Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science is a book by biologist Paul R. Gross and mathematician Norman Levitt published in 1994. Both authors claim to be leftists who are trying to save the academic left from itself.

The book begins with a brief history of the left and, in its early pages, makes an important distinction: There is a difference between saying that science is a social project and saying that what science studies is a social construct.

This book brilliantly groups and counter-attacks the so-called "academic left", as opposed to the left outside of academia, who are pushing an anti-science position clustered in three areas: postmodernism generally, a subset of radical feminism and a subset of radical ecology. They also mention a small position in "Afrocentric" science but this doesn't appear to be more than one person.

These positions, which will here be referred to simply as "Postmodernism" argue extreme subjectivity: everyone's position is a story or narrative and every story or narrative is equally true and valid. Therefore scientific knowledge is simply one "story" and not a particulary priveleged story and actually is the story of evil, white, european, male, imperialists, etc.

Which brings up the logical paradox of this postmodern "way of knowing" argument. From the postmodern perspective the scientific way of knowing is "equally valid" to all other ways of knowing - and is thus not to be discarded, or so we might think. However, the implicit postmodernist position is that every way of knowing *except* the white/male/patriarchal/imperialist/scientific way of knowing is to be preferred over that way of knowing. So in fact all ways of knowing are not equal, despite the rhetoric.

Higher Superstition attacks a large group of prominent and highly esteemed intellectuals at the highest rungs of academia. Ironically they have achieved prominence from their anti-scientific views on science as much as in their own subject areas, say Feminist Studies. It is this very problem that Gross and Levitt approach: how can scientifically illiterate, or scientifically minimally literate, critics find huge gaping holes in the logic and field of scientific inquiry? For example, if science is a male dominated construct then how come women scientists have not provided any over-whelmingly new female insights into science? Or perhaps more interesting, if science is a western capitalist imperialist construct then why hasn't communist China or Soviet Russia provided devastating anti-capitalist scientific methods and insights? Quite the opposite. Scientific knowledge is assimilated from diverse and often hostile groups whose backgrounds are not important to the area of research in the context of peer-review, replication, publication and so on.

Although never mentioned in this book, Chomsky's attack on Skinner would fit perfectly with the author's contentions. Noam Chomsky is better known for his views on U.S. Foreign policy than on linguistics, and traces his radicalism to the 60s and earlier. Chomsky's famous review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior is commented by Chomsky as an attack on Empiricism of which Skinner is just a leading proponent and his work a good example.

The tone of this work is fairly well written although it lacks in a few areas. First is the authors overuse of arcane english words. This is perhaps because of the enormous intellectual verbiage in the literature they are attacking and perhaps a desire to impress us that they are not unintelligent. It makes the work less readable and no more forceful. Second, is the odd use of end-notes by page number rather than chapter which detracts from it. Third is the general failure to account for the status quo pro-science positions with much evidence. Largely we are to take their sweeping statements along the lines of "Most scientists agree that..." or "No biologists we know of..." and so on. Lastly, and this is a small point, they make small attacks on things like rap music and graffiti art. Postmodern's ability to embrace everyone and everything, especially pop culture, is one of the things that makes it a potent force. To champion modernism, classical art, literature and music are not necessary to show that postmodernism is making a huge gaffe in discounting scientific "knowing".

See also: Sokal Affair

Related Texts

• Paul R. Gross and Normal Levitt, Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). ISBN 0801857074
• The Editors of Lingua Franca eds., et al, The Sokal Hoax: The Sham That Shook the Academy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000). ISBN 0803279957
• Noretta Koertge, ed., A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths About Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). ISBN 0195117263
• Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt, and Martin W. Lewis, The Flight from Science and Reason (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1997). ISBN 0801856760
• James Robert Brown Who Rules in Science: An Opinionated Guide to the Wars (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001). ISBN 0674006526
• Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1999). ISBN 0674004124