June 4, 1996 to June 29, 1996
Jason Walsh, jwalsh@u.washington.edu, visited on Tuesday, June 04, 1996:
Message:
Please include any suggestions you might have.
Web Page: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~jwalsh/homepage
Lowell Brown, brown@phys.washington.edu, visited on Tuesday, June 04, 1996:
Message:
Web Page:
Greg Dawes, gregory.dawes@stonebow.otago.ac.nz, visited on Wednesday, June 05, 1996:
Message:
Web Page:
James H. Brown, brown@mbnet.mb.ca, visited on Thursday, June 06, 1996:
Message:
Web Page:
Steven C. Scheer, scscheer@evansville.net, visited on Thursday, June 06, 1996:
Message:
Web Page:
Michael Austin, austin@humanitas.ucsb.edu, visited on Thursday, June 06, 1996:
Message:
Web Page:
Greg Wise, jmwise@hubcap.clemson.edu, visited on Thursday, June 06, 1996:
Message:
Web Page:
H. Brent Howatt, bhowatt@humboldt.k12.ca.us, visited on Thursday, June 06, 1996:
Message:
H. Brent Howatt | bhowatt@humboldt.k12.ca.us
Director of Insurance Services | http://www.humboldt.k12.ca.us
Humboldt County Office of Education | voice 707-445-7055
901 Myrtle Ave. | fax 707-445-7143
Eureka, CA 95501 |
=====================================================================
Web Page: http://www.humboldt.k12.ca.us
Bob White, bobwhite@sunvalley.net, visited on Friday,
June 07, 1996:
Message:
Thanks for putting this page up.
Web Page: -none-
Patrick W. Hamlett, phamlett@ncsu.edu, visited on Friday, June 07, 1996:
Message:
Web Page: http://www2.ncsu.edu/ncsu/chass/mds/hamlett.html
Luigi M Bianchi, lbianchi@yorku.ca, visited on Friday, June 07, 1996:
Message:
Thank you for putting together all the info about
the Sokal case, and also for the backgound links--
very useful. A great job!
Web Page: http://www.yorku.ca/sts/
Victor J. Milenkovic, vjm@cs.miami.edu,
visited on Friday, June 07, 1996:
Message:
Web Page: www.cs.miami.edu/~vjm
Ragnvald Larsen, ragnvald@stud.ntnu.no, visited on Saturday, June 08, 1996:
Message:
Interesting to read this information.
Web Page: http://www.pvv.unit.no/~ragnvald
Raymond Fancher, fancher@yorku.ca, visited on Saturday, June 08, 1996:
Message:
Web Page:
Eugene E. Ruyle, eruyle@csulb.edu, visited on Saturday, June 08, 1996:
Message:
Somewhat related, for a case study in science and ethics, see the Puvungna Sacred Site Web Page on archaeology and Indians
http://www.csulb.edu/~eruyle/puvuhome.html/ on science, archaeology, and Indians
Web Page: http://www.csulb.edu/~eruyle
Charles L. DeFanti , sensei@interport.net, visited on Saturday, June 08, 1996:
Message:
Web Page: http://www.interport.net/~sensei
Stewart Ogilby, stewart@netline.net, visited on Saturday, June 08, 1996:
Message:
We are pleased to link to your thoughtful site
from The BIG EYE at BEN-989.
Web Page: http://www.bigeye.com
Karen Knox, karen.knox@nashville.com, visited on Saturday, June 08, 1996:
Message:
What fun! I love academic jokes and word
play--that's what all this is, isn't it? I also love
hearing people say that the emperor isn't
wearing any clothes. What a lovely fairy tale
to tell my students! I can't wait until school
starts again.
Web Page:
Francisco Nemenzo, nemenzo@icu.ac.jp, visited on Saturday, June 08, 1996:
Message:
I am a Professor of International Relations at the International Christian University, Tokyo
Web Page:
Alan D. White, adwhite@worldnet.att.net, visited on Sunday, June 09, 1996:
Message:
Memorialize Sokal's parody with "Sokalize".
Web Page:
Jerry Gough, gough@wsu.edu, visited on Sunday, June 09, 1996:
Message:
I teach the history of science at Washington State University.
