Norman Levitt, Prometheus Bedeviled:
Science and the Contradictions of Contemporary Culture (Rutgers University
Press, 1999)
(to buy this book, click on the cover)
This review was published in the Independent on Sunday, 26 August 1999.
Rereading this review, I realise I should have made clearer that science -
by which Norman Levitt means natural science - has a privileged access, not
to truth in general, but to empirical truths about the physical world. There
is a tendency among some scientists to conflate the physical world and the
real world, as, for instance, in Richard Dawkins' assertion that 'science
is the only way we know to understand the real world.'
I have argued elsewhere that
this is a 'mechanistic' as opposed to a 'materialist' view of the world, because
it assumes that the tools of natural science are sufficient to understand
the social and mental realms. It is certainly possible to investigate both
the human mind and human society rationally and scientifically, but simply
in the same way as we investigate the natural or physical world. For more
discussion of this see Man, Beast and Zombie,
especially chapters 10 to 14.
For other discussions of public anxieties about science see my essay The
science we like and the science we don't and my debate
with Steve Fuller on the 'Sokal hoax'. See also my review
of Our Posthuman Future by Francis Fukuyama.
'Newton!' Griff Rhys-Jones snorts in the TV car ad. 'One apple falls on his
head and he thinks he's Einstein'. It nicely sums up the mixture of awe and
contempt with which most people view scientists. A few weeks ago the press
celebrated details of Einstein's larger than life brain as a symbol of scientific
genius. That same week a poll discovered that people were more willing to
trust even the food industry than scientists for information about GM crops.
This paradox in the public's perception of science lies at the heart of Prometheus
Bedeviled. Ignorance about science, Norman Levitt suggests, has led to
strained relations between science and society. We can't live without science,
yet fear what it is doing to us: from global warming to 'Frankenstein foods',
the consequences of science and technology drive us to panic. There is increasing
resentment about the 'arrogance' of science, and a desire to cut it down to
size. Such alienation, Levitt argues, is disastrous both for science and for
society at large.
Levitt, a mathematician from Rutgers University, has long been a pugnacious
defender of science against its critics. Five years ago, in Higher Superstition,
a book he co-wrote with Paul Gross, Levitt launched a broadside against the
'academic left' for having abandoned its commitment to science and reason,
and embraced instead a fashionable postmodern relativism. The book became
a key text in the so-called 'science wars' and turned Levitt into a figure
of hate among sociologists and historians of science. If anything Levitt's
view of 'science studies' has become harsher still. 'Academics who rail or
snipe at science', he writes, 'are rather like well-brought up children who
made a deliberate decision to misbehave and outrage their elders on some solemn
occasion.' But Prometheus Bedeviled is more than simply a critique
of such academic theory. Levitt recognises that academic attacks on science
are reflections of a more general unease. In his new book, therefore, Levitt
takes a broader view of the relationship between science and society in an
attempt to understand why science does not possess the social status he believes
it deserves.
Science, Levitt argues, is by far the best means we have invented for understanding
our world. It is not simply one way of knowing the world, on par with other
forms of knowledge. It is the crowning glory of human intellectual endeavour
and the only means of obtaining reliable, accurate and objective knowledge
about the world around us. The privileged access to truth that science provides
should ensure that it has a privileged place in society. Social institutions
from schools to law courts to legislatures should prioritise scientific evidence
above any other forms of knowledge.
Such a view, Levitt acknowledges, inevitably creates unease and resentment.
Much of this is because science is an elitist calling. By this Levitt means
two things. First, that only certain individuals have the talent to become
good scientists. And second, that science requires hard work, dedication and
the pursuit of high standards. But, Levitt claims, we live in a society in
which elitism and the pursuit of high standards are constantly denigrated
in the name of democracy and pluralism. Intellectual discourse has become
coarsened, high culture has prostituted itself in the name of popularity,
and there is a general tendency to seek the easiest solution to any problem
rather than struggling to achieve real insight. There is more than a touch
here of Allan Bloom's complaints in The Closing of the American Mind.
Levitt's aim, however, unlike Bloom's, is not to define a conservative agenda
but to show how today's 'anything goes' culture is inimical to scientific
activity. 'If high culture has frayed and disintegrated, if it has compounded
itself inextricably with common dross', he asks, 'why should not science share
the same fate?'
Levitt is particularly good in dismantling the arguments of those who wish
to 'democratise science'. There is currently a debate in America about the
teaching of evolutionary science in schools. Christian fundamentalists demand
that the Biblical account of Creation be taught as an equally valid theory
of the origins of life. Astonishingly many radicals support them on 'democratic'
grounds. What such radicals propose, Levitt points out, 'is not so much the
democratisation of science as the supplanting of science by a melange of viewpoints
and methods in which populist enthusiasm or even quasi-religious dogma will
be anointed with the cultural authority of the "scientific".'
Levitt's is a brilliant polemic, both thought-provoking and entertaining.
I am deeply sympathetic to his main arguments about the nature of scientific
knowledge and to his claims for a privileged role for science. I also agree
that the general 'dumbing down' of society has had a disastrous impact both
on science and on people's perceptions of science. Yet for all the lucidity
and cogency of Levitt's arguments, there remains a serious weakness in his
analysis.
Levitt suggests that there is a fundamental conflict between democracy and
science. Most people, he argues, are driven by habits of thoughts that are
antithetical to science. 'Public opinion', he writes, 'seems obstinately impermeable
to scientific good sense. The fit between the intellectual habits of most
laymen and what is required for reliable scientific judgement is depressingly
inadequate.' Hence most people will never be able to understand science, and
indeed will fear it because of its success. Science, therefore, needs to be
'protected' from the multitude. It must be 'insulated from the impulsiveness
of vulgar majoritarianism and populism'.
But insulating science in this fashion can only make worse disquiet about
it. Levitt is wrong to suggest that people are suspicious of science because
they are ignorant of it. More people have a greater understanding of science
today than they did a century ago, and yet the Victorian public more willingly
embraced scientific advance. That was largely because there existed then a
greater optimistic about the possibilities of human progress in general. We
live today in a much more pessimistic age. This has made many people queasy
about scientists 'playing God', and has created a sense that the interests
of scientists are different from their own. Insulating science in the way
that Levitt wants can only make both problems worse.
Levitt overplays the conflict between science and democracy. It is true that,
as in the debate about the teaching of evolutionary theory, scientific facts
often clash with religious or other prejudices, and that in these cases scientific
truth should not give way to irrational dogma, however popular this might
be. But one should not infer from this that there is a general conflict between
science and democracy. A genuine democracy requires its citizens to have a
grasp of the scientific method. A society in which mysticism or irrationality
breeds widely cannot be truly democratic. That is why, far from insulating
science from democracy, we should seek rather to open democracy to reason
and science.