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Cover image of Higher Superstition
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Higher Superstition

The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science

Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt

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The widely acclaimed response to the postmodernists attacks on science, with a new afterword.

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 edition of Higher Superstition includes a new afterword by the authors.

Reviews

Reviews

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.

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.

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.

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.

About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
348
ISBN
9780801857072
Table of Contents

Preface to the 1998 Edition
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. The Academic Left and Science
Chapter 2. Some History and Politics: Natural Science and its Natural Enemies
Chapter 3. The Cultural Construction of

Preface to the 1998 Edition
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. The Academic Left and Science
Chapter 2. Some History and Politics: Natural Science and its Natural Enemies
Chapter 3. The Cultural Construction of Cultural Constructivism
Chapter 4. The Realm of Idle Phrases: Postmodernism, Literary Theory, and Cultural Criticism
Chapter 5. Auspicating Gender
Chapter 6. The Gates of Eden
Chapter 7. The Schools of Indictment
Chapter 8. Why Do the People Imagine a Vain Thing?
Chapter 9. Does it Matter?
Notes
Supplementary Notes to the 1998 Edition
References
Index

Author Bios
Featured Contributor

Paul R. Gross

Paul R. Gross, former director and president of the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, is University Professor of Life Sciences, Emeritus, at the University of Virginia and a visiting scholar at Harvard University.
Featured Contributor

Norman Levitt

Norman Levitt is professor of mathematics at Rutgers University and the author of Grassmannians and Gauss Maps in Piecewise-Linear Topology.