Did The Science Wars Take Place?: The Political and Ethical Stakes of Radical Realism

By William Gillis

Today, one faction of reactionaries denounce leftists as enemies of science, while another faction of reactionaries happily embrace that same role, attacking science as totalitarian. Words like "postmodernism" and "relativism" get thrown about with fervor but little clarity, echoes of a conflict from decades ago.

Is there actually a physical world and can we know anything about it?

Did academics on the left influence "post-truth" politics on the right?

How could supposed defenders of "science" get lost in a mire of transphobia?

Did The Science Wars Take Place? returns to an infamous conflict across radical subcultural spaces and academia in the 80s and 90s to examine its lingering influence on the left and the right today, with an eye towards what anarchists can take away. Simultaneously a gossipy account of historical drama among radicals and a studious engagement with contemporary philosophy of science, it's a sharp defense of realism and a systematic autopsy of how the banner of "anti-authoritarianism" was appropriated and misused by non-anarchists.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0FKWSKPLH
• ISBN13: 9798218752125
• Release Date: August 2025
• Publisher: Center for a Stateless Society
• Length: 360 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"