Originally from
http://www.star-telegram.com:80/news/doc/1047/1:RELIGION42/1:RELIGION42111396.html
By Frederica Mathewes-Green
c.1996 Religion News Service
Well, here we are. Or are we?
It's an open question aothers?
Can one really state that "physical reality . . . is at
bottom a social and linguistic construct"?
That's what Alan Sokal, a physicist at New York University,
asserted not long ago in the pages of the journal, Social
Text.
Unfortunately for the editors of Social Text, Sokal was only
kidding. His article, bearing the five-dollar title
"Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative
Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," is an elaborate hoax.
Sokal and many other scientists are annoyed with moony
academic notions that reality is slippery or unknowable. It's
the kind of sappy, self-satisfied nonsense that would annoy
anyone, but for those in the more rigorous disciplines of
science it's even more problematic.
Hard science, as you would no doubt guess, depends on reality
staying put, right where it is. Today's measurements must
reliably compare with yesterday's and tomorrow's. An
assertion that reality is itself a mere whimsy makes science
impossible and absurd.
This battle between philosophical deconstructionists and hard
scientists has been sawing back and forth for some time now.
One particularly nettling point has been the development of a
new postmodernist academic discipline called "science
studies."
Science studies puts the scientist himself under the
microscope, seeking to analyze his prejudices and politics.
On one hand, the science community does exist and may be
studied as fairly as any other. On the other hand, being the
subject of such study does feel dismissive and patronizing.
Particularly if the non-scientists studying you believe your
work to be only as valid as any other magical-emotional
belief system.
In his parody, Sokal pretends to agree with the
deconstructionists in criticizing old-fashioned views like
these: "that there exists an external world, whose properties
are independent of any individual human being and indeed of
humanity as a whole; that these properties are encoded in
`eternal' physical laws and that human beings can obtain
reliable . . . knowledge of these laws by hewing to the
objective procedures and epistemological strictures
prescribed by the (so-called) scientific method."
On the contrary, Sokal writes (with tongue in cheek),
"scientific knowledge, far from being objective, reflects and
encodes the dominant ideologies and power relations of the
culture that produced it."
So the Sokal hoax is a great coup for the proponents of
reality, and the editors of Social Text aquitted themselves
clumsily by claiming with huffy dignity that although the
piece is a parody, they still found it worth studying.
Sokal's own assessment: "My article is a melange of truths,
half-truths, quarter-truths, falsehoods, non sequiturs, and
syntactically correct sentences that have no meaning
whatsoever. (Sadly, there are only a handful of the latter; I
tried hard to produce them, but found that, save for rare
bursts of inspiration, I just didn't have the knack.)"
A couple of weeks ago, New York University brought together
Sokal and Andrew Ross, Social Text's editor, to discuss
(according to the moderator) whether "there are any
intellectual standards in this corner of the left."
The New Yorker magazine described the event, and the
participants: Sokal "a boyish, bespectacled man, with a
physicist's haircut and a mischievous look in his eye," and
Ross "a brooding Scotsman, with matinee-idol features and a
certain dark charm."
Sokal gave an example of muddy thinking that he found
self-evidently absurd. An archaeologist had observed that
scientists believe Native Americans came to this continent
across the Bering Strait, while some Native Americans believe
their ancestors arose from an underground spirit world. The
archaeologist had gone on to say that these beliefs are not
incompatible. Sokal disagreed: The statements plainly were
incompatible, and he asked the audience which one was true.
But instead of answering his question, the audience had a
question for him. "On whose authority should we be forced to
answer your question?" one member asked. And another: "Should
the question be answered?" Andrew Ross inquired, "Why would
you choose a question that would put on trial Native
Americans?"
Sokal, a scientist, believes that questions are for answers.
The deconstructionists observing him believed that questions
beg more questions, enabling a never-ending prowl for hidden
motives and furtive prejudices.
Once unexpectedly thrust under the microscope, Sokal went
from puzzled to exasperated, the New Yorker tells us. Then
"if you looked very closely you could see that the little
look of mischief in his eye had vanished."
The departure of reason from scholarly discourse signals the
departure of reality. When tossed into deconstructionist
quicksand, scientific wiseacres begin to disappear, like a
Cheshire Cat in reverse gear.
The first thing to go is their mischief.