Defending Science 鈥� Within Reason by Susan Haack, Prometheus, $28, ISBN 1591021170 Reviewed by Robert Crease
IF you regard science as not merely one cultural phenomenon among many others but as a manifestation of human enquiry at its best and an invaluable tool for navigating a complex and perilous world, then for years you have been dogged by a serious problem. The proponents of this view have tended to be narrow, naive, pedantic and, worst of all, dull. Representatives of the opposition, who claimed that science was at bottom a power grab, a swindle, or mere networking, were not always convincing but were at least interesting: the incendiary Sandra Harding, the challenging Trevor Pinch and Harry Collins, and the imaginative Bruno Latour.
Along came Susan Haack. A professor not only of philosophy but also of law, she is a careful reader, sees through empty rhetoric, can spot flaws in logic and argument, can tell when scholarship slides into advocacy, realises that all evidence is not equal, and is able to forge a dramatic and compelling case. She aptly describes herself as a 鈥減assionate moderate鈥� in the title of a previous book. Haack can provide breezy summaries of complex positions without being simplistic or patronising, and fashions clever phases that stick. She is analytic and colourful, learned and fun.
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Defending Science is Haack鈥檚 latest contribution to understanding science. She reviews the strengths and limitations of what she calls the 鈥淥ld Deferentialists鈥� and their successors, who believed that formal logic could supply science with foundations in the theory of knowledge, and of the 鈥淣ew Cynics鈥�, who found the pretensions of the sciences to sure and certain knowledge indefensible.
Haack鈥檚 take-home message in Defending Science is that 鈥渟cientific inquiry is far messier, far less tidy than the Old Deferentialists imagined; and yet far more constrained by the demands of evidence than the New Cynics dream鈥�. Her favourite analogy compares doing science to working on a crossword puzzle. It is neither arbitrary nor logical, surrounding clues matter, and success requires that 鈥測ou should neither give up [a conjecture] too easily, nor hang on to it too obstinately鈥�.
This metaphor could profit from a deeper philosophical grounding. Haack might look to hermeneutical philosophy, which describes how the framework of meaning that makes for objectivity is not merely a function of tools, texts and ideas, but also involves a culturally and historically determined engagement with the world, susceptible to change over time.
But even without this philosophical foundation, Haack articulates a serious position that makes defending science reasonably fun again.