Web Page:
Michael Pollard, micahel@socomm.net, visited on Sunday, June 09, 1996:
Message:
Web Page:
Gil Rodman, gbr@kcii.com, visited on Sunday, June 09, 1996:
Message:
At the risk of sounding self-serving, there's a Cultural Studies webpage associated with a Cultural Studies listserv I "run" that might be a worthwhile link here. If nothing else, it'd match the link I've got to your page.
http://www.cas.usf.edu/communication/rodman/cultstud/index.html
Web Page: http://www.cas.usf.edu/communication/rodman/index.html
AdAm Nieman, a-nieman@uwe.ac.uk, visited on Monday, June 10, 1996:
Message:
Web Page: http://science.btc.uwe.ac.uk/~waveleng/home.html
Phil Landon, landon@gl.umbc.edu, visited on Monday, June 10, 1996:
Message:
A very useful oafe for folling the implications
of the Sokal controversy. Thanks for
creating it.
Web Page: http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~landon/index.html
Phil Landon, landon@gl.umbc.edu, visited on Monday, June 10, 1996:
Message:
A very useful page for following the implications
of the Sokal controversy. Thanks for
creating it.
Web Page: http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~landon/index.html
Andrew Norris, norris@norris.rutgers.edu, visited on Monday, June 10, 1996:
Message:
The Sokal Affair reminds me of George Orwell's
1984. Of course that was a much more serious
attempt at parody - no one has died in the
Science Wars. But his simple parody (last year's
``four legs good, two legs bad'' becoming this
years ``two legs good, four legs bad'') helped to
expose an emperor's state of undress. I think
Orwell would approve of Sokal's article.
Web Page: http://erebus.rutgers.edu/~norris/
Rick Duerden, richard_duerden@byu.edu, visited on Monday, June 10, 1996:
Message:
Thanks for the compilation. What irks me about Sokol (in his Lingua Franca piece) and the so-called defenders of rigor and evidence is how wildly they sling accusations against cultural studies--without evidence, without rigor, without noting diffe
rences, but apparently following their prior biases.
Web Page:
W.B. Merriman, WBMerriman@Prodigy.com, visited on Monday, June 10, 1996:
Message:
Thanks!
Web Page:
John Louis Lucaites, lucaites@indiana.edu, visited on Tuesday, June 11, 1996:
Message:
Web Page:
Cheryl Frank, c-frank@uiuc.edu, visited on Tuesday, June 11, 1996:
Message:
Web Page:
Daniel Zalewski, lfranca@interport.net, visited on Wednesday, June 12, 1996:
Message:
Well, now I know where to direct those wanting a comprehensive treatment of the whole Sokal Text business. FYI, Lingua Franca will be printing a gallery of letters on the subject in our next issue, which should be out in around two weeks. Respondent
s include Andrew Ross, Thomas Nagel, and Evelyn Fox Keller.
Web Page:
Joseph Edward Nemec, nemecj@mit.edu, visited on Wednesday, June 12, 1996:
Message:
I want to congratulate Professor Sokal on a fine
joke, well executed. It is a tribute to his
intellectual rigor that he has not turned
to ad hominems to reply to the personal attacks
leveled against him by the targets of his hoax,
something the targets themselves should have
learned by now. This was the perfect practical
joke! It was sublime, poingant, and best of all,
reveled the true nature of the clowns it
parodied.
Web Page: http://web.mit.edu/manuf-sys/www/nemec.html
albyn jones, jones@reed.edu, visited on Wednesday, June 12, 1996:
Message:
just for the record, your web page is unreadable
on a B&W monitor.
Web Page: http://www.reed.edu/~jones
Bill Tipper, wct4915@is2.nyu.edu, visited on Thursday, June 13, 1996:
Message:
Web Page:
Aernout van Enter, aenter@th.rug.nl, visited on Friday, June 14, 1996:
Message:
Web Page:
handel kashope wright, hwright@utkux.utk.edu, visited on Friday, June 14, 1996:
Message:
Web Page:
Norm Levitt, njlevitt@math.rutgers.edu, visited on Friday,
June 14, 1996:
Message:
Gee whiz!! When Alan first let me in on his lttle gag, way back in Sept., 94, I expected at most a couple of 'graphs in Chron.,Higher Ed. It's more than gratifying to see all this attention. It proves that a large number of people had already bec
ome sick and tired of certain kinds of posturing and were just waiting for something that would create theappropriate atmosphere of innocent merriment.
