Andrew Ross on global warming
A teaser from a book I'm writing on astrology, celebrity, and conspiracy...
In Strange Weather: Culture, Science and Technology in the Age of Limits, Ross relies on Bruno Latour's critique of scientific rationality to defend the "irrationality' of New Age science: first of all, according to Ross, the quantum revolution has "relaxed" the difference between the rational and the irrational. In addition, Ross points out that it was Latour who "observed that "'irrationality' is always an accusation made by someone who wants else out of the way."
In his work as a progressive historian of science, Latour criticized the social constructedness of scientific authority and scientific objectivity. According to Latour's critique, "science," "technology" are contested terms, fought over by "experts" hoping to secure more power and funding for themselves. Even more politically significant are the carefully guarded boundaries between scientific facts and "pseudo-scientific beliefs." In this kind of critique, skepticism is directed at the institutionality of scientific fact and tolerance displayed prominently for the contestatory "populism" of 'pseudo-scientific' belief or irrationality.
Ironically, thirteen years after the publication of Strange Weather, Latour is eating humble pie in the form of his own anti-objective, anti-Enlightenment positions, at least in his most recent article, "Why has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern" published in Critical Inquiry. Latour confronts the Republican strategist Frank Luntz's pointed use of scientific uncertainty about "the facts' in his arguments against the reality of global warming and the green house effect. By trying to shake the foundations of scientific fact and by trying to provide more room for 'interpretation,' Latour now realizes that he has added fuel to the fire for arguments such as these that were made by Right-wing functionaries against the Kyoto Protocols, "The problem for policymakers is that no one knows what constitutes a "dangerous" concentration of greenhouse gases. There exists, as yet, no scientific basis for defining such a concentration, or even for knowing whether it is more or less than current levels."
- See what progressive scientists have to say about this the Right's distortion and censorship of scientific research. If the Right wanted EVEN more fuel for their anti-global warming fires, they would have found Andrew Ross's Strange Weather analysis very handy, "Global warming theory is nothing if not a high cultural expression of Western science, dominant in the field of interpretation of the climactic economy." Strange weather indeed. To be perfectly fair, Ross later insists that he is not disputing the scientific theory of global warming, for that is the province of the despised and over-funded specialist - ("these theories draw their power in the world from an elite culture peopled by those accustomed, by education and an inherited sense of entitlement, to see the globe as part of their dominion.") Check out the creepy website giving Right wing apparatchiks talking points to challenge "regulatory excess" on environmental issues such as ozone depletion and climate change.
Now that the Right has appropriated the critique of scientific fact and reason to discredit decades of research on global warming in order to justify their energy-industry friendly policies, we can finally expose the lack of political, critical and methodological substance in Ross's pseudo-populist critique of science. Ross basically ignores the work of Richard Hofstadter, who shows that the American Right has always hated science and specialists for being "elitist": Theodor Adorno demonstrates how this suspicion of the "specialist" is one enduring aspect of the authoritarian personality who PREFERS strong men over complexity. In 2004, when Bruno Latour realizes that the implications of his own critique of scientific fact is being abused by right-wing demagogues, he makes a desperate appeal to the values of "protecting and caring" that are once again highly compatible with conservative religiosity.
This is in the end, what is so disturbing about both Ross and Latour: their academic piety. For Ross, it is catch phrases like "popular culture of experience and local memory," for Latour, it is "protecting and caring" that are mobilized as insurance policies against critical thinking. If I were a conspiracy theorist I would say that in the case of Andrew Ross, it is almost as if the powers that be are rewarding this kind of half-baked work in the humanities in order to promote a false image of Leftism and "politics." They're laughing behind their French cuffs and Blackberries as Ross leads pied piper-like, NYU grads and undergrads straight to the worship of error and false gods. But that would be crazy, right?
In Strange Weather: Culture, Science and Technology in the Age of Limits, Ross relies on Bruno Latour's critique of scientific rationality to defend the "irrationality' of New Age science: first of all, according to Ross, the quantum revolution has "relaxed" the difference between the rational and the irrational. In addition, Ross points out that it was Latour who "observed that "'irrationality' is always an accusation made by someone who wants else out of the way."
In his work as a progressive historian of science, Latour criticized the social constructedness of scientific authority and scientific objectivity. According to Latour's critique, "science," "technology" are contested terms, fought over by "experts" hoping to secure more power and funding for themselves. Even more politically significant are the carefully guarded boundaries between scientific facts and "pseudo-scientific beliefs." In this kind of critique, skepticism is directed at the institutionality of scientific fact and tolerance displayed prominently for the contestatory "populism" of 'pseudo-scientific' belief or irrationality.
