What do you think?
Rate this book
Thomas Kuhn and the Science Wars
Shows how science has become a major contested cultural symbol, and suggests that we need a new 'post-normal' synthesis in which the old debates are transcended. Science is not about demonstrations by experts, but dialogue among stakeholders. This is the new face of science, one which gives Kuhn's seminal insights new life.
80 pages, Paperback
First published May 3, 1996
83 people want to read
About the author
Ziauddin Sardar
194 books152 followersZiauddin Sardar has written or edited 45 books over a period of 30 years, many with his long-time co-author Merryl Wyn Davies. Recent titles include Balti Britain: a Journey Through the British Asian Experience (Granta, 2008); and How Do You Know: Reading Ziauddin Sardar on Islam, Science and Cultural Relations (Pluto, 2006). The first volume of his memoirs is Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim (Granta, 2006). His recent television work includes a 90-minute documentary for the BBC in 2006 called 'Battle for Islam'. Sardar's online work includes a year-long blog on the Qur'an published in 2008 by The Guardian newspaper.
Sardar is a Visiting Professor of Postcolonial Studies in the Department of Arts Policy and Management at City University London and is Editor of the forecasting and planning journal, Futures. He is also a member of the UK Commission on Equality and Human Rights. His journalism appears most often in The Guardian and The Observer, as well as the UK weekly magazine, New Statesman. In the 1980s, he was among the founders of Inquiry, a magazine of ideas and policy focusing on Muslim countries. His early career includes working as a science correspondent for Nature and New Scientist magazines and as a reporter for London Weekend Television.
>>(from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziauddin... )<<
--
*You can know more from his own site:
http://www.ziauddinsardar.com/Biograp...
Sardar is a Visiting Professor of Postcolonial Studies in the Department of Arts Policy and Management at City University London and is Editor of the forecasting and planning journal, Futures. He is also a member of the UK Commission on Equality and Human Rights. His journalism appears most often in The Guardian and The Observer, as well as the UK weekly magazine, New Statesman. In the 1980s, he was among the founders of Inquiry, a magazine of ideas and policy focusing on Muslim countries. His early career includes working as a science correspondent for Nature and New Scientist magazines and as a reporter for London Weekend Television.
>>(from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziauddin... )<<
--
*You can know more from his own site:
http://www.ziauddinsardar.com/Biograp...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 15, 2013
This slim volume is one of a set collectively entitled Postmodern Encounters, the postmodern not being a category with which you would immediately associate Thomas Kuhn. As the series title suggests, the idea is to pair a significant thinker with a pertinent issue and see what happens. Here we have Thomas Kuhn, with the Science Wars thrown in, all in 76 pages. It’s a mix of good and bad: you can read it in the bath before the water gets cold, but it isn’t exactly comprehensive, and there isn’t as much of Kuhn as you would expect from the title, though to be fair, you don’t get much on the Science Wars either. What it does show is the ways in which Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions became a key text for the way in which later philosophers conceived “normal science”.
We start with a brief overview of the hilarious Sokal affair, his paper ‘Transgressing the Boundaries’ showing up the gullibility of the editors of Social Text, then we have some background history on the Science Wars, and the context of the power struggles confronting science within which Kuhn’s book was published in 1962 (though one would not have thought that the controversy over Velikovsky’s theories was significant enough to warrant an entire page). There is a little on the reception of Kuhn’s book and a brief critique. There is nothing particularly contentious, though the treatment is extremely sketchy because of the limited space.
Where the book goes off the rails is in the discussion of “post-Kuhnian developments”. Given that this period covers some forty years up to the publication of Ziauddin Sardar’s book, there is plenty of scope to trace a few developments in the philosophy of science, but instead Sardar devotes a significant proportion of his text to a discussion of “the feminist approach to science” and “post-colonial studies of science”, both offered as alternatives to Western science. Unfortunately he is not able to provide much detail on what he thinks these alternatives would look like in practice.
He correctly notes that women are discriminated against in science, but this is not his main point. There is a problem within science as currently practised; it is too male: “It [feminist scholarship of science] has shown that the focus on quantitative measures, analysis of variation, impersonal and excessively abstract conceptual schemes, is both a distinctively masculine tendency and also one that serves to hide its own gendered character. And it has revealed that the prioritizing of mathematics and abstract thought, standards of objectivity, the construction of scientific method and the instrumental nature of scientific rationality, are all based on the notion of ideal masculinity.”
