From jwalsh@u.washington.edu Tue Jun  4 20:41:24 1996
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 96 20:30:27 -0700
From: Jason Walsh <jwalsh@u.washington.edu>
To: jwalsh@u.washington.edu
Subject: getdoc.xp?recnum=5874418&server=dnserver.dbapr&CONTEXT=833945212.24809&hitnum=74


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  Article 75 of 914

Subject:      Andrew Ross and Alan Sokal
From:         gans@scholar.chem.nyu.edu (Paul J. Gans)
Date:         1996/05/22
Message-Id:   <4o03ks$uhq@news.nyu.edu>
Organization: New York University
Reply-To:     gans@scholar.chem.nyu.edu
Newsgroups:   talk.origins
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Perahps it is time to clarify a few things about Alan Sokal's
article.

First, Alan Sokal is, officially, Professor of Physics at NYU.
Andrew Ross is, officially, Professor of Comparative Literature
and American Studies, also at NYU.  And, lest I be accused of
hiding things, I am officially Professor of Chemistry at NYU.

Alan Sokal is a friend of mine.  Our research areas overlap
to some degree.  I have met Andrew Ross on a number of
occasions and have had dinner with him once.

I was not aware of Sokal's article until after it had been
published.

I have read both Sokal's article in the Spring/Summer 1996 issue of
_Social Text_ and Sokal's article in the May/June 1996 _Lingua
Franca_.

I am NOT a disinterested party.  I believe that Ross's view of
science and its function in society is totally twisted.  I state
this up front so that there is no doubt about my position.


In his _Lingua Franca_ article, Sokal states that he wanted to
see if a "leading North American journal of cultural studies"
would publish an article "salted with nonsense" provided that it
"(a) sounded good and (b) flattered the editors' ideological
preconceptions."  They would and did.

Several quotes from Sokal's _Social Text_ paper have been posted.
Here are a few more:

    "Finally, the content of any science is profoundly constrained
     by the language within which its discourses are formulated;
     and mainstream Western physical science has, since Galileo,
     been formulated in the language of mathematics. [11]  But
     _whose_ mathematics?  The question is fundamental, for, as
     Aronowitz has observed, "neither logic nor mathematics
     escapes the 'contamination' of the social" (Aronowitz, 1988b,
     346) [32]  And as feminist thinkers have repeatedly pointed
     out, in the present culture this contamination is overwhelmingly
     capitalist, patriarchal, and militaristic..." (p. 230)

(Material in square brackets refer to footnotes in Sokal's paper.
All are, he has said in print, correct references and all quoted
material is quoted accurately.)

     "Permit me, in this regard a personal recollection:  Fifteen
      years ago, when I was a graduate student, my research in
      relativistic quantum field theory led me to an approach
      that I called "de[con]structive quantum field theory"
      (Sokal, 1982).  Of course, at that time I was completely
      ignorant of Derrida's work on deconstruction in philosophy
      and literary theory.  In retrospect, however, there is a
      striking affinity:  my work can be read as an explanation
      of how the orthodox discourse (e.g. Itzykson and Zuber, 1980)
      on scalar quantum field theory in four-dimensional space-time
      (in technical terms, "renormalized perturbation theory" for
      the \phi^4_4 theory) can be seen to assert its own unreliability
      and thereby to undermine its own affirmations."  (footnote 7,
      in part)


     "While chaos theory has been deeply studied by cultural
      analysts--see, for example, Hayles 1990, 1991; Argyros
      1991; Best 1991; Young 1991, 1992; Assad 1993 among
      many others--the theory of phase transitions has passed
      largely unremarked.  (One exception is the discussion of
      the renormalization group in Hayles 1990 [154-58]..."
      (footnote 42, in part)


     "One caveat:  I have strong reservations about Capra's use
      here of the word _cyclical_, which if interpreted too
      literally could promote a politically regressive quietism."
      (footnote 45, in part)


One could go on, but that seems to be enough.  Sokal's article
concludes with *10* pages of references on top of 55 footnotes
spread over 12 pages.  Section headings in the article (which
may not be Sokal's, but sure look as if they are) include
"Hermeneutics of Classical General Relativity", "Quantum Gravity:
String, Weave, or Morphogenic Field?", and "Transgressing the
Boundaries:  Toward a Liberatory Science".



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