Higher Superstition Revisited: An Interview with Norman Levitt


Interview by Ophelia Benson


Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt's book Higher Superstition appeared in
1994, rattled a good many cages, and prompted the
Sokal Hoax. The book describes a bizarre situation in American
universities in which academics in various (mostly
new-minted) fields such as Cultural Studies, Literary Theory, and
Science Studies, plus a few more familiar ones such as
Sociology, Comparative Literature and the like, make a career of writing
about science without taking the trouble to know
anything about it. Gross and Levitt have a good deal of fun exposing the
absurd mistakes perpetrated by people who
rhapsodise about quantum mechanics and chaos theory without having the
faintest idea what they're talking about.

But hilarity aside, there are serious issues involved. The Cultural
Studies brigade attack not only the misuses to which
science can be put, but scientific ways of thinking themselves; not only
possible inequities in hiring and promotion, but
logic, truth and the 'Enlightenment project'. Gross and Levitt did an
admirable job of sounding the alarm which Butterflies
and Wheels plans to go on sounding. Norman Levitt very kindly agreed to
answer some question for us.



Benson: Do you think the situation has improved since you wrote Higher
Superstition? Do people seem any more embarrassed or
self-conscious about writing ignorant absurdities? Or do they merely
congratulate themselves all the more on how
"transgressive" they are?

Levitt: This is a complicated question in that it depends on the
parameters one chooses to measure improvement or
deterioration. My main motivation for writing HS was to alert scientists
to the fact that bizarre views of science were
being taught and fervently advocated in various enclaves of the
humanities and social sciences. The main immediate danger,
I thought, was that "science studies" imperialists were, in many
schools, proposing that the "science requirement" for
non-science students be replaced by courses in "science and society" or
some such. This was an attractive proposition for
some of the scientists, who view "Physics for Poets" and the like as
joyless and time-wasting tasks. But since word has
gotten round that science studies is a dubious cult and actively hostile
to science to boot, the prospects for this kind of
coup have pretty much crashed. Of course, HS can't by any means claim
all the credit. The real shocker was the Sokal
Hoax, and there were other instructive flaps as well, such as the
Science in American Life exhibit at the Smithsonian.

Another fact worth noting with some satisfaction is that the enthusiasm
for extreme constructivist claims regarding the
nature of scientific knowledge has cooled considerably. Constructivist
slogans are no longer reflexively adopted and
mouthed in literature and sociology departments. This doesn't mean that
science studies has become any more worthwhile or
intellectually responsible, or that its hostility toward science has
lessened. But a lot of the rebellious glee has gone
out of it, as has the smug delight in being outrageous.

Most important, the ultimate ambition of many postmodern science-studies
enthusiasts--that is, to become the primary
mediators between science and political institutions (the commissars, as
it were, of science and technology)--have largely
been squelched. Embarrassing questions were raised far too early in the
game, well before any successful infiltration of
the corridors of power.

On the other hand, alas, few of the more notorious academic anti-science
celebrities have lost out, career-wise, as a
result of being flayed by HS, A House Built on Sand, The Flight from
Science and Reason, and so forth. There are some
partial exceptions to this, most notably the failure of the silly
attempts to appoint a science studies professor at the
Institute for Advanced Study. But even the characters gulled by Sokal's
prank remain pretty much immune to retribution
for their intellectual dereliction. Indeed, being attacked by one of
those dreaded scientists in warpaint amounts to a
crown of martyrdom that nicely adorns one's curriculum vita. Most so
attacked have prospered quite nicely, thank you. One
laments the injustice of it all! 

But then, we're not talking about child rape or looting employee pension
funds. It's just the university culture being
its customary silly self, which is hardly surprising or curable.

