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I've read about this incident before, and as someone who transitioned from the 'hard' sciences (specifically semiconductor engineering) to the 'soft' or social
by avs733 11y ago
I've read about this incident before, and as someone who transitioned from the 'hard' sciences (specifically semiconductor engineering) to the 'soft' or social sciences (specifically education and economics) it has been a bit disquieting.
First, for Dr. Sokal, I am a bit...bemused or surprised I guess I would say...at what seems like a quite childish simplification and overall process. This was not a peer review journal, as is implied in most coverage of the incident. Further, I strongly suspect (as I have seen from my former colleagues when I discuss my new field with them) Sokal showed an enormous amount of hubris (as Robbins and Ross note "What Sokal’s confession most altered was our perception of his own good faith as a self-declared leftist...On the other hand, we recognize that professional scientists like Sokal do feel that their beliefs and their intellectual integrity are threatened by the diverse work done in the field of science studies"). To attempt to speak ill of a field you know little about and yet still find to be trivial or unrigorous is puzzilingly tactless and embarrassingly presumptuous. It is a bit as if Sokal found himself laughing at the naked emperor, unaware that it was a mirror.
Second, I have always wondered what about what this incident, and its references, says about other disciplines understanding and approach to social sciences and fields like philosophy and psychology. We tend to have a natural search for truth as scientists...one of the fundamental questions though is what is meant by truth and, further, what is the interrelationship between a truth and the context in which it is observed? Engineering colleagues I have look at the fact that things are rethought, changed, dismissed, in conflict, can't be confirmed, etc. is seen as a flaw whereas I see it a reality. Much of the social sciences is closer to the quantum domain. True social experiments are difficult or legally/ethically untennable. When they are conducted, they are often conducted in ways that try to minimize outside variables...but reality isn't that simple. Human beings don't share a universal 'ground state' from which decisions or behaviors emminate.
- ubasu 11y agoYou can read Sokal's various commentaries on this topic. His point was that many philosophers tried to make grandiose statements about science and mathematics that did not make sense at all. The philosophers were making statements based on their imagination of what certain terms meant, and not on the actual meaning of those terms. See the links here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10715872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10715872
- jackcosgrove 11y ago"To attempt to speak ill of a field you know little about and yet still find to be trivial or unrigorous is puzzilingly tactless and embarrassingly presumptuous." This is one of the most common academic tactics: to claim that those who are outside the field are ignorant of it and therefore cannot pass judgment. As someone who claims to be a scientist, you should know that this is an appeal to authority and that a scientist would welcome criticism from anyone regardless of training or background provided their argument was well-argued and supported by evidence.
- hueving 11y agoThe person you are replying true believes that truth is objective and therefore obviously cannot commit a logical fallacy.
- mcguire 11y ago"All science is either physics or stamp collecting."
- avs733 11y agoI understand your point, I just disagree. As you point out in the your last sentence, there is an enormous and quite uncanny trench between principled and unprincipled critique. One comes from a place of understanding and heartfelt disagreement, one does not (although one is often presumed by authors). While the former is possible, I would confidently say the both Sokal's and the commenter's came from the later. Edit to add: Sokal's entire proposition (based in frankly an attempt to embarrass a field) exposes the lie underneath the straw man being built to support him.
- marcoperaza 11y agoPostmodernist drivel speaks for itself. Richard Dawkins wrote a great essay with some good examples. http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/dawkins.html http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/dawkins.html My favorite: >The privileging of solid over fluid mechanics, and indeed the inability of science to deal with turbulent flow at all, she attributes to the association of fluidity with femininity. Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids... From this perspective it is no wonder that science has not been able to arrive at a successful model for turbulence. The problem of turbulent flow cannot be solved because the conceptions of fluids (and of women) have been formulated so as necessarily to leave unarticulated remainders.
- jules 11y agoThis is symptomatic of the postmodernist nonsense that Sokal pointed out. 1. Politicising what ought to be science: "What Sokal’s confession most altered was our perception of his own good faith as a self-declared leftist". 2. Claiming that people outside the field are unable to understand that it's drivel: "To attempt to speak ill of a field you know little about and yet still find to be trivial or unrigorous is puzzilingly tactless and embarrassingly presumptuous". 3. Pulling up the smoke screen that truth is subjective: "We tend to have a natural search for truth as scientists...one of the fundamental questions though is what is meant by truth and, further, what is the interrelationship between a truth and the context in which it is observed?" 4. Using scientific terms in a nonsensical way: "the social sciences is closer to the quantum domain" Postmodernism is a blight upon the human intellect that is not only destroying the social sciences but increasingly also politics.
- gus_massa 11y agoI agree, but I want to highlight your 4th point > 4. Using scientific terms in a nonsensical way: "the social sciences is closer to the quantum domain" I think that a big part of the problem is trying to make Quantum Mechanics more layman friendly with nice stories without math. Quantum mechanics is unintuitive but the math is very clear, so "anyone" can get the same correct result for an experiment. When you remove the math, you keep only the unintuitive part.
- dahart 11y agoI have no love for postmodernism, but this seems at least mildly unfair. Sokal's initiating action was entirely political. Responding by saying that Sokal hurt himself more than anyone else is a decent strategy, and might be true too, but it's not a symptom of postmodernism. Claiming that people outside a field don't understand is a symptom of academics, and of most groups of humans, but it is not something in any way unique to postmodernism.
- mcguire 11y agoFurther, claiming that any field you don't understand is worthless gibberish is also pretty common.