Ironically, thirteen years after the publication of Strange Weather, Latour is eating humble pie in the form of his own anti-objective, anti-Enlightenment positions, at least in his most recent article, "Why has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern" published in Critical Inquiry. Latour confronts the Republican strategist Frank Luntz's pointed use of scientific uncertainty about "the facts' in his arguments against the reality of global warming and the green house effect. By trying to shake the foundations of scientific fact and by trying to provide more room for 'interpretation,' Latour now realizes that he has added fuel to the fire for arguments such as these that were made by Right-wing functionaries against the Kyoto Protocols, "The problem for policymakers is that no one knows what constitutes a "dangerous" concentration of greenhouse gases. There exists, as yet, no scientific basis for defining such a concentration, or even for knowing whether it is more or less than current levels."
- See what progressive scientists have to say about this the Right's distortion and censorship of scientific research. If the Right wanted EVEN more fuel for their anti-global warming fires, they would have found Andrew Ross's Strange Weather analysis very handy, "Global warming theory is nothing if not a high cultural expression of Western science, dominant in the field of interpretation of the climactic economy." Strange weather indeed. To be perfectly fair, Ross later insists that he is not disputing the scientific theory of global warming, for that is the province of the despised and over-funded specialist - ("these theories draw their power in the world from an elite culture peopled by those accustomed, by education and an inherited sense of entitlement, to see the globe as part of their dominion.") Check out the creepy website giving Right wing apparatchiks talking points to challenge "regulatory excess" on environmental issues such as ozone depletion and climate change.
Now that the Right has appropriated the critique of scientific fact and reason to discredit decades of research on global warming in order to justify their energy-industry friendly policies, we can finally expose the lack of political, critical and methodological substance in Ross's pseudo-populist critique of science. Ross basically ignores the work of Richard Hofstadter, who shows that the American Right has always hated science and specialists for being "elitist": Theodor Adorno demonstrates how this suspicion of the "specialist" is one enduring aspect of the authoritarian personality who PREFERS strong men over complexity. In 2004, when Bruno Latour realizes that the implications of his own critique of scientific fact is being abused by right-wing demagogues, he makes a desperate appeal to the values of "protecting and caring" that are once again highly compatible with conservative religiosity.
This is in the end, what is so disturbing about both Ross and Latour: their academic piety. For Ross, it is catch phrases like "popular culture of experience and local memory," for Latour, it is "protecting and caring" that are mobilized as insurance policies against critical thinking. If I were a conspiracy theorist I would say that in the case of Andrew Ross, it is almost as if the powers that be are rewarding this kind of half-baked work in the humanities in order to promote a false image of Leftism and "politics." They're laughing behind their French cuffs and Blackberries as Ross leads pied piper-like, NYU grads and undergrads straight to the worship of error and false gods. But that would be crazy, right?
3 Comments:
Well done! Lately, I have been wondering if Habermas did not get it right back then in 1981, when he pointed out that postmodernism was in fact neo-conservative. Unfortunately, what weakens Habermas's critique is what you so well detected in Ross and Latour: the academic piety.
Now, we should be more acutely critical of the locus of enunciation of these critiques to the establishment, especially that of Ross. The "cult studs" of academia operate on the basis of a fully reified notion of the great divide between high and low culture. Ross denounces the sense of entitlement of the scientific establishment to discuss all things global, and at the same time is completely oblivious of how much cultural capital and discursive power he himself has accumulated as a highly ranked member of the corporate global academic establishment. While scientists are still expected to prove their theories and show evidence derived from hard facts, Ross and others like him can derive all their power form well deployed rhetorical strategies without ever having to take any responsibility for the effects of their statements. We should inquire further into the dimensions of complicity between the superficial and damaging relativism of the postmodernists and the fundamentalism of the right. They both seem to derive, as you well point out, from the same distrust of rationality.
Well, everyone who's anyone knows that Andrew Ross is a complete crackpot when it comes to science. Remember he's the one who made a laughingstock out of himself and SOCIAL TEXT when he published Alan Sokol's hoax essay *by accident,* even though Sokal wrote it as a total joke?
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/
I can understand your concern about Latour, and the way his arguments may be mobilized. But a point Latour always comes back to, is that he has very little interest in disputing scientific facts (or objective reality). His main concern is the way scientific facts are simplified and used politically. Often times, early spawns of Latour’s theory, such as Ross, just interpreted this as a defence of social construction of science. But what Latour was trying to get at was more at the non-human (pre-symbolic) agency involved in any scientific research.
Not to defend Latour too much, as he often times drifts into technophilia (and as your righlty pointed out, academic piety). But he shouldn't be simply discarded as a social contstructivist.
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