Web Page: none
Frank Tough, Tough@duke.usask.ca, visited on Friday, June 14, 1996:
Message:
Thanks for setting up the page. The rapid exchange of ideas conerning Sokal's spoof indicates the importance of the Internet.
Web Page:
Whee Ky Ma, ma@th.rug.nl, visited on Saturday, June 15, 1996:
Message:
Web Page: http://www.cpedu.rug.nl/~N0769908/WKM.html
Pierre Walthéry, pwa@info.fundp.ac.be, visited on Saturday, June 15, 1996:
Message:
Web Page:
Naomi Patner, rentap@u.washington.edu, visited on Saturday,
June 15, 1996:
Message:
Impressive page-especially appreciated the Chapman article and the links offered.
Web Page: http://
Dade Hayes, dhayes@oberlin.edu, visited on Monday, June
17, 1996:
Message:
Great site! It's really heartening to see that there are so many good positivists fed up with all of the ridiculous political malarkey that pervades the humanities. Sokal's shrewd and witty "deconstruction" of the language of the left reveals it f
or the Potemkin Village it is.
Web Page: http://
(Prof.) Patrick J. Boylan, P.Boylan@city.ac.uk, visited on Tuesday, June 18, 1996:
Message:
Thanks - keep updating this.
Web Page: http://www.city.ac.uk/artspol/index.html
Artie Samplaski, asamplas@indiana.edu, visited on Tuesday, June 18, 1996:
Message:
Like many others have said, an excellent
compilation of material, well-organized.
Please by all means keep it around. Alan D. White's suggestion earlier in the guestbook that this needs to enter the
language is a fine one, too.
Web Page:
Thomas E. Booth, teb@lanl.gov, visited on Tuesday, June
18, 1996:
Message:
Web Page: http://
John Duskin, mthduskn@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu, visited on
Tuesday, June 18, 1996:
Message:
A really helpful compendium. Thank the gods for people like you who are willing to go to so much trouble.You make the net worthehile!
Web Page: http://
Jouni Hakli, hakli@joyl.joensuu.fi, visited on Wednesday,
June 19, 1996:
Message:
Web Page: http://
Chris Brooke, cbrooke@fas.harvard.edu, visited on Wednesday,
June 19, 1996:
Message:
Web Page: N/A
Mark Shulgasser, mshulgasser@zelacom.com, visited on Wednesday,
June 19, 1996:
Message:
Very interesting & useful. Thanks. MS
Web Page: http://
Michael Lam, mlam@ditell.com, visited on Wednesday, June
19, 1996:
Message:
Bless you.
Web Page: http://
Per-Tore Aasestrand, c-three@online.no, visited on Friday,
June 21, 1996:
Message:
Keep up the good work!!
Web Page: http://
Hank Karl, hankkarl@ix.netcom.com, visited on Friday, June 21, 1996:
Message:
Good job by Sokal. I wonder if clasifying ourselves as conservatives (or liberals) makes us feel that we have to support the whole adjenda, not just the parts we agree with. (Apply the theroy of cognative dissonance here.)
Web Page:
Erik van Roon, evroon@pi.net, visited on Friday, June 21, 1996:
Message:
Great going mr. Sokal
I love it when 'so called' scientists go flat on
their face. They make people disrespect real
scientific research and findings
Web Page:
Robert Haley, rlhaley@bright.net, visited on Friday, June
21, 1996:
Message:
Web Page: http://
Sean Carroll, carroll@ctp.mit.edu, visited on Saturday, June 22, 1996:
Message:
Thanks for the very informative page. This is
the Web at its most useful.
Web Page: http://ctpa02.mit.edu/~carroll/home.html
John W. Farley, farley@nevada.edu, visited on Sunday, June 23, 1996:
Message:
Your web page is a very useful guide. I've put in a link
on my own home page. Sokal has really punctured the balloon
of a number of people, especially Aronowitz. Social
Text may not realize it yet, but they've lost
so much face they've started to lose neck...
