Radar Processing, Technology, and Applications IV 21-22 July 1999, Denver, Colorado Book

A collection of essays on the so-called Science Wars of the 1990s that saw "realist" scientists attacking both sociologists of science and postmodern theorists as Dangerous To Society for challenging the status and self-image of science...and, too, for supposedly opening the door to irrationalism and superstition. The essays are generally well-done and thoughtful, though the book lacks a sense of the sheer venom and melodrama in some of the attacks by "anti-antiscence" types. The essays here do discuss how what might've been a debate about epistemology or scientific method became politicised and became part of the Culture Wars in society at large, and Segerstrale's editorial overviews do give a sense of context and some of the political issues. Yet I do wish some of the essays had been better at the sheer overblown hilarity of many of the polemics involved, and that Segerstrale had devoted more time to showing how what began as a feud between scientists and social theorists who were all largely on the Left became a tool by the Right to attack the idea of critical theory and the world of the academy as a whole.