Idealism of Cultural Studies and Realism of Mario Bunge

The chapter traces the origin of Cultural Studies as a scholarly field that conjoins, centrally, anthropology, sociology, feminism, and philosophy. It is characterised by its opposition to scientism, its explicit epistemological relativism, its rejection of the Enlightenment project, and, in places, its ontological idealism and distrust of science. From the early 1990s cultural studies has become institutionalised in science education with the establishment of a journal and creation of strands in major research conferences. Its links to the philosophy and pedagogy of constructivism are explicit, so too its links to Critical Theory. Arguments against the radical idealism of cultural studies are advanced. The contrast is made with the ontological realism of the physicist/philosopher Mario Bunge whose arguments for the symbiosis philosophy and physics, for a realist interpretation of quantum physics, for the Enlightenment project, and for informed scientism are outlined.