek to demonstrate how misplaced the concerns are over historical accounts of science. His Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (1935) directly influenced Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), and later gained currency in the history and sociology of science. This original and inspirational constructivism, Herrnstein Smith argues, contains no hint of skeptical relativism, despite its account of truth as fluid. Flek requires that beliefs and theories be bodily and materially engaged, and denies that truth reduces to belief or even to membership in a conceptual system.

Of particular interest to feminist philosophers is chapter 4, which addresses how the illusory threat of skepticism undermines the project of feminist epistemology. The way that feminist philosophers situate themselves against...

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