Abstract
The conflict that has come to be known as the “Science Wars” started when the biologist, Paul R. Gross, and the mathematician, Norman Levitt, published the book, Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science. The book was a fierce attack on certain quarters within the history of science, philosophy of science and sociology of science — such as existentialism, phenomenology, postmodernism, feminism, multiculturalism and so on. The next year, 1995, the book was followed up with a conference in New York given by the New York Academy of Sciences titled The Flight from Science and Reason. The conflict gained momentum when the physicist Alan Sokal published the article “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” in the journal for cultural studies, Social Text. Soon after the article was published, Sokal revealed that the entire thing had been a hoax. He had intentionally written an article that contained a lot of nonsense, however it was written using fashionably correct terminology with references to a range of “postmodern” thinkers. The hoax gained worldwide publicity, and many of the participants in the debate have claimed that this debate shows that C.P. Snow’s “two cultures” still exist.1
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Notes
I want to point out that I find Sokal’s article both clever and amusing, and that I regard the reaction of the editors of Social Text as both irrational and even ridiculous.
Sheldon Goldstein, “Quantum Philosophy: The Flight from Reason in Science” in Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, eds., Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994 ). 119–126.
Mara Beller, “The Sokal Hoax: At Whom Are We Laughing?,” Physics Today, September 1998: 29.
In this article I stress the close relationship between Bohr and Heisenberg. However, as pointed out by Patrick A. Heelan, Quantum Mechanics and Objectivity. A Study of the Physical Philosophy of Werner Heisenberg (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965) there were no doubt important differences between them.
Werner Heisenberg, Physikalische Prinzipien der Quantentheorie (Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut 1958 [1930]): 48
Heisenberg, “The Physical Content of Quantum Kinematics and Dynamics,” reprinted in J.A. Wheeler, W.H. Zurek, eds., Quantum Theory and Measurement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983 [1927]), 64.
Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen. “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?” Physical Review 47/1935:777–80, reprinted in J.A. Wheeler and W.H. Zurek, eds., Quantum Theory and Measurement.
In an article with the title “Is the Moon There When Nobody Looks?” (Physics Today, April 1985: 38–47) David Mermin quotes the following passage from Abraham Pais: “We often discussed his notions on objective reality. I recall that during one walk Einstein suddenly stopped, turned to me and asked whether I really believed that the moon exists only when I look at it.” Pais, `Subtle is the Lord… ’ The Science and Life of Albert Einstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).
Niels Bohr, “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?” Physical Review 48/1935:696–702, reprinted in Wheeler and Zurek, eds., Quantum Theory and Measurement,148.
Bohr, “Science and the Unity of Knowledge,” reprinted in Niels Bohr: Collected Works,vol. 10 (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1999 [1955]), 79–98. 89.
On the Bell inequalities and EPR experiments, see for example J. S. Bell, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987 ).
Quoted from Abraham Pais, Niels Bohr’s Time, in Physics, Philosophy and Polity ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991 ), 426.
In support of this view, see for example Dugald Murdoch, Niels Bohr’s Philosophy of Physics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
For historical details, see Heelan, “Husserl’s Later Philosophy of Natural Science,” Philosophy of Science 54/1987: 368. Heelan has a much more detailed description of Husserl’s project in Crisis than I can offer here.
Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften and die transzendentale Phänomenologie, Walter Biemel, ed. ( The Hague: Nijhoff, 1954 ), 52.
See Edwin A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundation of Modern Physical Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972, Sec. rev. ed. [1924]). On the Platonist aspects of Galileo’s science, see especially pp. 6473.
Alexandre Koyré, Galileo Studies (London: Harvester, 1978 [1939]): 3.
Needless to say, this is an extreme interpretation. An almost opposite view, stressing the importance of Galileo’s experiments, can be found in Stillman Drake, Galileo at Work (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1978 ). However, without following Koyré all the way, one may nevertheless maintain that he focussed on an essential aspect of Galileo’s science.
Koyré, 37–38.
Koyré, “Galileo and Plato” in Koyré: Metaphysics and Measurement (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968 [1943]), 34.
Husserl, 121.
Ibid.,125.
For more details, see Pais ’Subtle is the Lord… ’ The Science and Life of Albert Einstein,116–117.
Cf. Murdoch, 105.
July 1935. In Pais, Niels Bohr ‘s Time, in Physics, Philosophy and Polity, 446.
David Favrholdt, Fysik, bevidsthed, liv. Studier i Niels Bohrs filosofi ( Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag 1995 ), 89.
Ronald H. Giere, Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988 ), 133.
Heelan, Space-Perception and the Philosophy ofScience ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988 ).
Heidegger, “Vom Wesen und Begriff der fysis” in Wegmarken ( Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1978 ), 246.
F. M. Cornford, Plato ‘s Cosmology. The Timaeus of Plato ( London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977 ), 200n.
Included as Appendix VI in the English translation of Edmunds Husserl’s, The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. D. Can ( Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970 ).
Heelan, Space-Perception and the Philosophy of Science,378.
Husserl, 1954, 27.
Benoit Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature (New York: Freeman and Company, 1983), 25ff.
For a more detailed discussion of complementarity and biology, see Henry J. Folse Jr., “Complementarity and the Description of Nature in Biological Science,” Biology and Philosophy 5/1990: 211–224.
Bohr, “Light and Life” in Bohr, Collected Works, vol. 10: 34.
Norman Levitt, “The End of Science, the Central Dogma of Science Studies, Monsieur Jourdain, and Uncle Vanya” in Noretta Koertge, ed., A House Built on Sand. Exposing Postmodernist Myths About Science ( New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998 ), 280.
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Fjelland, R. (2002). The “Copenhagen Interpretation” of Quantum Mechanics and Phenomenology. In: Babich, B.E. (eds) Hermeneutic Philosophy of Science, Van Gogh’s Eyes, and God. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 225. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1767-0_5
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