Contents - 21 Jul 2007 COVER STORY: The fifth battle domain - cyberspace - Peter Coates EDITORIAL: Democracy triumphs in East Timor - Peter Westmore NATIONAL SECURITY: Terrorist risk is fast approaching critical - John Miller CANBERRA OBSERVED: Security nightmare for Australian authorities HOUSING: Home ownership: the unattainable dream? - Colin Teese NATIONAL CENSUS: Making sense of the Census - Bill Muehlenberg MEDICAL SCIENCE: Cloning - dead as the Dodo? - Charles Francis QC VICTORIA: Medical suicide campaign gets underway - David Perin STRAWS IN THE WIND: The gangs of Melbourne / Global yawning / Still looking for Dreyfus / Victimhood / A ship without a rudder - Max Teichmann TAIWAN: Divisive politics alienate Taiwanese - Jeffry Babb OPINION: Left-wing bid to discredit our Anzac tradition - Mark Braham POPULAR CULTURE: Video games overtaking movies and music - Anh Nguyen AS THE WORLD TURNS: Why do we dress children like miniature adults? - Lesley Thomas Science and the academic left (letter) - P.D. Burke The Net and I (letter) - Stephen Babb Swedish film defended (letter) - Marie Rankin Terrorist doctor-killers? (letter) - Frank Bellet CINEMA: Triumphing against all the odds - Amazing Grace - John Ballantyne BOOKS: WHEN ISLAM AND DEMOCRACY MEET, by Jocelyne Cesari - Joseph Poprzeczny (reviewer) News Weekly Books

Sir,

Further to Mr Chris Hilder's letter, "Undermining scientific truth" (News Weekly, June 23, 2007), let me quote distinguished US scientists, Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt (self-described as of the political left), who note in their book, Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science (John Hopkins University Press, 1997): "To the analyst of cultural constructivist bent, matters of scientific truth are 'always and everywhere matters of social authority'." (p.47).

But they go on to observe that the philosopher Paul Feyerabend, "one of the thinkers directly responsible for initiating the chain of ideas [leading to this view] now expresses deep reservations about the outcome of this line of thought". (p.49).

In a paper, "Atoms of Consciousness" (Common Knowledge, Vol.1, No.1, 1992), Feyerabend asks: "How can an enterprise [science] depend on culture in so many ways, and yet produce such solid results? Most answers to this question are either incomplete or incoherent."

P.D. Burke,
Gilberton, SA
 
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