Science wars

The science wars were a late twentieth-century dispute over scientific objectivity, realism, and the social construction of scientific knowledge. They became especially visible in conflicts between scientists and scholars in science studies.

Social Text affair: A 1996 hoax in which physicist Alan Sokal published a deliberately nonsensical article in the journal Social Text. The affair turned an academic dispute into an international controversy.
Scientific realism: The view that successful scientific theories describe a mind-independent world, including aspects not directly observable. It names a central position challenged by constructivist accounts.
Strong programme: A sociology of scientific knowledge approach that explains accepted and rejected beliefs symmetrically through social causes. Its symmetry principle became a target of criticism by some scientists.
Bruno Latour: A French sociologist and anthropologist whose studies examined how scientific facts and technologies are made. His work became a prominent example in arguments over social construction.
Science and technology studies: An interdisciplinary field examining how scientific knowledge and technologies develop within social, political, and material settings. The field became a central object of public criticism during the wars.
Alan Sokal: An American physicist known for exposing weaknesses in some postmodern writing about science through a 1996 hoax. His article and later arguments made the controversy highly visible.
Social constructionism: An approach that studies how social practices and institutions shape categories, beliefs, and knowledge. Its claims about scientific knowledge were often caricatured or contested in the dispute.
Laboratory Studies: Ethnographic studies of how scientific facts and practices are produced inside research laboratories. These studies made scientific work appear more contingent than its public image suggested.
Harry Collins: A British sociologist of science known for studies of scientific expertise and the sociology of scientific knowledge. His approach exemplified sociological explanations criticized during the dispute.
Sokal affair: The controversy following Alan Sokal’s 1996 hoax article in Social Text and its subsequent disclosure. It brought disputes over scholarly standards and science studies to a wide audience.

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