How to think about the `anti-science' phenomenon

Abstract

Opposition to science as conventionally defined can take a great variety of forms, from interest in astrology to attacks on relativity theory, from false beliefs based on scientific illiteracy to support of Lysenkoism or Creationism. Which of these are relatively negligible, and which are potentially dangerous? What do these symptoms of disaffection with the Enlightenment-based tradition portend, for science and culture in our time? Here I present a framework to deal with these questions. It is based on the proposition that belief in anti-science (or `alternative science', `parascience') is grounded in a person's functional worldview, and is one symptom of a long-standing struggle over the legitimacy of the authority of conventional science, as well as the concept of modernity within which science claims to be embedded. This analysis leads finally to the identification of a set of strategies for dealing with the countervisions which periodically attempt to raise themselves from the level of apparent harmlessness to that of politically ambitious success.