Web Page: http://www.physics.unlv.edu/~farley/
Brendan Larvor, larvor@liv.ac.uk, visited on Tuesday, June 25, 1996:
Message:
Web Page: http://www.liv.ac.uk/~larvor/philsci.html
John Witherston, withers203@aol.com, visited on Tuesday,
June 25, 1996:
Message:
I read in The Chronicle of Higher Education about the "Mickelson hoax" that is supposed to be related to the Sokal Affair, and I have just found my way to the original Web site that features the "Manfred Mickelson letter"
(http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~wcd/alsc!.htm)
and I have read the letter. I want to indicate my support for Bruce Robbins and Andrew Ross and the Editorial Collectivity of Social Text. I think all these people were hired by Jesse Helms. They do not observe the canons of scholarly se
riousness. Stanley Fish is right: scholarship is a very serious matter and nobody should joke around about it and people should have a very high ethical standard in their work and be serious. I support Stanley Fish and the Editorial Collectivity of Social
Text. I think it is Jesse Helms.
Web Page: http://
Paul Pojman, ppojman@indiana.edu, visited on Tuesday, June 25, 1996:
Message:
Web Page: http://www.indiana.edu/~hpscdept
Bronson Messer, , visited on Tuesday, June 25, 1996:
Message:
Thank you. Your site is an oasis of engaging and
entertaining thought in an Interdesert filled with
completely useless trash (e.g. www.maytag.com!).
As a physicist who knows a little Derrida and Lacan,
I find the entire debate absolutely irresistable.
Alas, C. P. Snow and Rodney King shall never meet
to mingle their respective gestalts and hopes for
mankind...
Web Page: http://
Carmella C. Moore, ccmoore@uci.edu, visited on Tuesday,
June 25, 1996:
Message:
Bravo to Prof. Sokal!
Web Page: http://
Simon Hopper, hapn1@central.susx.ac.uk, visited on Wednesday,
June 26, 1996:
Message:
Both sides are right, Sokal makes too much of
his hoax, do we dismiss the natural sciences after finding
out about a hoax in physics? But there is a lot of needlessly obscure
writing in cultural studies.
Web Page: http://
Dr John Flood, floodj@wmin.ac.uk, visited on Wednesday,
June 26, 1996:
Message:
Web Page: http://
Howard Hoffer, hoffer@athena.csdco.com, visited on Wednesday, June 26, 1996:
Message:
Thank you very much for pulling together the Sokal-hoax materials. I haven't had this much media-fun since the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.
Web Page: http://n/a
Harold Zapolsky, zapolsky@physics.rutgers.edu, visited
on Wednesday, June 26, 1996:
Message:
Excellent job. Keep up the good work!
Web Page: http://
Peter Sestoft, sestoft@dina.kvl.dk, visited on Friday, June 28, 1996:
Message:
Very useful collection of links --- thanks!
Web Page: http://www.dina.kvl.dk/~sestoft
Peter Borcherds, p.h.borcherds@bham.ac.uk, visited on Friday, June 28, 1996:
Message:
Web Page: http://sun1.bham.ac.uk/p.h.borcherds
Noelene Ryan, naryan@bopis.co.nz, visited on Saturday,
June 29, 1996:
Message:
Web Page: http://
Andrew Tierman, tierman@tardis.svsu.edu, visited on Saturday,
June 29, 1996:
Message:
Thanks, to the creators of this page. Michael Sullivan's
comments are excellent in indicating an even- measured, plain-language
approach to the ideological cage of (some?) self-described post-modernists
attacking, not merely the situation of inquiry in the physical sciences but
the scientific method; indeed, logical reasoning itself.
I find some "PM's" readiness for the grossest ad hominem attack (that is, accusing Sokal
of dishonestly describing his work in Nicaragua -- as opposed to a thorough and reasoned investigation
of background motivations, which the academic left sometimes appears to have abandoned to the heroic
efforts of Mother Jones, the Nation, FAIR and the like -- as if anything short of "developing theory" is
a self-demeaning task for a self-respecting intellectual) exasperating. It would be merely laughable to see
this very controversy attributed (as done by one visitor putatively from the left) to Jessie Helms, if the crisis of
American politics which we on the left see, to wit, the utter sale of political power and voice, of American's
very franchise to the wealthy corporate elite, in service of profit and to the detriment of the vast majority of
Americans -- indeed, of citizens of the world.
