Introduction: Why Science Wars?

Abstract

While all definitions are stipulative by nature and reflect alternative usages, the meaning of the word “knowledge” is especially ambiguous. It carries profound consequences for what we mean by truth, reality, and rationality, but most importantly for our understanding of scientific knowledge claims. Rhetorically, knowledge trumps belief and opinion, but it is not clear that knowledge, even scientific knowledge, is essentially different from and superior to belief and opinion. As to the questions of what scientists know and how they know it, no answers have stood up to critical scrutiny in the history of modern science. Despite this uncertainty, modern science has claimed a hegemony in our society on the production of knowledge as superior to belief and opinion.