Logo IMG   The Wisdom of "Mom"  Steve Shapin  In Defense of
Food: An Eater's Manifesto. Michael Pollan. xii + 244 pp. The
Penguin Press, 2008. $21.95.  Some sciences have points of
contact with common sense and lay concerns; others don't. Expert
opinions on the existence of the Higgs boson or the dating of
the Cretaceous period don't have much effect on everyday life,
for example, nor are people likely to imagine that common sense
qualifies them to speak out on those subjects. With other sorts
of scientific claims, though, laypeople feel competent to weigh
in. The so-called "soft sciences" are soft not because their
methodologies aren't rigorous enough but because they cannot
effectively discipline their objects of inquiry. They cannot
control the range of people able and willing to say their piece.
Such fields are expected to make good their claims in the messy
arena of everyday practice, where essentially everyone can see
whether the claims are valid. Michael Pollan's compact and
eloquent new book In Defens