ABSTRACT
A notable feature of contemporary Western—and especially American—culture is its hostility to the scientific enterprise necessary to its existence. The enmity of popular culture toward science and scientists is familiar to every TV viewer and has been well documented by Stanley Rothman. Thus science becomes an irresistible target for those Western intellectuals whose sense of their own heritage has become an intolerable moral burden. The central common feature of the maniacs whom Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt analyze is "perspectivism." All the traditional ideas of Western civilization, including science, are merely "local truths," if not deliberately manufactured by the upholders of "hierarchy". Gross and Levitt's critique is especially interesting, since, as they stress, they themselves are men of the left. Gross and Levitt closely analyze the subtypes of the attack on science. For extreme feminists, science is a male enterprise biased by the values of our male-dominated society.
