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((short description|1994 book by Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt))
((Infobox book
|italic title   = force
| name             = Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science
| image            = Higher Superstition.jpg
| caption          =
| authors          = ((hlist | [[Paul R. Gross]] | [[Norman Levitt]]))
| title_orig       =
| translator       =
| illustrator      =
| cover_artist     =
| country          = United States
| language         = English
| series           =
| subject          = [[Philosophy of science]]
| publisher        = [[Johns Hopkins University Press]]
| pub_date         = 1994
| media_type       = Print ([[hardcover]] and [[paperback]])
| pages            =
| isbn             = 0-8018-5707-4
| dewey            =
| congress         =
| preceded_by      =
| followed_by      =
))

'''''Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science''''' is a 1994 book about the [[philosophy of science]] by the biologist [[Paul R. Gross]] and the mathematician [[Norman Levitt]].<ref>((Cite book|last1=Gross|first1=Paul R.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KRwAEAAAQBAJ&dq=%22Skepticism%22+%22superstition%22&pg=PP1|title=Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science|last2=Levitt|first2=Norman|year=1997|publisher=JHU Press|isbn=978-0-8018-5707-2|language=en))</ref>

==Summary==
((unreferenced section|date=September 2019))
Levitt states he is a leftist trying to save the "academic left" from itself by exposing misuses and abuses of science to advance political goals.

Topics discussed include: cultural constructivism or [[social constructivism]], the [[strong programme]], the science criticism of [[Stanley Aronowitz]] and [[Bruno Latour]], [[post-modernism]] and [[deconstructionism]] and their influence on American academia, the science criticism of [[Andrew Ross (sociologist)|Andrew Ross]], feminist science criticism, environmentalist science criticism and "apocalyptic naturism", [[Jeremy Rifkin]]'s influential "pseudoscientific alarmism", attacks on medical research connected with AIDS activism and [[animal rights]] advocacy, and [[Afrocentrism]]. The book also questions [[climate change denial|human activity's relationship with climate change]]. The authors find it unfortunate that social scientists and literary critics often consider themselves qualified to criticize the natural sciences without learning much about them in detail, and worry about what would replace [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] ideals of universalism and rationalism, and objective truths about the natural world as ascertained by a scientific methodology of repeatable experiments, if these were to be discredited, as many science critics in the humanities wish to do.

==Reception and influence==
The book inspired the 1996 [[Sokal affair|Sokal hoax]], in which [[Alan Sokal]] published a bogus paper in [[Social Text]], a [[postmodernist]] journal that did not [[Peer review|peer-review]] submissions.<ref name= "postmodernism">((cite web|url= http://richarddawkins.net/articles/824-postmodernism-disrobed |date= 2007-04-01 | last = Dawkins | first = Richard |title=Postmodernism Disrobed |accessdate=2010-09-24 |url-status= dead |archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20110120082759/http://richarddawkins.net/articles/824-postmodernism-disrobed |archivedate= 2011-01-20))</ref> Sokal stated in an interview that while he was initially skeptical about ''Higher Superstition'', he concluded after reading the works Gross and Levitt criticized that they were describing them fairly in "about 80 percent of the cases".<ref>((cite web|url= http://www.chronicle.com/article/Anatomy-of-a-Hoax/238728 |title=Bait and Switch: How the physicist Alan Sokal hoodwinked a group of humanists and why, 20 years later, it still matters.|first= Jennifer |last=Ruark |date= 1 January 2017 |accessdate=7 January 2017 |work= [[The Chronicle of Higher Education]]))</ref>

The book has been criticized by Historian of Science [[M. Norton Wise|Norton Wise]]. In a review of the book for the History of Science journal [[Isis (journal)|Isis]], he dismisses the authors critique as misunderstanding what [[postmodernism]], [[Women's studies|feminist studies]], and [[social constructivism]] entail. He regards their writings as an awkard attempt at portraying history of science as a complacent teleological story devoid of any cultural influence and states that the author's demands for people who study science to be competent in the natural sciences is understandable but odd, given their own incompetence in historical research and writing.<ref>((Cite journal |last=Wise |first=M. Norton |date=1996 |editor-last=Gross |editor-first=Paul R. |editor2-last=Levitt |editor2-first=Norman |title=The Enemy without and the Enemy within |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/236069 |journal=Isis |volume=87 |issue=2 |pages=323–327 |issn=0021-1753))</ref>

==See also==
* [[Science wars]]

==Notes and references==
((Reflist))

==Further reading==
* Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt, ''Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science'' (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). ((ISBN|0-8018-5707-4))
* The Editors of Lingua Franca eds., et al., ''The Sokal Hoax: The Sham That Shook the Academy'' (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000).  ((ISBN|0-8032-7995-7))
* Noretta Koertge, ed., ''A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths About Science'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). ((ISBN|0-19-511726-3))
* Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt, and Martin W. Lewis, ''The Flight from Science and Reason'' (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1997). ((ISBN|0-8018-5676-0))
* James Robert Brown ''Who Rules in Science: An Opinionated Guide to the Wars'' (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001). ((ISBN|0-674-00652-6))
* Ian Hacking, ''The Social Construction of What'' (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999). ((ISBN|0-674-00412-4))
* Norton Wise, "The Enemy Without. The Enemy Within: A Review of Gross and Levitt, Higher Superstition" ''Isis'' 87 (1996).

==External links==
* [https://books.google.com/books?id=PDQJGiKeXwAC Higher Superstition] – at books.google.com

((Criticism of postmodernism))

[[Category:1994 non-fiction books]]
[[Category:Books by Paul R. Gross]]
[[Category:Criticism of academia]]
[[Category:Criticism of postmodernism]]
[[Category:Scientific controversies]]
[[Category:English-language books]]
[[Category:Johns Hopkins University Press books]]
[[Category:Liberalism]]
[[Category:Science studies]]

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