IN HIS further letter on radiation pollution (‘Is this science which you quote?’, letters , July 8), Jim Watson invokes the totem of modern ‘science’ to support his position.

Yet he seems blissfully unaware of the commonplace view within academic philosophy and social studies of science that ‘science’ is socially and culturally constructed, rather than being some trans-historical, universally objective practice with its ‘research’ generating accurate access to, or portrayal of, ‘reality’.

For this is at root a question of conflicting (and quite possibly irreconcilable) paradigms of knowledge.

The one hand, we have the kind of empiricist, materialist view of ‘science’ apparently assumed by Jim Watson (and many others) and on the other, there exists an expanded view of ‘post-materialist’ science that is informed by spiritual cosmologies, and which is advocated by prestigious organisations like the global scientific and medical network.

From the latter paradigmatic viewpoint, empiricist science is incapable of investigating the subtle effects of radiation pollution upon the human organism because of the faulty or distorted metaphysical assumptions it makes about ‘reality’, and it is therefore illegitimate to assume that such science can necessarily adjudicate accurately on these phenomena.

Mr Watson’s summary dismissal of homeopathy, reflexology, etc, is similarly flawed, for similar reasons, for because of its very nature, his own paradigm is incapable of passing judgement on one with fundamentally different metaphysical assumptions to his own.

Mr Watson is of course entitled to pin his allegiance to materialistic science with its narrowly mechanistic world view, if that’s his preference, but what he is not entitled to do is to assume that his kind of ‘science’ is necessarily superior to, or more true than, a more holistic, spiritually attuned world view.

Only history and human evolution can ultimately answer this question; and I know which paradigm I’m backing.

Dr Richard House

Stroud