Why Are There No Science Critics?

Prosthesis links to an article by philosopher of technology Don Ihde who considers why we don't have science/technology critics and why anyone who attempts it is quickly called a "Luddite" or anti-science/technology.  Ihde takes as his starting point a passage from Langdon Winner's book The Whale and the Reactor (coincidentally the same passage I quoted here a while back).  An excerpt from Ihde:

The contrast between art and literary criticism and what I shall call 'technoscience criticism' is marked. Few would call art or literary critics "anti-art" or "anti-literature" in the working out, however critically, of their products. And while it may indeed be true that given works of art or given texts are excoriated, demeaned, or severely dealt with, one does not usually think of the critic as generically "anti-art" or "anti-literature." Rather, it is precisely because the critic is passionate about his or her subject matter that he or she becomes a 'critic.' That is simply not the case with science or technoscience criticism.

Link: Why Not Science Critics?.

Of course we do now many (relatively new) fields of study that do just this: philosophy of science, philosophy of technology, science and technology studies (STS), sociology of science, etc., but this work doesn't typically get mainstream exposure or respect.

There's an interesting and lengthy discussion related to this happening amongst SEED magazine science bloggers Benjamin Cohen and others (The World's Fair: When Talking About Science is Dangerous), in response to a recent op-ed by Chris Mooney and Alan Sokal (LA Times: Can Washington get smart about science?).  STS professor Cohen takes Mooney and Sokal to task for misquoting Bruno Latour with respect to the "science wars" of the 1990s, which Mooney and Sokal claim has re-emerged as the American right's "Republican war on science."  (That's an extremely rough paraphrase -- I recommend you read Cohen's post.)

Comments

[Bob Calder]

There isn't much of a distinction even though we often say "Science and Technology." Scientists describe technology as part of Science. "Technoscience" is a label that doesn't *do* much for me.

I would like to observe that the article starts off with an odd tone and then grows warmer and ends very nicely. There are plenty of ehticists at work and there are plenty of writers who are valiantly attempting to make science writing more clear, although Ihde doesn't mention the science writers.

Perhaps there are needs at several levels that can improve Science. If you think of Literature as a two dimensional form and Science as having a couple more the critic analog may be a bit too flat.

[Kevin]

"Technoscience" is a term popular with the Science and Technology Studies community, meant to express (as I understand it) the close coupling between science and technology in the way we talk about it at least. But I agree, it can sound a bit too academese.

The Ihde article doesn't have a date, but I'm guessing it's quite old (late 80s, early 90s). Times have changed quite a bit, criticism is more common now, and STS and ethics are bigger fields. There are good science writers, but too often there's not much depth or questioning to popular science.