by Laura Briggs
about Laura Briggs
Laura Briggs is Professor and Chair of the Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies Department at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Her most recent book is Somebody’s Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption.
Science
To speak of science is to deploy a deceptively simple word whose use confers the mantle of authority. As [Raymond Williams (1976/1983, 276–80)](/american-cultural-studies/works_cited/williams-raymond-se-2/ "Williams, Raymond.SE") and the _Oxford English Dictionary_ tell us, the word came into English from the Latin _scientia_, meaning simply “knowledge.” In the fourteenth century, it was distinguished from _conscience_, with “science” signifying theoretical knowledge, as opposed to knowing something with conviction and passion. In the seventeenth century, it began to denote that which was learned through theoretical—as opposed to practical—knowledge: philosophy, in short. Already, then, the term “science” was making hierarchical distinctions in kinds of learning, favoring the abstract and the dispassionate. In the nineteenth century, “science” came to distinguish the experimental from the metaphysical, that which was known as truth as opposed to asserted. In its current configurations, this struggle over which kinds of knowledge should be accorded the higher status of being known as “science” is carried out through adjectives; the word, with no modifier, most often refers to the “natural sciences” or “hard sciences,” and less often the “medical sciences,” but seldom the “social sciences” and never to work in the arts and humanities. Science is not _a_ knowledge, in this usage, but...
Science
feature
Keywords
Now:
Pandemic
**For a limited time, read the full keyword essay on ["Science"](/american-cultural-studies/essay/science/)** In 2020, as the weeks of pandemic lockdown that began in March stretched into months, the question of what to do about the novel coronavirus in the name of public health came to dwell on the status of science and its legitimacy. As the Covid pandemic saw a rapid spread of [vaccine rejection](https://nyupress.org/9781479812790/calling-the-shots/) on the political right, liberals and progressives who had once been critical of big Pharma and the social and cultural authority of scientific knowledge started saying, "trust the science," while conservatives (long inclined to defer to authority) started urging each other to become "critical thinkers" and to "do their research," offering a counter-science of Silicon Valley elites, [5G towers, microchips implanted through vaccines](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-53507579), dangerous side effects, including heart attacks and infertility, and a 2020 election stolen from Donald Trump through a science that [loosed Covid](https://www.newsweek.com/michael-flynn-claims-covid-invented-steal-2020-election-1674334) on the world. While this may have begun as a fight over the role of government in managing a public health emergency, it quickly came to turn on the status of science. In December of 2022, Elon Musk, in his new role as owner and CEO of Twitter, wrote "[My pronouns...