The Science Wars and the Past's Quiet Voices

Abstract

The turn in the `science wars' controversy to detailed critiques of case studies is an encouraging one: such critiques are a vital check for error. Philip Sullivan's critique of this author's 1978 analysis of the controversy between Karl Pearson and G. Udny Yule over the measurement of association in contingency tables is thus entirely to be welcomed. It does not, in fact, undermine that analysis, and it helps clarify a key source of the heat of the `science wars': the misconception that case studies such as this in the historical sociology of science are criticism of science.