These, it is implied, are not good things. What an alternative would look like we are not told, but to paraphrase an old joke, I would be reluctant to fly in a plane designed by feminist engineers if they threw out quantitative measures, maths and objectivity. Just getting more women into science (while welcome) would not help, Sardar claims, as this is a systemic problem within a male-oriented approach to science, one that can only be rectified by a fundamental change in its approach: “Feminist scholars are asking for nothing less than a reorientation of the logic of scientific discovery”. In the meantime presumably such feminist scholars will eschew all manifestation of oppressive patriarchy, such as technology.
The other peculiar section deals with “post-colonial studies of science”. Not coincidentally Sardar is described as a Visiting Professor of Postcolonial Studies, but again lack of space means he has to paint with a brush broad enough to become caricature. He notes that non-Western scientific developments have been marginalised in the standard historical narrative of science, particularly those in China and the Middle East (though pretending that ancient Greek culture wasn’t European merely to downplay European achievements is pointless).
But correcting the historical record is not enough. Sardar is suggesting that other cultures have their own paradigms which are just as valid as the hegemonic Western approach. However again he does not indicate how, say, his example of Hindu sevenfold logic might be an improvement over the Western type, which seems to muddle along quite successfully with what it has. But still, “A science that is based on different notions of nature, universe, time and logic would therefore be a totally different enterprise from Western science”, as if these were a smorgasbord from which you could pick what you fancy according to preference, all approaches equally valid and successful in practice.
What would such a science look like, one wonders. But we are prevented from finding out: to its shame, we are informed, blinkered Western science refuses to acknowledge the validity of these alternative approaches, maintaining a monopoly by unfair means. Part of Sardar’s argument is a crude characterisation of the way scientific development works, stating that European science grew partly because of the influence of colonialism, its military, economic and political dimension, “and not because of the purported greater rationality of science or the alleged commitment of scientists to the pursuit of disinterested truths”. Who today would claim that science is a disinterested pursuit isolated from social influences? It’s a straw scientist.
In parallel with the feminist scholars, we are told that “post-colonial scholarship of science seeks to re-establish the practice of Islamic, Indian or Chinese science in contemporary times”. Sardar ignores the large numbers of students from those regions happy to pursue Western science in Western countries in preference to whatever advantages his alternatives might offer, and, in portraying these competing paradigms in ideal terms, he somewhat ignores the contingency and social influence that would affect such approaches just as much as they do the Western variety.
The book was published in 2000 so you might think that things have improved since he was writing, but his characterisation of science as a dogmatic religion refusing to admit uncertainty was as distorted then as it is now. Even if individual scientists dislike acknowledging error, science as a whole is generally a self-correcting enterprise. It changes with changing evidence, unlike theology, which resists change that contradicts dogma. In science’s supposed confusion, Sardar likes to think that scientists deny that “blind faith” among the public has gone, but it has been a long time since scientists were conceited enough to assume that the public had blind faith in their enterprise. If there was a “moral panic” among scientists when Sardar was writing, as he claims, it was a quiet one.
Given his commitment to cultural relativism, it is not surprising that Sardar bemoans the identification of radical critics such as Paul Feyerabend with irrationalism. He considers science to have entered a “post-normal” state, as discussed by Jerry Ravetz, but despite science’s undoubted difficulties, that still seems some way off. Yes, in a world where science becomes ever-more abstruse and unpredictable we need to hold its practitioners accountable, so one can certainly agree that there needs to be more public engagement with science and debate on its ramifications, and both have grown in the last decade.
But public involvement in practising science, including “anecdotal evidence and statistics gathered by a community”, while an interesting suggestion, is not a practical one given the way in which contemporary science is funded and conducted. There are some fine sentiments, but nothing on how they might be implemented, and we seem to have come a long way from Kuhn’s interest in how science deals with anomalies to Sardar’s in public policy and social engagement.
That the notion of paradigm shift is important is evidenced by the extension of its use from science matters (as I write this I have just seen a notice for a conference to discuss a possible paradigm shift in performance studies). Unfortunately, Sardar tries to cover too much ground in a small space, and many of his statements are either simplistic, unclear, or both. If the reader has no prior familiarity with the subject, this book is likely to engender as much confusion as enlightenment, and those with some familiarity will probably take issue with the naïve characterization of how science works. The publishers previously produced the … for Beginners series, for which Sardar contributed titles, and those worked brilliantly with their tight focus on a single topic. Here Sardar has bitten off a lot, and it feels undigested.
We start with a brief overview of the hilarious Sokal affair, his paper ‘Transgressing the Boundaries’ showing up the gullibility of the editors of Social Text, then we have some background history on the Science Wars, and the context of the power struggles confronting science within which Kuhn’s book was published in 1962 (though one would not have thought that the controversy over Velikovsky’s theories was significant enough to warrant an entire page). There is a little on the reception of Kuhn’s book and a brief critique. There is nothing particularly contentious, though the treatment is extremely sketchy because of the limited space.
