ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Scientists to the fore: writing the Science Wars

• In Event: Lost in Translation? Science Wars from a Transnational Perspective

English Abstract

Media coverage of debates on relativism in the social sciences and humanities began in 1994 in the USA, but it was only after the Sokal Hoax in 1996 that these debates appeared in French-language publications. Newspaper articles, radio broadcasts as well as public events flourished, particularly in relation to the book "Impostures intellectuelles", published in 1997 by physicists Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont. Journalists were not the only ones involved: scientists (in both the natural and social sciences) also expressed their views on the many issues raised by Sokal, Bricmont, and others. They wrote in newspapers, popular science magazines, as well as in specialized journals and academic books.

My goal is not to determine who won the battle in terms of media impact, nor to study how the different positions were expressed after the Sokal Hoax were interpreted. I focus on the Science Wars as a moment in the career of the scientists that took part in it. How did these actors adapt to the dissemination of their ideas outside their usual academic field?

I first analyse how scientists such as Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, Jacques Bouveresse, Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond, Jacqueline Feldman, and Etienne Klein (among others) adopted new practices when they had the opportunity to defend their ideas to a wider audience. Personal archives and interviews with these actors and their publishers provide insight into the evolution of publishing practices and the development of scientists’ relationships with publishers, journalists, and other scientists. I then examine changes in the relations between these scientists from different disciplines, as they met or read each other’s work. The changes appear in the use of certain labels that reflect old and new alliances, such as “relativism”, “rationalism” and “Science studies”. Finally, I analyse the actors’ writings after 1999 to identify which new practices and new relationships persisted.

Author

• Natacha Demoule, Université Paris-Cité - SPHere laboratory