I'd like to comment on some of Christopher Maines's comments about bad vs. good science. 1st The claim isn't that Agassiz was a bad scientist, the point is very much that he was a good scientist and what he did met the standards of his time. We (in science studies) turn to cases like Agassiz because enough time has elapsed so that his claims "seem" biased, and it leads us to ask about the way culture is working through science now. As much work has been done on the mystical nature of Newton's work (his, as seen from the present, absurd belief in inertial frames of reference, by modern standards an absurdity), Darwin (See Robert Young's recent piece on anthropomorphization in Darwin's own writings about "natural selection") and other "successful" scientists. As for the flight of airplanes, you're right, it seems like an indisputable fact, but airplanes and fluid dynamics are not simply things that came to be naturally, they come out of a particular view of nature, a particular will to knowledge, that is again culturally and historically specific. While it is true that "Republicans, Democrats, members of the Moral Majority, members of the upper class, the Radical Faeries, feminists, anti-abortionists" all could fly that plane without jeapordizing either the laws of physics or their own identity (all the people listed are of ONE culture), there are people sufficiently marginalized in the technoscientific west (the Yuqui indians of Brazil, for instance) who could not be Yuqui and fly the plane at the same time, to fly the plane would mean becoming "western" it would mean not being Yuqui. My point? That planes and aerodynamics are cultural "facts" not just natural ones. In a recent issue of the Sciences I noticed articles on Obesity (To be read with a yiddish-american accent: This is not a cultural category?) which failed to note how obesity is being constructed in a society killing itself to stay thin. There is no science or hypothesizing outside of language, metaphor, and therefore culture and politics. This hold true for science that "works" (today) and science that "fails" (today). Furthermore, our critique of science is just as much of a culturally biased critique (The current emphasis on multiplicity of gender, race, class, ethnicity etc. is a cultural concern very much of the 90's in the US, not world wide). As Donna Haraway notes "Science is Culture" Recommended reads (though not easy) Science in Action by Bruno Latour discusses how sciences make and unmake facts. Secrets of Life, Secrets of Death by Evelyn Fox Keller tries to examine how science can at once be both thoroughly cultural and yet make "true" stories about nature. in dialogue Matthew Weinstein