Norman Levitt

I’ve been wanting to read Higher Superstition for some time now, and it finally showed up at a local used book store. To my surprise, I’m a little disappointed.


Authors Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt preach to the choir. Higher Superstition is as inaccessible to the average reader as some of the neologism- and jargon-ridden deconstructionist tracts that it criticizes. Particularly annoying is the consistent mocking of mathematical ignorance by using advanced mathematical concepts – a particularly egregious example is a footnote discussing deterministic causality and quantum mechanics (the subscripts are not going to come out):

“The model is so simple that we cannot resist the temptation to summarize it for readers with a little knowledge of mathematics and physics:


Consider a universe of N particles the set of whose possible respective coordinates form a configuration space (modeled on 3N-dimensional Euclidean space). Let qk denote the position of the kth particle (as a triple of local coordinates) and mk its mass. Thus q = (q1, … ,qN) is the configuration vector. We assume as well a complex-valued wave function, ψ, defined on the configuration space. The dynamics are then given by the familiar Schrödinger equation


iħ∂ψ/∂t = -(ħ2/2)Δψ + Vψ

(where V denotes a potential energy function) together with the ordinary differential equation

dq/dt = ħIm(gradψ/ψ)

(here the Laplacian Δ and the gradient are given in terms of a Riemann metric scaled by the mass of the particles.) The mathematically literate reader will readily see that, given an initial ψ0 at one particular time, ψ evolves purely deterministically (as usual) and thus, with initial values for q as well, the whole system evolves deterministically. As it turns out, however, with modest and unproblematic assumptions on the initial values of ψ0 and q(0), “small” subsystems consisting of “small” numbers of particles will behave so that, statistically speaking, the standard quantum mechanical formalism applies.

This sort of thing – especially the comments about readers with “some” knowledge of mathematics and physics and the “mathematically literate” reader – just gives ammunition to the opposition.

Gross and Levitt’s documentation of some of the stranger claims of the deconstructionists – that the uncertainty principle and relativity mean that physics is uncertain and relative are valuable, but they don’t really answer the questions of an ordinary reader – i.e., one not physically and mathematically literate enough to follow the example above – of why physics isn’t uncertain and relative. Although they discuss some general ideas in their introductory chapter, they really don’t get down to the meat of the matter – the persistent misconception that science is a belief system or a philosophical position, instead of just being a tool. Rodin was once asked how he sculpted, and supposedly replied “Well, I start with a block of stone and chisel away everything that isn’t a statue.” That’s really all science is – you start with an immense block of stuff and chisel away anything that isn’t true.

Worth a read mostly for historical purposes; surprisingly dated (written in 1994) now, as the two cultures have moved even further apart and both sides seem to be proud of their isolation.… (más)

For most of the time I was reading _Prometheus Bedeviled_, I was planning to give it a 5-star rating. The author, Norman Levitt, has many valuable insights, and he is an extraordinarily eloquent writer. I share the author's profession (mathematics) and much of his disdain for social constructivism. Although I am a conservative, believing Christian and Levitt is an outspoken atheist, I thought that his, sometimes pointed, criticism of believers was generally tolerable. He discusses the teleological presuppositions of the irreligious as well and is willing to spread the blame around for what he perceives as the devaluation of science in modern society.

My enthusiasm for _Prometheus Bedeviled_ began to wane towards the end of the book. Levitt's thesaurus seemed to run dry, as we read about the "clotted" prose of the postmodernists for the nth time. I also began to notice how often Levitt resorted to labeling the arguments of his opponents as "rants" or "raves" as a means of dismissing them without, I think, giving them the attention they deserve. That is a rhetorical device I don't care for. Some cheap shots Levitt apparently couldn't resist. Consider, for example, his observation that "the core ideology of the Republican party is essentially plutocratic, that the central aim of the party is to preserve and advance the interests of a rather small fraction of wealthy Americans." Even setting aside the questionable accuracy of his analysis of Republican economic policy, Levitt conveniently understates the influence of social conservatism in the GOP. In any case, these are the words of a polemicist, not a scientist.

Rather than a full-fledged argument, Levitt presents an intriguing sketch of an argument. Perhaps this is to avoid pedantry, and it does make for a very readable text, but I think it leaves too many gaps. The all-important word "science" is left undefined, and, as far as I can tell, Levitt never tells us the theory upon which he bases his, often resounding, moral judgments. I will not demand that Levitt accept Ivan Karamazov's decree that "without God, everything is allowed," but in light of Levitt's atheism, it would be nice if he clarified where his "oughts" are coming from.

The last chapter strikes me as the least clear and the most controversial. Levitt seems to be arguing for granting the scientific establishment a prominent official presence in government and society, but I'm not sure what exactly he has in mind. Few readers of _That Hideous Strength_ will be able to read this chapter without thinking of N.I.C.E. Levitt himself says that "[t]he notion of setting apart a restricted class of Americans to sit in judgment on all the others is spooky and obnoxious." I agree.… (más)

Two smug conservatives go yah boo sucks at leftie straw men. That's not quite an accurate summary of this book, but it conjures up perfectly my feelings all the while I was reading it: revulsion at the abominably orotund and self-congratulatory writing style, profound irritation that -- despite a half-hearted attempt in the introductory pages to claim non-partisanship -- the authors were framing their very justified criticisms of sloppy, antiscientific thinking as a political left-right battle. A full 100% of Republican Senate/House candidates this Fall reject the science of climate change. The leaders of the campaigns against the science linking tobacco smoke to disease, against the science showing the depletion of the ozone layer, against the science demonstrating the reality of evolution, against the science that showed SDI wouldn't work, and now against the science indicating the world is warming -- it is nary impossible to find a leftie amongst them. But, you cry, Gross's and Leavitt's real targets are the postmodernists/social constructivists, who're definitely a bunch of lefties, no? Well, okay, if you think that people like Nietsche and Nazi Party member Heidegger, two of the primary inspirations of that school, are lefties. To be fair, some of the authors' targets are of the left -- for example, that branch of feminism which tried to twist science for ideological reasons -- but this is by no means uniformly the case. Antiscientific idiots are to be found all across the political spectrum, but the majority of them seem always to be on the political right.

I succeeded in ploughing through this book because I had to for the sake of research. What's depressing is that, behind the tone of infantile sneer, there's some very valuable stuff being said. But I imagine that most of the people who should be reading it will have thrown the book at the wall in disgust long before they get that far.
… (más)