After reading David Hull, 'The Professionalization of Science Studies: Cutting Some Slack', and listening to Philip Kitcher last night, I extrapolated the following maritime history for your consideration:

Once upon a time (being an historian I automatically begin this way), there was a well-equipped galleon, laden with treasure trove, the accumulated understandings of many years of industrious archival diggings and clear thinking, floating on a calm sea, while the captain (I think his name was Popper), the first mate (Kuhn?) and crew lolled about on deck peacefully discussing such riveting topics as -

If the universe doubled in size overnight , would we know?

and

What was the exact date when Darwin received Wallace's paper? -Pass me the shipping schedules and my chronometer please.

Suddenly, out of the blue looms a black ship flying that well-known pirate flag (two symmetrical bars sinister surmounting the skull of a positivist), crewed by an ill-bred bunch of constructivist cutthroats and relativist bully boys, who grapple onto the galleon and let fly with small arms and a brace of cannon (symmetrically mounted of course). They blow a rather large hole in its side and swarm on board, hacking and deconstructing. Popper is forced to walk the plank while Kuhn is captured and carried triumphantly back on board the pirate ship, kicking and screaming. The philosophers and internalists fight back gallantly, hurling logic and hard facts at the pirates, who, becoming bored with the whole thing, fall to fighting amongst themselves, hurling oneanother overboard, or reflexively disappearing up the rigging.

Meanwhile, a sleek postmodern craft, festooned with all the latest eclectic but ingeniously assembled gadgetry, powered by semiotics, once captained by Latour (now escaping in his own small inflatable), currently perhaps by Haraway (who knows? nothing is certain in this world and anyway, do we need captains?), personned (cyborged?) by vengeful feminists, non-innocent cultural theorists and other self-designated marginals, glides gracefully in and out of the carnage, managing to be everywhere at once and nowhere in particular, making carefully scripted twists and turns and yet more turns.

Unfortunately it attracts the attention of the armour-clad destroyer, HMS Enterprise, manned by infuriated scientists, captained of course by Gross and Levitt with Sokal as first mate, who turn their objectivist, epistemologically privileged, big guns on the postmodernists and pirates, blast them out of the water and unintentionally and most unfortunately blow the bow off the already-listing, treasure-laden galleon.

All hands, including the invading pirates, rush to the pumps, while a couple of well-intentioned philosophers hastily assemble a modest realist raft (Kitcher), or maybe its a one-size-fits-all model (Hull), and generously invite everyone on board (with the possible exception of unreconstructed relativists), including the jeering scientists (whom some might think are not really in need of rescue).

The burning issues are: Will we all fit? Can we stop squabbling long enough to row together and reach shore? Is cannibalism imminent? Will the scientists come? Why should they? Do we really want/need them?

What nobody seems to have noticed are the vice-chancellorial sharks circling the wreckage; and that blur on the horizon? - My God, a tidal wave of economic rationalists heading right this way!

And where are the students in all this? Partying in the hold of one or other of the sinking ships? Safely on the raft? Or swimming for their lives?

As Hull might well say: Hmmm.
 

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More seriously, I think we need a new history - a new narrative. I don't think the real problem is the methodolical /ideological cut and thrust that goes on in HPS/STS. This happens in all disciplines. Historians, sociologists, and (dare I suggest it?) even philosophers, all have their different schools of thought, their methodological differences , their conflicts. Taken to extremes it can be destructive, and I take the point that we in HPS/STS certainly need to be a little more tolerant and better mannered to oneanother. But Kitcher and Hull are not just making a simple plea for tolerance . What they seem to be proffering is their own preferred methodology and epistemology, a little blurred at the edges, tucked in here, let out there; as I said, a sort of one-size-fits all model.

On the contrary, I want to argue that diversity is healthy. It's what intellectual life is about. If I didn't care deeply about what I do and the way I do it, if I couldn't enthuse students with my views, argue for them, debate with colleagues, engage in the (inter)disciplinary cut and thrust, feel that what I was doing was somehow new, different, challenging, extending, pushing the boundaries, I wouldn't bother doing it. I don't want to leap onto a one-size-fits-all raft. If we all did it in the name of unity in the face of the alleged Science Wars threat, it would not solve our problems; rather, it would stifle intellectual diversity, growth, the very changes that we may most need to meet the major challenges that confront us.

For all their short-term ferocity, these are not the Science Wars. I think we need to turn our attention to more fundamental issues: We are professional academics before we are historians, philosophers, sociologists, postmodernists, scientists, whatever. In a world-wide, increasingly difficult and complex socio-economic context, when universities themselves are undergoing fundamental, far-reaching changes, funding and restructuring, how are we to keep afloat? How are we to interest and attract students; how are we to keep and train the next generation of professional historians, sociologists and philosophers of science? How are we to stop the continual erosion of our academic numbers? How are we to revitalize our professional associations; keep our journals going? How, indeed, are we to keep universities (as places where students and academics might want, or be able, to meet and work) afloat?

In the face of the tidal wave that's coming, that is even now washing up on us and is as likely to carry away the scientists as their fellow academic targets, it makes little sense to climb aboard a flimsy life raft. I for one will take my chances by clinging to the wreckage. There seems to me to be still some buoyancy left in the boat. And in my history, for all our differences, like it or not, we are all in the same boat. We may yet ride out the waves together.