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This is symptomatic of the postmodernist nonsense that Sokal pointed out. 1. Politicising what ought to be science: "What Sokal’s confession most altered was o

by jules 11y ago

This 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 ago
I 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 ago
I 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 ago
  Further, claiming that any field you don't understand is worthless gibberish is also pretty common.
  - Crito 11y ago
    Claiming it with the rigor that Sokal has is not common.
- jules 11y ago
  Whether or not his action was political, their response that insinuates that he is not a true leftist is not only incorrect but irrelevant, though it's understandable that somebody in a field where virtue signalling is so critical might think that this is a valid counterargument. Imagine that somebody pointed out that articles in a mathematical journal are incorrect and the editor responds with "yea, but you're not a true leftist!!". Virtue signalling and victimology over arguments, opinion over facts, obscurantism over clarity, etcetera. The claim that people outside of the field have a hard time understanding it has the advantage of being correct when applied to science and mathematics. This is why Sokal's book only analyses the use of physics and mathematics in postmodernist literature. Since he is physicist and mathematician the claim that he just doesn't understand what he is talking about in his criticism falls flat. I know I'm being harsh, but ridicule and contempt is the only way to get rid of this before it further infects campuses and, after the current generation of students grows up, politics.
avs733 11y ago
I'm not interested in getting into a huge argument on this, the post is my opinion take it as you will. I will note that as someone who has worked specifically with both the social sciences (including post modernism) and quantum mechanics I am actually quite familiar with both and I stand by my statements. But hey lets go a little further because, its the internet why not there's no page charge here... Heisenberg postulates a very specific mathematical formulation for a core quantum phenomenon. While there is no exact equivalence in social science research, phenomenon like WEIRD are reasonably close parallels in terms of the attempts to control for one phenomenon having impacts in unintitive or counterproductive ways that impact the search for truth. Further, I, as someone who works in technical education (and who is also an engineer), find conceptions of truth such as the one you imply deeply problematic. I see them as a concern for the future of technical fields and technical personnel. Look at the impact of design and design thinking on many fields. The search there is less interested in truth and more in meaning. I suspect that your misconception is related to fundamental questions about the difference between truth and meaning. Post modernism doesn't try to make truth subjective, it fundamentally rejects truth (largely in favor of meaning). Post modernism began as a rejection of the modernist ideals that we could find with absolute certainty. This is not the realm of 'scientific' (i.e., convergent closed form solution). The questions, and therefore many of the answers, are not tractable in a mathematics sense and work is typically on finding a tractable form that serves as a reasonable approximation rather than a tractable, single, answer. The difference is one of abductive vs. deductive/inductive schools of formal logic. This is where a lot of technical education fails students, as well as why ideas like constructionism and poststructuralism are important in seemingly clean/refined fields like engineering. An entrepreneur seeking to understand customer value (and their products proposition thereof) does not seek truth but meaning (what you might call a subjective truth or others a personal truth). Choosing to reject as 'nonsense' that thinking is really at the heart of our innovation problem more so than a lack of technical ability in the population. Market formation processes, Schumpeter's creative destruction, and Knightian uncertainty...find the truth in these explanations for real situations. They are abductive in nature and best treated through a non-positivist, non-modern point of view. But that is what we are talking about at the core, point of view. Additionally, it is why diversity is so important...because that thing you call 'truth' is really a very personal rather than absolute thing except in the rare frames where it can be explicitly measured without affecting the result (and what does that sound like). Having the differing perspectives, points of view, and personal truths helps link customers and companies far better. [1] [1] http://nature.berkeley.edu/er100/readings/Crewe_1997.pdf http://nature.berkeley.edu/er100/readings/Crewe_1997.pdf Crewe, E. (1997). The silent traditions of developing cooks. Discourses of development: anthropological perspectives, Oxford: Berg, 62-77.

by jules 11y ago

gus_massa 11y ago

I 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 ago

I 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 ago
Further, claiming that any field you don't understand is worthless gibberish is also pretty common.
- Crito 11y ago
  Claiming it with the rigor that Sokal has is not common.
jules 11y ago
Whether or not his action was political, their response that insinuates that he is not a true leftist is not only incorrect but irrelevant, though it's understandable that somebody in a field where virtue signalling is so critical might think that this is a valid counterargument. Imagine that somebody pointed out that articles in a mathematical journal are incorrect and the editor responds with "yea, but you're not a true leftist!!". Virtue signalling and victimology over arguments, opinion over facts, obscurantism over clarity, etcetera. The claim that people outside of the field have a hard time understanding it has the advantage of being correct when applied to science and mathematics. This is why Sokal's book only analyses the use of physics and mathematics in postmodernist literature. Since he is physicist and mathematician the claim that he just doesn't understand what he is talking about in his criticism falls flat. I know I'm being harsh, but ridicule and contempt is the only way to get rid of this before it further infects campuses and, after the current generation of students grows up, politics.

avs733 11y ago

I'm not interested in getting into a huge argument on this, the post is my opinion take it as you will. I will note that as someone who has worked specifically with both the social sciences (including post modernism) and quantum mechanics I am actually quite familiar with both and I stand by my statements. But hey lets go a little further because, its the internet why not there's no page charge here... Heisenberg postulates a very specific mathematical formulation for a core quantum phenomenon. While there is no exact equivalence in social science research, phenomenon like WEIRD are reasonably close parallels in terms of the attempts to control for one phenomenon having impacts in unintitive or counterproductive ways that impact the search for truth. Further, I, as someone who works in technical education (and who is also an engineer), find conceptions of truth such as the one you imply deeply problematic. I see them as a concern for the future of technical fields and technical personnel. Look at the impact of design and design thinking on many fields. The search there is less interested in truth and more in meaning. I suspect that your misconception is related to fundamental questions about the difference between truth and meaning. Post modernism doesn't try to make truth subjective, it fundamentally rejects truth (largely in favor of meaning). Post modernism began as a rejection of the modernist ideals that we could find with absolute certainty. This is not the realm of 'scientific' (i.e., convergent closed form solution). The questions, and therefore many of the answers, are not tractable in a mathematics sense and work is typically on finding a tractable form that serves as a reasonable approximation rather than a tractable, single, answer. The difference is one of abductive vs. deductive/inductive schools of formal logic. This is where a lot of technical education fails students, as well as why ideas like constructionism and poststructuralism are important in seemingly clean/refined fields like engineering. An entrepreneur seeking to understand customer value (and their products proposition thereof) does not seek truth but meaning (what you might call a subjective truth or others a personal truth). Choosing to reject as 'nonsense' that thinking is really at the heart of our innovation problem more so than a lack of technical ability in the population. Market formation processes, Schumpeter's creative destruction, and Knightian uncertainty...find the truth in these explanations for real situations. They are abductive in nature and best treated through a non-positivist, non-modern point of view. But that is what we are talking about at the core, point of view. Additionally, it is why diversity is so important...because that thing you call 'truth' is really a very personal rather than absolute thing except in the rare frames where it can be explicitly measured without affecting the result (and what does that sound like). Having the differing perspectives, points of view, and personal truths helps link customers and companies far better. [1] [1] http://nature.berkeley.edu/er100/readings/Crewe_1997.pdf http://nature.berkeley.edu/er100/readings/Crewe_1997.pdf Crewe, E. (1997). The silent traditions of developing cooks. Discourses of development: anthropological perspectives, Oxford: Berg, 62-77.