Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science 1st Edition

by Professor Paul R. Gross (Author), Professor Norman Levitt (Author)

39 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0801847660

ISBN-10: 0801847664

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With the emergence of "cultural studies" and the blurring of once-clear academic boundaries, scholars are turning to subjects far outside their traditional disciplines and areas of expertise. In Higher Superstition scientists Paul Gross and Norman Levitt raise serious questions about the growing criticism of science by humanists and social scientists on the "academic left." This paperback edition of Higher Superstition includes a new afterword by the authors.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"We should be thankful that Gross and Levitt have provided a wake-up call. Their significant overview of the thinking of those who teach our lawyers, journalists and teachers should be read by all who are concerned by the decline of the status of science in our times." -- Physics Today

"At last, somebody has performed the invaluable service of exploding the pretentions of those who think every equation derived this century undermines the fabric of western thought." -- New Statesman

"The authors' shredding of such luminaries of postmodernism and feminism as Stanley Aronowitz, Sandra Harding, and Evelyn fox Keller, among others, is not always charitable, [but] it is invariably compelling and frequently devastating." -- Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Washington Times

Review

"An original, brilliant, and important book. The authors clarify the impact, mostly malign, of postmodernism -- at least postmodernism in the hands of the second-rate -- on the evolving curriculum in higher education." -- Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University

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Product details

Hardcover: 348 pages
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press; 1 edition (January 1, 1994)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0801847664
ISBN-13: 978-0801847660
Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.2 x 9.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 39 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,113,850 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5816 in Books > Science & Math > History & Philosophy
- #22574 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Sociology
- #26142 in Books > Textbooks > Science & Mathematics

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Ronald E. Parsons

To soft-science university faculty: Stop loading 'victimhood' politics on to hard sciences.

October 20, 2017

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

<Higher Superstition> by Gross and Levitt was not written for the man in the street. The authors are academics. They assumed (probably correctly) that their book would not attract a general readership. Their book was aimed towards other academics. Therefore they wrote in a language that I call 'academese.' (Not meaning to suggest that I coined the word). Therefore I fear that readers unaccustomed to reading academese must be prepared to wade through material set out in that 'language.' And the print is smallish. BUT, it is worth wading through!

The targeted readership are those who teach in the higher educational fields of studies called 'The Humanities,' which are generally deemed 'soft-sciences.' The book's authors are/was* a biologist (Gross) and a mathematician (Levitt).

The book's premise: The discipline 'The Humanities', has become contaminated by a left-oriented, questionable theory called Post-Modernism which was built around the belief (or hope) so described by this reviewer as: Nothing in science can be called established fact before it is first run past the various minorities whose views were not taken into consideration by the entities who pronounced it to be scientific fact. The minorities view themselves as 'oppressed,' and as such are and have always been unable to enter THEIR inputs whether or not such or such is indeed a scientific fact. Apparently, in regard to facts of hard science they maintain that there are feminist scientific facts, black scientific facts and homosexual-lesbian scientific facts, Marxist scientific facts and environmentalist scientific facts. Therefore, 'established' scientific fact, is per se, dead-white-oppressor-Eurocentric fact, and therefore invalid.

A problem as identified by authors Gross and Levitt is that academics in the humanities insist on commenting as experts on matters best left to the Hard Science academics who are the experts in such as mathematics, physics, biology, chemical and structural engineering, etc. Part of the problem is that the soft-science academics, in the process of teaching the humanities, imply to their students that they know what they are talking about vis-a-vis hard science -- and as a result their students take such proffered 'science' as valid.

Another problem is that the humanities academics insert post-modern (leftist) politics into truly scientific disciplines that are by right apolitical.

It was by accident that I stumbled across <Higher Superstition> and bought it on a whim - though I did read the reviews. I'll admit that after receiving the book via Amazon I nearly gave up on it. And I am a retiree from one of the 'learned' professions, one that entails reading reams of sometimes-dense material both in school and thereafter. My point: If you have an inquiring mind, please stick with reading this book.

*I read that Norman Levitt has died.

4 people found this helpful

Comment

A Must Read For Scientists and Laymen Alike

September 2, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Having experienced this phenomena in real life I had doubts as to how harmful Postmodernism was but now I understand it to be not an insignificant benign mass of pseudo-intellectuals but a malignant and metastasizing crowd of know nothing professional academics that pervert progress industrially.

6 people found this helpful

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Outstanding book for young scientists!

October 29, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is an outstanding book for all young scientists, though many may be confused by the virulence of the attack on academic left. But their emotion is warranted as we now live in a world where global warming, vaccines, and even evolution are considered unproven theories. I read this many years ago, and I still find that many of the critiques still resonating strongly with me. The term "left" may be a bit confusing to many, particularly those who grew up outside US. The authors are attacking ideas promulgated by the academic left, particularly the post-structuralists. These ideas may not always align with those of the political left. The critique raised in this book forms a nice continuum with the philosophy of science as postulated by Karl Popper.

2 people found this helpful

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Ronald Fernandez

Great read though somewhat dated

May 5, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Although somewhat dated this is an impeccably written book. It provides a full background to the "science wars" that raged academia in past decades, and covers most of the disputes that took place therein. Unfortunately, it does not go deep enough into the social vs. exact sciences controversy, and sadly it does not address the climate change issue as settled and undisputed fact. All in all, a great read with some expected flaws.

2 people found this helpful

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A Book that Shouldn't Be Necessary

July 21, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

If science took direction from postmodernists, it would be even less objective than critics accuse it of being. This book sounds the alarm about the dangers of the anti-science relativism that threatens to render the humanities irrelevant.

Comment

Jeremy M. Harris

A scary crop of academia nuts

March 30, 2003

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Despite the subtitle "The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science," the dangerous aspects of the misconceptions exposed and dissected in this book are due much more to irrationality than to politics. Fortunately the authors take pains to clear up a potential misunderstanding by pointing out that there does exist a generous complement of academics who are left-leaning, rational, and not inclined to quarrel with science.
Gross and Levitt perform a valuable service in three parts. They take the time and trouble to wade through the more obviously idiotic postmodern anti-science drivel, they refute it, and they remind us that the purveyors of it are firmly ensconced in the faculties of major universities.
The authors of "Higher Superstition" are academics themselves, and write elegantly in prose laced with vocabulary-stretching words like hermeneutics, conspective, auspicating, tatterdemalian and weltanschauung. While not a particularly easy read, the book makes its main point clearly and simply enough: the postmodern science-bashers are aiming their largely spurious complaints at subjects they secretly resent and barely comprehend. Science has produced edifying, useful, beneficial results with more regularity and less ambiguity than any other field of human endeavor. To claim otherwise is deeply dopey. If academia tolerates a clique where such claims resonate, something is seriously out of whack and we must thank Gross and Levitt for providing fair and frightening warning. Self-styled progressives who berate science with politically correct non sequiturs are no less goofy than the religious zealots they so pointedly disdain.

64 people found this helpful

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