Princeton Weekly Bulletin, March 30, 1998
Reality Check dialog informs faculty thought, work across disciplines
Negotiating "science wars"
By Caroline Moseley
|
|
|
|
|
"I've never known arts and sciences to be so divided as they are today," agrees Alison Jolly, visiting lecturer in ecology and evolutionary biology.
This divide -- commonly referred to by participants and observers as "the science wars" -- is being fought inside and outside academe. At Princeton the science wars are being negotiated rather than fought, thanks to Rosen, Jolly and others who have formed an informal interdisciplinary group of faculty who call themselves Reality Check.
How much we take for granted
"The purpose of Reality Check is to maintain a dialog between scientists and those nonscientists in the humanities and social sciences who study the role that science and scientists play in history and culture," explains Lee Silver, professor of molecular biology.
"The idea," adds Reality Check coordinator Angela Creager, assistant professor of history, "is to become familiar with each other's work and to test each other's assumptions."
Rosen finds it "useful to realize just how much we take for granted in our own academic work. It happens again and again in our conversations that what I regard as a matter of straight-forward common sense, the others regard as somehow dubious or suspect. This doesn't necessarily change my mind about my 'assumptions,' but it does help to bring out just how little common ground there is these days across the disciplines. That's a very good thing to know."
Creager emphasizes, however, that "Disagreements are not always between scientists and humanists. When we discussed Lee Silver's work on behavioral genetics, for example, it was striking to me that the experimental psychologists among us disagreed with Lee's interpretations as a molecular biologist, because their biological understandings of how intelligence related to physiology and genetics were different from his."
During other Reality Check discussions, she says, "Historians, philosophers and social scientists have diverged rather sharply on their understanding of trends in the humanities. This sort of interdisciplinary discussion helps those not on that part of the science-humanities divide understand the range of opinions held by those they would usually treat as a monolith."
Still, "Scientists have good reason to worry about the future of their enterprises," believes Creager, who is a historian of science. "Political and economic changes have already begun to curtail the funding and autonomy of scientific research." And in the biosciences, "Alliances between university labs and biotech companies have become routine, leading critics to question the credibility of discoveries."
What's more, says Jolly, "As reproductive technology becomes more complex, a lot of people are scared by it. They begin to feel toward scientists as people used to feel toward witches."
Historical primatology
Enter Reality Check, which originated in talks between Charles Gross, professor of psychology,
and primatologist Jolly. The two approached Creager in 1995 seeking a forum in which to examine how primatology has been presented historically. They invited several campus colleagues to participate, and Reality Check was born -- its name devised by Associate Professor of Anthropology Rena Lederman.
The group -- whose membership currently includes anthropologists, psychologists, biologists, historians of science, a literary scholar, a philosopher and a molecular biologist -- meets several times a semester over lunch to discuss topics of common interest. Creager solicits suggestions for papers to discuss and sees that members receive copies. The group receives support from the Humanities Council, she notes.
Among recent readings -- all guaranteed to generate intense interdisciplinary discussion -- was a 1991 article by Professor of Anthropology Emily Martin, "The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles." Martin was "intrigued by the possibility that culture shapes how biological scientists describe what they discover about the natural world," she says. In the article she challenges the popular idea of the sperm as active and the ovum as passive, a view she says reflects not physiologic facts but societal views of men as active and women as passive.
A luncheon topic was Jolly's "Women in the Wild," about women who study primates. In her paper she addresses Donna Haraway's Primate Visions: Gender, Race and Nature in the World of Modern Science (1989), a book about primatologists Jolly describes as "a litmus test for postmodernism. If you're a postmodernist, you tend to love it; if you're a primatologist, you tend to hate it."
Haraway, says Jolly, "has spent a lot of care and scholarship and even love trying to understand primatologists. Her book made us realize the fundamental importance of a lot we tried to ignore: the colonial ethos; support from middle-class parents, friends, lovers; financial incentives; the need to view monkeys and apes as ultimately powerless 'others.' But," says Jolly, a veteran of the science wars, "we can't forgive her for ignoring the one reason we thought we were studying primatology: to learn more about primates."
Not just talk
As inspiriting as it is, in Rosen's words, "to participate in serious conversation about important issues with colleagues who have given the issues a lot of thought," Reality Check is not just talk.
Hope Hollocher, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, says Reality Check "has fed my ongoing interest in understanding the intersection of science and popular culture." Hollocher, who teaches many nonmajors, led a sophomore workshop last semester that examined images of science and scientists in popular films.
"Reality Check has had a major impact on my professional life," says Silver, whose Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World was published last year. "I could never have written Remaking Eden without understanding how science is perceived by people who are not scientists, and without understanding the historical framework in which technology has progressed."
Silver plans to offer a course next year called Human Genetics, Reproduction and Public Policy. "Without our Reality Check conversations," he says, "I never would have had the background required to put together such a course."
He adds, "I don't think Reality Check could happen at other universities that are much larger and where it is more difficult for professors from different disciplines to get together. Princeton is unique in the way itfosters intellectual engagement across disciplines."