To my knowledge, both version above of the story have validity. Lewontin, who has been mentioned in this or related threads, is a good example of a scientist who resisted the overreach of scientific theories of his times. It also seems to be historically true that science/scientists have often lagged non-scientists in these issues (which is no surprise to me, since I believe science is a highly conservative affair), but I do not think that’s because scientists can flip positions based on social appropriateness of such positions - in fact, from Summers to Pinker, modern defence of inappropriateness has always been that we “must” accept unpalatable truths when they are “scientific”.
I would venture that it took social activism to change society and equivalent scientific revisionism to correct science (where successful).
In such matters, it is not just science but the methodologies of science that are also in question. If the data contradict existing theories, what does one throw out? Etc.
Regarding expertise: the mathematician Gabriel Stolzenberg (whom I have referred to multiple times on this list) takes apart the arguments of Weinberg, Nagel and others to show that in their criticism of the pomos it is they (the experts!) who do not understand the mathematics, and it is they who commit what are, for their level, simple technical errors. On the flip side, a few years ago the sociologist Harry Collins beat out a “real” physicist on a series of technical questions in the field, as judged by a panel of experts.
At any rate, IMHO, the friction does not arises at the level of mathematical symbol manipulation. It is when the rubber meets the road, when the physical theories are applied to predict and prescribe that a conflict occurs between the scientist and the non-scientist. Here, again IMHO, each brings his/her own bag of knowledge or skills. The farce, the sleight of hand, the conceit is the assertion or assumption that there is a direct unmediated mapping between one type of theoretical/technical construct/model and the world/reality, both in terms of their nature and in terms of their laws (worse really… the [Platonist] assertion often is that it is the model that is in fact reality, but that’s another debate). But that’s incorrect in multiple ways. Sociologists, astrologers, lay people also offer their own [competing] models and constructs. Second, the assumption of reducibility, that all theories and laws not only reduce, but *are* *reducible* to physical laws expressed in mathematics, is more a matter of faith.
Third, there is always a chasm between theory, underdetermined by data, and the world (of objects and phenomena) it claims to describe. And how a scientist bridges that gap is not a scientific matter but is indeed a matter that is, IMHO, most significant to the rubber meets road problem i.e., the effect of scientific pronouncements on the lives of people (this among other reasons is the motivation behind organisations such as Lewontin and Co’s Science for the people). There are two interesting contemporary examples of this problem that I would draw attention to (both of which I have posted about here, before, so apologies for the broken record):
One is the exchange between the neuroscientist V.S.Ramachandran and the philosopher Colin McGinn in the LRB (or perhaps the NYRB). I won’t get too far into the details, but McGinn does a good job of pointing out that the solid basis of Ramachandran’s technical work using fMRIs and what not, nevertheless, does not underwrite his (VSR’s) speculations on the workings of the “mind” (a sort of category error).
The other is the murky debate around philosopher Jerry Fodor’s claim that Natural Selection doesn’t really live up to its billing. The responses from biologists have almost all missed the point entirely (Lewontin being the only one, in my opinion, to have gotten close), as they repeat the just so story by arguing back from the results (as Fodor says, *we* *humans* can do that because we can look back, but nature, the agent of the change, cannot!). Fodor’s point (at least as I see it) that The Theory of Natural Selection is actually not a Theory at all seems to be lost on the most technical minds in biology because his point is not a biological technical one.
> In my experience, many scientists have so little respect for the critiques
> that they simply don't understand them... their contempt isn't proper in
> any way shape or form.
Amen!
And then there’s Medawar’s Advise to a Young Scientist. Next week, perhaps!
—ravi