Finally, something should be said about the leaching of postmodern
antiscience attitudes into the more general culture.
Some real damage has been done. Schools of education have picked up a
bit of this nonsense, especially in connection with
"constructivist" theories of pedagogy. Even worse, so have some schools
of nursing, which invoke shoddy philosophy and pomo
slogans to justify their flirtation with worthless alternative medicine
dogmas and practices. Some of the same stuff works
its way into environmental activism or into the kind of ethnic activism
that has set up western science as an ideological
enemy. Postmodern cant has also softened up many intellectuals for the
renewed assaults of creationists, now taking form as
"Intelligent Design Theory." (An example may be found in The Nation, the
best-known American leftist journal, which
recently ran a bizarre, effectively pro-ID review of Stephen Gould's
last book. It was written by an au courant literary
critic with scant knowledge of biology but a thorough grounding in
social-constructivist drivel.)



Benson: Are undergraduates aware of the controversies? Do science
teachers have to waste much energy combatting trendy
notions about the situatedness of truth, or is that one area where
ignorance is an advantage?

Levitt: Speaking as a mathematics teacher, I waste a lot of energy,
perhaps, but not in order to combat postmodern
attitudinizing. In lower-level courses, I talk and I write stuff on the
blackboard, the undergraduates listen and take
notes (or not). Hence, there's little interchange that isn't initiated
by "Is this going to be on the exam?" In
upper-level courses, things are a bit more relaxed and clubby, but
students who get as far as upper-level mathematics are
hardly the type to pay much attention to the archdruids of
deconstruction, the pythonesses of feminist theory, or the
jongleurs of multiculturalism.

Nonetheless, one can get a sense of overall undergraduate attitudes
toward the spectrum of experiences encountered at a
university. I'm specifically talking about a large, multiplex American
state university, which encompasses, academically,
all sorts of activity, from hard-nosed engineering to the squishiest,
touchy-feely "oppression studies," and which serves a
host of other functions by way of baby sitting young people between late
adolescence and the grim, inevitable day they have
to go out and earn a living. Most students invest most of their ardor in
having a helluva good time-sex, rock' n' roll,
and partying down, with the occasional foray to the football stadium or
the basketball arena for those rituals of mass
mindlessness. To extent that they take education seriously, it's as a
gateway to the possibility of making a decent
income-upper middle-class or better. So they fight like hell to get into
the business and management programs, and
sometimes do some serious grinding to qualify for law or medical school.
But the issues that raise tempers in purely
academic circles-the culture wars, the fights over "diversity," and all
that rot-are not undergraduate issues, by and
large.

The PC/Pomo faction, to describe it as tersely as possible, certainly
has a death-grip on a lot of instructional turf.
Basic courses like expository writing are in their hands, and many
students have to go through the mill of a pious course
on "diversity" or some such. There they get a fairly strong whiff of
academic-left doxology. But the upshot is not, on the
whole, a cohort of enthusiastic recruits, but rather a mass of
skeptical-to-cynical young people who have caught on to the
fact that their instructors, or at least, those who give pedagogical
marching orders to their instructors, can often be
prigs, bores, and bigots-and none too bright, at that. PC/Pomo preaching
far more readily generates disdain for itself than
hostility toward its declared foes. This is even true for black and
Hispanic students. It is an obvious corollary that the
quirky attitudes toward science common amongst the pomo faithful do not
diffuse very far or very fast into mainstream
undergraduate culture.

This is not to say that undergrads are generally knowledgeable about
science or that they have a sophisticated grasp of the
canons of reliable knowledge. Even science majors have a shallow
knowledge of science beyond what they've specifically
acquired in courses. The non-science majors know little and care little
about science and tend to be clueless and
inarticulate when scientific matters arise at any level. But PC/Pomo
demonology, per se, doesn't seem to have been
responsible for this.



Benson: Is the issue still alive among the faculty? Are there arguments,
debates, quarrels? Do you personally have to deal
with bristling, indignant colleagues from "Cultural Studies" and such
who are outraged by your work?

