Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
20 - What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
from Part One - Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2016
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
Summary
Many scientists pride themselves on their ability to read difficult texts in areas of their discipline conceptually or historically remote from their own. It has become evident in the recent “science wars” between scientists and science critics that this ability can diminish rapidly with interdisciplinary distance. (I use the word “critics” in the neutral sense—cf. “theater critics.” I can think of no other term encompassing the full array of practitioners from sociology, anthropology, history, literature, and cultural studies who have turned their attention to the activity of scientists.) Fronts are opening in the science wars on which some scientists are misrepresenting and oversimplifying as egregiously as those at whom they direct their fire.
I shall illustrate this with one of the strangest and most notorious texts on the battlefield, Bruno Latour's “A Relativistic Account of Einstein's Relativity” [1]. This essay has been criticized by physicists for misconstruing the content of relativity and being filled with elementary technical mistakes. It is on display in Alan Sokal's famous spoof [2], one of its “mistakes” showed up in Steven Weinberg's much-cited article in the New York Review [3], and I know of two articles on the “Relativistic Account” scheduled to appear in anthologies devoted to the new and gloomy art of extracting technical errors from the writings of science critics.
I believe such attacks miss the point of Latour's essay. While I have not myself succeeded in making complete sense of it, there are texts by Nietzsche, Hegel, and Kant in which there is virtually nothing I can make sense of. Nevertheless, I have not concluded that they are charlatans. Critics of the science critics ought to exercise similar caution. The straightforward explicit style toward which scientists strive (and pick up any issue of Science to remind yourself how successful we are in achieving it) is inappropriate in disciplines where the objects and aims of inquiry have themselves an ambiguous and uncertain character.
Latour takes an anthropological slant on things. Physicists recently discovering his “relativistic account” are not the only ones he puzzles. Many distinguished British critics of science find him a far-from-easy read, and they have fired more accurate salvos in his direction than some of the interdisciplinary ballistic missiles I have seen launched from the science side.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Why Quark Rhymes with PorkAnd Other Scientific Diversions, pp. 139 - 146Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016