Where the book goes off the rails is in the discussion of “post-Kuhnian developments”. Given that this period covers some forty years up to the publication of Ziauddin Sardar’s book, there is plenty of scope to trace a few developments in the philosophy of science, but instead Sardar devotes a significant proportion of his text to a discussion of “the feminist approach to science” and “post-colonial studies of science”, both offered as alternatives to Western science. Unfortunately he is not able to provide much detail on what he thinks these alternatives would look like in practice.
He correctly notes that women are discriminated against in science, but this is not his main point. There is a problem within science as currently practised; it is too male: “It [feminist scholarship of science] has shown that the focus on quantitative measures, analysis of variation, impersonal and excessively abstract conceptual schemes, is both a distinctively masculine tendency and also one that serves to hide its own gendered character. And it has revealed that the prioritizing of mathematics and abstract thought, standards of objectivity, the construction of scientific method and the instrumental nature of scientific rationality, are all based on the notion of ideal masculinity.”
These, it is implied, are not good things. What an alternative would look like we are not told, but to paraphrase an old joke, I would be reluctant to fly in a plane designed by feminist engineers if they threw out quantitative measures, maths and objectivity. Just getting more women into science (while welcome) would not help, Sardar claims, as this is a systemic problem within a male-oriented approach to science, one that can only be rectified by a fundamental change in its approach: “Feminist scholars are asking for nothing less than a reorientation of the logic of scientific discovery”. In the meantime presumably such feminist scholars will eschew all manifestation of oppressive patriarchy, such as technology.
The other peculiar section deals with “post-colonial studies of science”. Not coincidentally Sardar is described as a Visiting Professor of Postcolonial Studies, but again lack of space means he has to paint with a brush broad enough to become caricature. He notes that non-Western scientific developments have been marginalised in the standard historical narrative of science, particularly those in China and the Middle East (though pretending that ancient Greek culture wasn’t European merely to downplay European achievements is pointless).
But correcting the historical record is not enough. Sardar is suggesting that other cultures have their own paradigms which are just as valid as the hegemonic Western approach. However again he does not indicate how, say, his example of Hindu sevenfold logic might be an improvement over the Western type, which seems to muddle along quite successfully with what it has. But still, “A science that is based on different notions of nature, universe, time and logic would therefore be a totally different enterprise from Western science”, as if these were a smorgasbord from which you could pick what you fancy according to preference, all approaches equally valid and successful in practice.
What would such a science look like, one wonders. But we are prevented from finding out: to its shame, we are informed, blinkered Western science refuses to acknowledge the validity of these alternative approaches, maintaining a monopoly by unfair means. Part of Sardar’s argument is a crude characterisation of the way scientific development works, stating that European science grew partly because of the influence of colonialism, its military, economic and political dimension, “and not because of the purported greater rationality of science or the alleged commitment of scientists to the pursuit of disinterested truths”. Who today would claim that science is a disinterested pursuit isolated from social influences? It’s a straw scientist.
In parallel with the feminist scholars, we are told that “post-colonial scholarship of science seeks to re-establish the practice of Islamic, Indian or Chinese science in contemporary times”. Sardar ignores the large numbers of students from those regions happy to pursue Western science in Western countries in preference to whatever advantages his alternatives might offer, and, in portraying these competing paradigms in ideal terms, he somewhat ignores the contingency and social influence that would affect such approaches just as much as they do the Western variety.
The book was published in 2000 so you might think that things have improved since he was writing, but his characterisation of science as a dogmatic religion refusing to admit uncertainty was as distorted then as it is now. Even if individual scientists dislike acknowledging error, science as a whole is generally a self-correcting enterprise. It changes with changing evidence, unlike theology, which resists change that contradicts dogma. In science’s supposed confusion, Sardar likes to think that scientists deny that “blind faith” among the public has gone, but it has been a long time since scientists were conceited enough to assume that the public had blind faith in their enterprise. If there was a “moral panic” among scientists when Sardar was writing, as he claims, it was a quiet one.
Given his commitment to cultural relativism, it is not surprising that Sardar bemoans the identification of radical critics such as Paul Feyerabend with irrationalism. He considers science to have entered a “post-normal” state, as discussed by Jerry Ravetz, but despite science’s undoubted difficulties, that still seems some way off. Yes, in a world where science becomes ever-more abstruse and unpredictable we need to hold its practitioners accountable, so one can certainly agree that there needs to be more public engagement with science and debate on its ramifications, and both have grown in the last decade.