Levitt: The basic story is this: A certain camp within the PC/Pomo
enterprise made a fetish of "science criticism" and, at
its high water mark 10 or 12 years ago, even dreamt of becoming a
powerful oracular presence on the societal scale, a major
player in determining science and technology policy. However, it
couldn't fly below the radar forever; its vanguard was
spotted and chased back to the starting line fairly easily. The "science
wars" have dissolved such susceptibility to its
wiles as might have existed among scientists and science administrators.
But its own turf is pretty secure, thanks to the
inertia of the academic world. Its members have their little club and
retain their power to praise and promote each other
for as long as the money holds out (which it will for some time to
come). 

Hurt feelings persist, and folks like Paul Gross and me, not to mention
Sokal, are still excoriated for our villainy and
obtuseness, evoking imprecations from many courses and published papers
(and a good thing, too, since it keeps our books in
print!). Yet people in the science-studies racket have also grown more
prudent; they are chary of making outrageous
epistemological claims with flags flying and trumpets blaring the way
they used to on a daily basis. Their dreams of
exercising actual political power over science and scientists are on the
back shelf. But the academic cult as such keeps
grinding away on its own narrow terms.

Debates do continue, in some sense, but they have moved to such arenas
as schools of education and-quite frightening-into
medicine, where bits and pieces of the radical science-studies litany
are now and then recruited to defend quackery. But,
as I see it, the main thing to keep in mind is that the academic assault
on science began, when you get down to it, because
antiscientific attitudes widespread in the general culture penetrated
the academy, becoming over time increasingly stark
and explicit in the thinking of intellectuals who think of themselves as
radically opposed to middle-class politics,
culture, and values. In the universities, this antagonism acquired a
particular rationale-philosophies propounding the
situated and socially-constructed character of knowledge claims and the
malign effects of a Eurocentric episteme. It also
acquired a vocabulary and a certain characteristic rhetorical style. At
that point, it leached back into the wider culture,
slightly altering the rhetoric, but not necessarily the essential
substance, of demotic antiscience. But it is well to
remember that the basic problem is not that of an assault on rationality
by a cabal of reckless university intellectuals;
the assault was going on long before these guys came on the scene, and
will continue even if each and every
poststructuralist and feminist-epistemologist were to convert overnight
to logical positivism.

As for my personal experiences; obviously there are people who don't
like me at all because of HS et seq. Once in a while
I get roundly attacked at a conference where I'm speaking. But this is
hardly terrifying; superannuated as I am, I love
being denounced as a dangerous character. In defense of my own
institution, Rutgers University, I must say that it has
treated me rather well as a result of my involvement in the science wars
(while treating some of my local enemies quite
well, too!) Post 9/11, we-scientists, intellectuals along with all the
rest--seem to be headed into "interesting times,"
which takes a lot of the ginger out of academic quarrels. All this
science-wars stuff may be fading irrelevancy within a
few years.



Benson: If some faculty members are indignant, are others as it were
recruited? Do you find new allies in departments such
as History, Sociology, Anthropology, where evidence and the validity of
evidence are highly relevant? If so, could this be
a hopeful sign? Could one by-product be a heightened awareness in many
disciplines of the need to ground truth-claims and
knowledge-claims with evidence and logic?

Levitt: Though one could hardly call it a mass movement, there has been
a recurrent "Rally round the flag, boys!" mood
amongst some scholars in areas besieged by relativism and
anti-rationality, with the serio-comic episode of the science
wars providing some ground for renewed hope that terminal silliness will
not prevail. I've been in touch with quite a few
of these people in areas like psychology, anthropology, and even
philosophy. It's no longer quite so easy to sneer at
words like evidence"" and "objectivity," and, to a certain extent, it's
become possible to sneer at the sneerers. Things
are changing slowly, but largely they are changing for the good. The
project of serious inquiry in all kinds of fields is
in better shape than it was a few years ago, and the intellectual fops
are no longer quite so sure of their ground.

Norman Levitt is Professor of Mathematics at Rutgers University. He is author, with Paul R. Gross, of Higher Superstition:
The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). Edward O. Wilson said about
this book that it was "original" and "brilliant".

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POWRÓT