from "The Twilight of American Culture" by Morris Berman.

  In looking toward the future after the "Great Collapse"
of "corporate control of our lives" Berman mentions a possible
"detente" between the two extremes of reductionist-science-truth
and all-is-in-our-minds postmodernism:

  "If the twenty-second century brings with it a return to
Enlightenment values, it will not be in the sense of coming full
circle.   ...    We cannot possibly stage a simple revival
of the Enlightenment, because if we know the power of that
worldview, we also know its limits.  The Enlightenment vision
of unlimited improvement, and total knowledge of the world,
is no longer vredible.  The notion that one day all knowledge
will be unified in a few basic principles; that we can, as a
result, completely understand what makes individuals and
socities function; and that, on that basis, we can create a better
life for all is just not tenable any more.  Those who lived
during the Enlightenment believed we could know everything.
Postmodernists made the mistake of believing we could know
nothing.  The truth, surely, is that we can know _some_ things,
and that that knowledge is worth having.  Hence a certain
detente is possible between the Enlightenment and postmodernism.
The contribution postmodernism has made to Western
philosophy is an issue that has certainly been raised before (if
not with such virulence): There is a reflexive quality to all of
our knowing.  If we discover a truth, there is also a subjective
component by which we create it, and so we need to maintain
an awareness of ourselves as pursuers of truth.  We have
agendas (not necessarily political ones, I hasten to add) in
pursuing the truth, and this will always raise the question of how
true that "truth" really is.  While it does seem to be the case
that E=mc^2 and that Galileo's description of projectile motion
was right, while Aristotle's was wrong, and that this really _is_
universal knowledge valid for all time, it remains the case that
much of what we know is culturally and temporally conditioned.
The trick, as it were, is to pursue the truth with all the
optimism and love of reason that animated the Enlightenment,
while at the same time being willing to give the effort a post-
modern wink: The knower is part of the known, and the knowledge
is probably provisional.  I seek the truth, _and_ I am aware
of myself as a culturally situated seeker of the truth.  ..."

(from pp.176-177 of the 2006 paperback, very near the end of the work.)

   It seems to me that a similar mind set could be adopted by
scientists in their work, helping them "to cultivate humility with
regard to fixed positions on the nature of truth" and maybe
reduce the alienation of scientists in some quarters :-)

 -dd