- Weinberg, Steven.
Facing Up.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-674-01120-1.
-
This is a collection of non-technical essays written between
1985 and 2000 by Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg.
Many discuss the “science wars”—the assault by
postmodern academics on the claim that modern science is
discovering objective truth (well, duh), but many other topics are
explored, including string theory, Zionism,
Alan Sokal's hoax
at the expense of the unwitting (and witless) editors of
Social Text,
Thomas Kuhn's views on
scientific revolutions, science and religion, and the comparative
analysis of utopias. Weinberg applies a few basic principles to most
things he discusses—I counted six separate defences of reductionism
in modern science, most couched in precisely the same terms. You may
find this book more enjoyable a chapter at a time over an extended
period rather than in one big cover-to-cover gulp.
January 2005 