I guess you could say that my book Why It's OK to Trust Science (Routledge, 2023. Get your copy today!) is "science apologetics." For decades now science has been under strident attack from both the left and the right. From the left, social constructivists say that the methods of science are not reliable means of producing objective knowledge but are products of the ambient social and political milieu and express the thinking of dominant elites. Radical feminists say the science is a product of Western, linear, and male (i.e., bad) ways of thinking, and that objectivity is just what a man calls his subjectivity. Postcolonialists say that science is the hegemonic worldview imposed by colonizers on the natives and excludes the equally valid "other ways of knowing" of the indigenous peoples. Postmodernists, drawing upon their guru of gloom Michel Foucault, dismiss science as just another pernicious "metanarrative." From the right you have the creationists--both the fundamentalist "young earth" kind and the more sophisticated "intelligent design" type. They have been predicting the imminent demise of Darwinism for 165 years. Ideology and avarice join hands to deny anthropogenic climate change or to deny that anything can or should be done about it. Science should not need defending. For too long, scientists, who are very busy people, ignored their detractors, content to just let the asses bray. Unfortunately, if left untreated, irrationality metastasizes and spreads through the body politic.
Thank you for posting this. It’s very helpful
I guess you could say that my book Why It's OK to Trust Science (Routledge, 2023. Get your copy today!) is "science apologetics." For decades now science has been under strident attack from both the left and the right. From the left, social constructivists say that the methods of science are not reliable means of producing objective knowledge but are products of the ambient social and political milieu and express the thinking of dominant elites. Radical feminists say the science is a product of Western, linear, and male (i.e., bad) ways of thinking, and that objectivity is just what a man calls his subjectivity. Postcolonialists say that science is the hegemonic worldview imposed by colonizers on the natives and excludes the equally valid "other ways of knowing" of the indigenous peoples. Postmodernists, drawing upon their guru of gloom Michel Foucault, dismiss science as just another pernicious "metanarrative." From the right you have the creationists--both the fundamentalist "young earth" kind and the more sophisticated "intelligent design" type. They have been predicting the imminent demise of Darwinism for 165 years. Ideology and avarice join hands to deny anthropogenic climate change or to deny that anything can or should be done about it. Science should not need defending. For too long, scientists, who are very busy people, ignored their detractors, content to just let the asses bray. Unfortunately, if left untreated, irrationality metastasizes and spreads through the body politic.