But public involvement in practising science, including “anecdotal evidence and statistics gathered by a community”, while an interesting suggestion, is not a practical one given the way in which contemporary science is funded and conducted. There are some fine sentiments, but nothing on how they might be implemented, and we seem to have come a long way from Kuhn’s interest in how science deals with anomalies to Sardar’s in public policy and social engagement.
That the notion of paradigm shift is important is evidenced by the extension of its use from science matters (as I write this I have just seen a notice for a conference to discuss a possible paradigm shift in performance studies). Unfortunately, Sardar tries to cover too much ground in a small space, and many of his statements are either simplistic, unclear, or both. If the reader has no prior familiarity with the subject, this book is likely to engender as much confusion as enlightenment, and those with some familiarity will probably take issue with the naïve characterization of how science works. The publishers previously produced the … for Beginners series, for which Sardar contributed titles, and those worked brilliantly with their tight focus on a single topic. Here Sardar has bitten off a lot, and it feels undigested.
July 3, 2019
This book throws out a lot of names and texts for such a short book which is distracting for someone like me who is not familiar with names in this field. I find the critique of the scientific method interesting but this book does little to explain Kuhn's actual ideas making generalized statements without specific examples. The few examples that are shared, like the questionable existence of TRH, are not explained in a way that was helpful to add to my understanding. There has to be a better book on this topic out there. This just felt like an introduction. Here are some parts I liked:
p. 26 "The term 'paradigm' is closely related to 'normal science': those who work within a dogmatic, shared paradigm use its resources to refine theories, explain puzzling data, establish increasingly precise measures of standards, and do other necessary work to expand the boundaries of normal science." (wave optics, Newtonian, Coperican, etc.)
p. 28 "Thus, the scientific method-the idealized process of observation, experimentation, deduction and conclusion-on which much of science's claims to objectivity and universalism are based, turns out to be a mirage. Kuhn suggests it is the paradigm that determines the kinds of experiments scientists perform, the types of questions they ask, and the problems they consider important. "
p. 32 "And he had reduced...science to nothing more than long periods of boring conformist activity punctuated by outbreaks of irrational deviance."
p. 38 "...Ravetz suggests that we need to abandon the idea that 'science discovers facts', or is 'true or false', or that knowledge is an automatic outcome of research. Rather, genuine scientific knowledge is at the product of lengthy social process, of which the major part occurs long after the research is completed. This means that science, interpreted as research or scholarship in the broader sense, should be seen as 'craft work'. If science is seen as craft, then 'truth' is replaced by the idea of 'quality' in the evaluation of scientific output."
p. 53 "A science that is based on different notions of nature, universe, time, and logic would therefore be a totally different enterprise from Western science."
p. 57 The teaching of science is as dogmatic as theology.
p. 26 "The term 'paradigm' is closely related to 'normal science': those who work within a dogmatic, shared paradigm use its resources to refine theories, explain puzzling data, establish increasingly precise measures of standards, and do other necessary work to expand the boundaries of normal science." (wave optics, Newtonian, Coperican, etc.)
p. 28 "Thus, the scientific method-the idealized process of observation, experimentation, deduction and conclusion-on which much of science's claims to objectivity and universalism are based, turns out to be a mirage. Kuhn suggests it is the paradigm that determines the kinds of experiments scientists perform, the types of questions they ask, and the problems they consider important. "
p. 32 "And he had reduced...science to nothing more than long periods of boring conformist activity punctuated by outbreaks of irrational deviance."
p. 38 "...Ravetz suggests that we need to abandon the idea that 'science discovers facts', or is 'true or false', or that knowledge is an automatic outcome of research. Rather, genuine scientific knowledge is at the product of lengthy social process, of which the major part occurs long after the research is completed. This means that science, interpreted as research or scholarship in the broader sense, should be seen as 'craft work'. If science is seen as craft, then 'truth' is replaced by the idea of 'quality' in the evaluation of scientific output."
p. 53 "A science that is based on different notions of nature, universe, time, and logic would therefore be a totally different enterprise from Western science."
p. 57 The teaching of science is as dogmatic as theology.
September 16, 2023
Absolutely awful book. At least it's very short, an essay, really, so it is easy to get through. Definitely don't use it to learn about Kuhn, at least not at first, you have to read it critically. But there's less about Kuhn then one one might hope for, the focus is on the latter part, the science wars with Kuhn coming later on, which is a bit odd. How does Sardar go about discussing the science wars? He starts by explaining the Sokal affair and is very much on the side of Sokal and this is the linchpin of the rest of the work. If this wasn't bad enough, how does Kuhn fit in into all of this? He is accused of being a relativist, the misinterpretation of his work that frustrated Kuhn his whole life is the point of view of this book. But then it gets even worse with criticism that Kuhn is eurocentric and that there are many different views of science held by different people around the world which are neglected due to the domination of European science. How is that not relativistic, but Kuhn is? I have no idea. I just know there must be better books on the topics discussed. I haven't read them, but I've seen youtube videos that are better. This is definitely not a book I would recommend.
