The War on Science
In his survey of the academic backdrop to today’s rampant unreason, Professor Sidky suggests a causative link between the rise of what he calls postmodernism and the unreason he sees around us (“The War on Science, Anti-Intellectualism, and ‘Alternative Ways of Knowing’ in 21st-Century America,” March/April 2018). Goofy thinking is rampant, and perhaps English professors, historians, anthropologists, and philosophers do exert some tenuous influence on the general public, but to suggest that academics who question our socially constructed cultural verities have caused the public to reject science and reason is a misreading of how culture works. In fact, tempests in our academic teapots far more often reflect cultural shifts than cause them.