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Comment by jhbadger | Hacker News Reader

Well, it's true that the cliched "scientific method" taught in high schools is a gross oversimplification, and many discoveries are made by accident rather than deliberately trying to test a clearly defined hypothesis. But in the 1980s-1990s "Science Wars", there was a movement by postmodernists to try to claim that science is just an ideology no better than religion or magic. This movement liked to quote Feyerabend and Kuhn regularly. That's why many working scientists don't really have warm feelings towards philosophers of science in general.

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Considering the replication crises and the utter failure of, for example, supersymmetry in theoretical high energy physics, maybe the criticism was warranted. Ignoring the ideological forces that drive science as it actually exists doesn't make them go away.

Supersymmetry was a theory that turned out not to be true. Are scientists not allowed to offer hypotheses that turn out not to be true? That's a job for oracles, not people.

What do you mean? Supersymmetry isn't falsifiable with current technology, as far as I know.

Some versions are, and some versions aren't. I think the theoretically most appealing versions (like the MSSM) have been ruled out by the LHC.

(Anyway, my main point is that there was nothing problematic about advancing supersymmetry as a hypothesis, whether or not it turns out to be true.)

> there was a movement by postmodernists to try to claim that science is just an ideology no better than religion or magic.

This is such a paranoid fantasy.

It's not a paranoid fantasy, when you look at the (very real) religious education wars that were being waged in the American South.

The meme of "Science is no better then religion or magic" is why schools mandated equal time into teaching evolution, and particular flavours of evangelical creationism.

It's literally what Feyerabend argued in "Against Method".

That sounds interesting. Do you have a recommendation for some reading materials on those Science Wars?

I'd recommend Samir Okasha's "Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction" (one of those Oxford University Press "Very short introduction" books that are only around 100 pages) as he has a short section on the Science Wars, and then if you are interested in more, James Robert Brown's "Who Rules in Science?: An Opinionated Guide to the Wars". Both Okasha and Brown are philosophers of science themselves, and do cover both sides, but they are are scientific realists in that they believe that scientific models do reflect to some degree the reality of the universe.

You might be interested in Why Trust Science? by Naomi Oreskes, who tries to answer a related question: how do we do science in a 'post-truth' period, where the tactics of postmodern critique are being taken up by climate change deniers, tobacco companies, etc?

I have only read the beginning, but chapter one gives a very good overview of the history of critique that got us to this place. Oreskes suggests that it is possible to hold a critical, social constructivist position while also demanding a good scientific practice that will produce trustworthy knowledge.

Karin Knorr-Cetina's Epistemic cultures : how the sciences make knowledge (1999). https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=0372C63887A1EAB996E5E2D...

How does science create knowledge? Epistemic cultures, shaped by affinity, necessity and historical coincidence, determine how people know and what they know. This text compares two epistemic cultures, those in high energy physics and molecular biology.

The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution by C.P. Snow (1959). An important shot over the bow.

Many working scientists are also not very well versed in social sciences and humanities and tend to just get angry when anything outside of their fields get mentioned.

My experience is precisely the reverse. Working scientists understand both the social sciences and humanities as well as science and math. On the other hand, people outside the sciences have very little understanding of science and math. And they are often embarrassed by their lack of knowledge and sometimes respond in anger.

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