August 25, 2025
A brief history of the controversy around Thomas Kuhn. It's too brief and almost impressionistic in its description. He doesn't demonstrate enough of the writings of the people being summarized so we just have to trust him when he insists X thinker was dogmatic, or Y thinker firmly established some idea, etc.
January 3, 2025
Too short to have anything of import to say, alas. Did introduce me to the existence of the field of post-colonial science studies and the concept of post-normal science.
February 20, 2022
A lot of unnecessary namedropping, very little detail. More information about the context than the actual topic.
April 13, 2012
Sardar's slim little volume is an excellent primer which is part of a new series of pocket guides that has hit the shelves ("Postmodern Encounters") and includes titles like Heidegger and the Nazis, Wittgenstein and Psychoanalysis, and this handy guide to the recent and continuing fuss about the status of science, the coherence of some postmodernist theorizing, and the interconnections between the two domains.
Sardar recounts the history of debates about the philosophy and politics of science and technology, by means of a discussion of Thomas Kuhn's famous 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which itself revolutionized sociological approaches to science. The familiar phrase, "paradigm shift", is Kuhn's, and refers to what happens when the day-to-day work of "normal science" is re-conceived as a result of major theoretical developments, as when Einstein's ideas supplanted Newton's.
Sardar's treatment is useful for what it can point you to read further and should not be kept around as the only book you have on the science wars and the development in HPS in the last century. The back section has a generous bibliography for further reading. If you are familiar with Kuhn's reputation and his seminal work but need to be oriented a bit in order to appreciate it, Sardar's book will help.
Sardar recounts the history of debates about the philosophy and politics of science and technology, by means of a discussion of Thomas Kuhn's famous 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which itself revolutionized sociological approaches to science. The familiar phrase, "paradigm shift", is Kuhn's, and refers to what happens when the day-to-day work of "normal science" is re-conceived as a result of major theoretical developments, as when Einstein's ideas supplanted Newton's.
Sardar's treatment is useful for what it can point you to read further and should not be kept around as the only book you have on the science wars and the development in HPS in the last century. The back section has a generous bibliography for further reading. If you are familiar with Kuhn's reputation and his seminal work but need to be oriented a bit in order to appreciate it, Sardar's book will help.
June 18, 2015
جنگیدن با "کلیسای سیاه علم ( ساینس)" از نبرد با کلیسای سیاه قرون وسطی دشوارتر است. چه اینکه در قرون میانه، مردم چیزی نمی دانستند و آشکار کردن این نادانی کاری بود گرچه سخت اما امکان پذیر. مصیبت آنجا آغاز می شود که نادانی گمان کند همه چیز را می داند و متفرعنانه گفته های خود را به رخ عالم بکشد. کوهن دست از کهانت معابد "فیزیک" شست و تصمیم گرفت به صفوف مجاهدانی بپیوندد که با استبداد علمی می جنگیدند.
ضیاءالدین سردار در این کتاب نازک، چکیده ای از این داستان حماسی - و تراژیک- را روایت کرده است. روایتی کوتاه و مفید که در ذهن خواننده ی جوال سوالاتی جدید و مسیری برای اندیشه را در پیش رویش ایجاد می کند.
ضیاءالدین سردار در این کتاب نازک، چکیده ای از این داستان حماسی - و تراژیک- را روایت کرده است. روایتی کوتاه و مفید که در ذهن خواننده ی جوال سوالاتی جدید و مسیری برای اندیشه را در پیش رویش ایجاد می کند.
March 31, 2020
This is a small a book (only 76 small pages).
The introduction of the sociology and epistemology of science was interesting, but the author critique of Kuhn is weak.
This is not a neutral book or journalist style introduction to Kuhn ideas, he seem to assume that the reader will agree with him on his post-colonial science claims without giving enough evidence.
There is an anti-western biased tone that I found strange and unappealing.
The introduction of the sociology and epistemology of science was interesting, but the author critique of Kuhn is weak.
This is not a neutral book or journalist style introduction to Kuhn ideas, he seem to assume that the reader will agree with him on his post-colonial science claims without giving enough evidence.
There is an anti-western biased tone that I found strange and unappealing.
July 11, 2011
I enjoyed this a lot because it helped organize my disjointed knowledge of the history of the philosophy of science.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews