Beyond relativism : science and human values /

Masters (government, Dartmouth) follows his mentor Leo Strauss in believing that contemporary failures in both social science and political culture are traceable to modern science's acceptance of the fact-value distinction, whereby science is seen as a mere tool adaptable to any set of values. About half the book is devoted to critiquing "postmodernist" and "relativist" attempts to rationalize these failures. Here Masters observes that contemporary social science is alienated not only from relevant developments in the natural sciences, but also from controversial public issues on which social scientists should be able to offer guidance. In the author's mind, these two conditions are not unrelated. The other half of the book presents a program for recovering a classically inspired integration of fact and value based on what biologists have shown about the complex interactions between hereditary and ecological factors. Masters revives a quasi-Aristotelian "naturalistic ethics," but one that respects biologically grounded individual differences as limits on the possibility for both systematic social science and legitimate political control. (He fends off charges that biology itself is politically tainted.) Recommended for its provocativeness and lucidity to philosophers of social science, including advanced undergraduate and graduate students. S. Fuller; University of Pittsburgh

Masters (government, Dartmouth Coll.) first sets up the ``straw man'' of a value-free science and then laments that it has led to relativism and subjectivism in regard to values generally. He aims to show that the traditional values ``found in all major religions and ethical doctrines'' can be shown by science--when properly understood--to be implicit in human nature and that therefore no gap separates fact and value, ``is'' and ``ought,'' science and ethics. The book has the appearance and apparatus of a scholarly tour through intellectual history from the ancients to the present, but it is a confused conflation of ideas and concepts that does not come anywhere near its goal; in the end, it tells us nothing substantive about how science can help us cope with the complexity and difficult ethical choices of ``post-modern'' life.-- Leon H. Brody, U.S. Office of Personnel Mgt. Lib., Washington, D.C. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.