DOOMERS versus DENIERS : the war between the SCIENCES

Michael Marshall

An ideological war really only gains traction when both of its sides garner catchy nicknames.

So we see English Roundheads versus  Cavaliers .Union Grays from the North versus Confederate Blues from the South. The Orange against the Green. Russian or Hungarian Reds versus the Whites. Revolutionary America's Rebels versus Tories (or Loyalists). Spanish Loyalists versus the Nationalists.

Now we have had lots of (verbal) wars in the past involving Science (with a capital "S").

The War between Science and Culture or the Humanities. The supposed War against Science better seen as the scientists' war against religion. The Science Wars between postmodern social science critics and  the hard (physical) science defenders of scientific realism.

The latest war is one being fought within the ranks of hard, physical, science and this makes it new.

It is a war between sciences, a civil war within science itself.

Well, new in the memory of most scientists, which isn't saying a lot.

A more ahistorical bunch is hard to imagine.

But this war did go on, back in the 19th century ----and in varying forms  ----right back to Plato versus Aristotle.

Today its popular nicknames - given by each side to the other side, as is traditional - see the advocates for the newer science being called DOOMERS and the defenders of the older science being labelled DENIERS.

Two hundred or so years ago, the order of new and old would have been reversed.

Then the older science under attack would have been called Catastrophists (instead of Doomers) --- and the rising new science would be called Uniformitarians (rather than Deniers).

But you could say that two hundred years ago, the real battle was the enduring one between Natural Philosophy and Natural History.

(I support this viewpoint myself.)

But whatever, the substance of the disagreement between various kinds of science and scientists remained unchanged beneath all the varying labels.

On a bigger scale,the Catastrophists can be seen as part of the efforts of Romantic Science, itself a subset of the overall Romanticism Movement , to mount an attack on the earlier Classical Science --- and the Classicalism Movement in general.

 Meanwhile in the dark shadows, a new Counter-Romantic Science, (Positivism/Modernity/Scientism) was birthing and preparing to attack in turn.

Think of it as the electoral-cum-rhetorical politics of intellectual ideas, with sequential elections and the tidal flow of the Ins versus the Outs.

With the Ins and Outs publicly claiming to be externally - and eternally - consistent but actually considerably changed on the inside, after each bout of time in  government and in opposition.

The dance of the dialectics......