Why I am Not a Postmodernist

Found : Why I am Not a Postmodernist

Postmodernists complain that science is a cultural prejudice, and/or a tool invented by the current elite to maintain power, and/or only one "way of knowing" among many, with no special privilege. For postmodernists, science is "discourse", one system among many, maintained by a closed community as a means of holding onto power, and ultimately referential only to itself.

No reasonable person would deny that politics and the profit-motive do influence what science studies, and who gets to use the laboratories. But it seems to me that the feature of real-world science which distinguishes it from other forms of description is rigorous measurement and the experimental method, which we can apply to atoms, to the galactic radiation, to our bodies, and to the medical techniques of indigenous peoples. All scientific knowledge is tentative, and scientific statements are judged by their predictive value…