ABSTRACT
Postmodernism’s disavowal of meta-narratives and universal truth claims
has recently manifested itself in a series of debates that has become known as
the ‘science wars’: scientists, cultural theorists, sociologists, and philosophers
in dispute over the status of scientific knowledge (Collins and Pinch 1993;
Franklin 1996; Levins 1996; Martin 1996; Rose 1996; Shapin and Schaffer
1985; Snow 1964; Sokal 1996). Is science a disinterested reflection of the
world as it really is or a discourse whose findings are heavily influenced by the
interests and prejudices of those who work within it? Strong objections are raised by the realists in the debate to the sociologists’ metaphor of scientific
knowledge as a ‘construction’. What the sociologist understands by this is that
scientific theories are constituted by the perspectives and research opportu-
nities which are made available within a particular community. However, the
realist reacts to the more subjective, ‘fabricated’ associations of ‘construction’
and interprets the relativism of the sociologist to mean that it is the scien-
tific community and not nature which determines where ontological divisions
lie. Do we create or do we discover truths about the world? Surely, the realist demands, it cannot be the former? It is in this context that Richard Daw-
kins’s often quoted remark – ‘show me a relativist at 30,000 feet and I will
show you a hypocrite!’ – is made (quoted in Franklin 1996: 143).