As a legal services lawyer viewing the inception of the "Reagan revolution", I read the Heritage Foundation report which
targetted just such institutions as legal services and other paltrily funded efforts to enhance the voices of poor and oppressed people
I read the clarity with which the Right identified its goals to itself: these organizations harbored; gave pay, little as it was, and an
opportunity to work in the public behalf to persons whose dedication to justice transcended any personal drive for self-aggrandizement. In
other words, the Right saw a particular need to eradicate any resources which lent the most meagre soapbox to social values other than
the selfishness upon which the politics of the Right in America (distinguishing it from true 'conservatism') is founded.
The knee-jerk defensiveness of postmodernists reflects that clarity in a cruelly comic horror. When I read Jonathan Culler in the early
1980's, I recognized that, without a research post in academia to support me, I could not participate in a grand intellectual conversation which
was beginning in US critical theory. I did not anticipate the degree to which self-referential, self-perpetuating academics would construct a climate
of exclusion.
I recall a letter in a leftist political journal several years ago criticizing Henry Giroux for writing in a fashion which was inaccessible to the mass
of schoolteachers whom he claimed to desire to become "transformative intellectuals." Giroux responded in complete hostility to the critique: his manner of writing,
he affirmed, was the only way; his words, his sentence structures the only ones in which his awfully important ideas could be conveyed. Moreover, the letter-writer
insulted America's teachers, stating that Giroux's writings were incomprehensible and useless to them. I have been in a few teachers' lounges, subbed in a few teachers'
classes, and taught 10th or 11th grade algebra (as a college instructor) to a few of those prospective, dedicated teachers with poor high-school preparation, perhaps in
English as well as in mathematics. I think the letter-writer was correct, and the great professor was more connected to a body of work which perpetuates itself in its
disconnectedness from every-day life than to breathing, working schoolteachers.
In the mathematics education community today social constructivism has taken firm hold. Some (I'm told not all but just as roughly derided for my dissenting references
to scientific knowledge) constructivists claim that, not merely is scientific knowledge mediated, but the existence of physical principles itself is nothing more than a social
construct; that we humans can take no stock whatever in drawing reasoned inference from scientific research and theoretical development over the centuries. I have, with certain]
individuals, argued about basic matters I trust in, such as the fact that light takes a finite amount of time to travel or that I must direct my automobile while driving to avoid
certain obstacles such as curbs, trees, telephone poles and the like. I have been told that my "faith" in reason in accounting for a physical reality is no more or less than religious
faith... And I have been told this by those responsible for educational theory in the preparation of the youth of this nation. Doubtless, as I have expressed, much of their work has
value for effectiveness in teaching. However, they seem adamant about extending the conceptual foundation of their method to answer the greatest ontological questions of philosophy (I might say,
"Western" or "European" philosophy, since that is the perceived source of what they view themselves as debunking. I could go on, with references and quotes, but I have taken too much advantage of
this space as it is.
I am also thankful for Katha Pollit's excellently seasoned and spirited celebration of Alan Sokal's accomplishment in showing the emperor naked (unable to identify scientific nonsense) and remain
troubled that the postmodernist camp sees slander and innuendo as a more reasonable response than admitting that they have made ignorant and laughable statements about subject-matter which, being
abstruse as that in any discipline, they did not comprehend. (Thus, both quantum mechanics and chaos theory, in fact, depend upon "Newtonian" reasoning; and classical physics itself does not pretend
to have answers for complicated cases -- and states the same. And there is more of a continuum in scientific and mathematical reasoning than the Postmodernists, with their need for preliminary
rejection of "centered" and "totalizing" reason will never understand -- no more than I could claim to have expert knowledge of quantum field theory.
Here is a good resource for the left, in answer to what has become of post-modernists: Monthly Review's July/August 1995, expanded issue, entitled "in defense of history: Marxism and the postmodern agenda",
does a creditable service in assessing this field of controversy, without over-working the details, in MR's outward stance as an intellectual but non-academic magazine, certainly one with unassailably
socialist leanings -- albeit based in the very "old left" which evokes nothing but disdain among postmodernists.
Web Page: http://
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