Reviews for Optimization Approach to Workforce Planning for the Information Technology Field

The average rating for Optimization Approach to Workforce Planning for the Information Technology Field based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-05-19 00:00:00 Dan Peters Segerstrale's first article provides a general overview of the Science Wars, and then the proceeding articles seem to represent a late-stage series of entries in the Wars written under a strange sense of retrospection and finality. That is, they act like they're looking back on something that's already finished, but continue to slip in snide remarks and feel entirely bound by the limited epistemological premises of their sides. I found a lot of it really frustrating, particularly material from the "pro-science" side, which validated a lot of the sort of worst-case preconceptions I had about that side--the characterization of "Rearguard Rationalists" used in some article I read seems about right, people clinging to invalidated philosophical premises based on their associations with political positions that themselves seem outmoded and counterproductive. I had thought this impression might just be because the quotes and positions were selected by STS and postmodern sympathizers (and both sides definitely strawman each other with a frequency disturbing given the intellectual caliber of the interlocutors). I was not always impressed by the way the represented the STS side--part of the controversy could certainly be ascribed to over-eager, ideological, and inarticulate writers on that side. But the "pro-science" chapters doubled down on their ideology, dismissing constructivism as inherently absurd, imagining that relativism and nihilism are fundamental mistakes that philosophy of science has to avoid in order to even be valid, etc. It's a bit annoying, because I was actually hoping to come into this conversation at a more direct level and hear some convincing arguments from so-called "pro-science" activists. But none of them seemed interested in grappling with the implications of social science, psychology, and anthropology for knowledge creation in science. Instead, they're just stuck asserting ideological premises that they refuse to question, and it really gives the impression that this whole debacle set back the field by decades. I do wish there had been some discussion of case studies. One of the articles implies that case studies are not useful because they can always be countered with other case studies, but it seems like putting things on that level would reveal some of the caricature in each side's position. I just keep getting hung up on the stupid Dawkins gotcha where he implies that there's no such thing as a constructivist in an airplane. It just betrays such a limited understanding of the view he's critiquing. Maybe people at the time were just too close to the French philosophers to articulate their case convincingly, and it seems more clear in retrospect. I just find that hard to believe; people like David Bloor seem quite lucid. And Israel Scheffler gives a respectful and serious treatment to the STS position in 1982 that seems like somebody at least was making themselves clear. I'm still curious to know what how the legacy of this debate is playing out now. Do people perceive a particular faction to have won? Is it still simmering somewhere? Or is there a decent synthesis that has emerged? And have scientists learned what relativism means yet?

Review # 2 was written on 2020-05-28 00:00:00 Peter Barmby 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.