From: J. R. Molloy (jr@shasta.com)
Date: Sat Nov 13 1999 - 14:29:14 MST
From:
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/lingua_franca_v4/lingua_franca_v4.html
A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies
Alan D. Sokal
Department of Physics
New York University
4 Washington Place
New York, NY 10003 USA
Internet: SOKAL@NYU.EDU
Telephone: (212) 998-7729
Fax: (212) 995-4016
The displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that
everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is -- second only
to American political campaigns -- the most prominent and pernicious
manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time.
-- Larry Laudan, Science and Relativism (1990)
For some years I've been troubled by an apparent decline in the standards of
intellectual rigor in certain precincts of the American academic humanities. But
I'm a mere physicist: if I find myself unable to make head or tail of
jouissanceand différance, perhaps that just reflects my own inadequacy.
So, to test the prevailing intellectual standards, I decided to try a modest
(though admittedly uncontrolled) experiment: Would a leading North American
journal of cultural studies -- whose editorial collective includes such
luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross -- publish an article liberally
salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors'
ideological preconceptions?
The answer, unfortunately, is yes. Interested readers can find my article,
``Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum
Gravity,'' in the Spring/Summer 1996 issue of Social Text. It appears in a
special number of the magazine devoted to the ``Science Wars.''
What's going on here? Could the editors reallynot have realized that my article
was written as a parody?
In the first paragraph I deride ``the dogma imposed by the long
post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Western intellectual outlook'':
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, albeit imperfect and tentative, knowledge of these laws by hewing to
the ``objective'' procedures and epistemological strictures prescribed by the
(so-called) scientific method.
Is it now dogma in Cultural Studies that there exists no external world? Or that
there exists an external world but science obtains no knowledge of it?
In the second paragraph I declare, without the slightest evidence or argument,
that ``physical `reality' [note the scare quotes] ... is at bottom a social and
linguistic construct.'' Not our theoriesof physical reality, mind you, but the
reality itself. Fair enough: anyone who believes that the laws of physics are
mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from
the windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor.)
Throughout the article, I employ scientific and mathematical concepts in ways
that few scientists or mathematicians could possibly take seriously. For
example, I suggest that the ``morphogenetic field'' -- a bizarre New Age idea
due to Rupert Sheldrake -- constitutes a cutting-edge theory of quantum gravity.
This connection is pure invention; even Sheldrake makes no such claim. I assert
that Lacan's psychoanalytic speculations have been confirmed by recent work in
quantum field theory. Even nonscientist readers might well wonder what in
heavens' name quantum field theory has to do with psychoanalysis; certainly my
article gives no reasoned argument to support such a link.
Later in the article I propose that the axiom of equality in mathematical set
theory is somehow analogous to the homonymous concept in feminist politics. In
reality, all the axiom of equality states is that two sets are identical if and
only if they have the same elements. Even readers without mathematical training
might well be suspicious of the claim that the axiom of equality reflects set
theory's ``nineteenth-century liberal origins.''
In sum, I intentionally wrote the article so that any competent physicist or
mathematician (or undergraduate physics or math major) would realize that it is
a spoof. Evidently the editors of Social Text felt comfortable publishing an
article on quantum physics without bothering to consult anyone knowledgeable in
the subject.
The fundamental silliness of my article lies, however, not in its numerous
solecisms but in the dubiousness of its central thesis and of the ``reasoning''
adduced to support it. Basically, I claim that quantum gravity -- the
still-speculative theory of space and time on scales of a millionth of a
billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter -- has profound
politicalimplications (which, of course, are ``progressive''). In support of
this improbable proposition, I proceed as follows: First, I quote some
controversial philosophical pronouncements of Heisenberg and Bohr, and assert
(without argument) that quantum physics is profoundly consonant with
``postmodernist epistemology.'' Next, I assemble a pastiche -- Derrida and
general relativity, Lacan and topology, Irigaray and quantum gravity -- held
together by vague rhetoric about ``nonlinearity'', ``flux'' and
``interconnectedness.'' Finally, I jump (again without argument) to the
assertion that ``postmodern science'' has abolished the concept of objective
reality. Nowhere in all of this is there anything resembling a logical sequence
of thought; one finds only citations of authority, plays on words, strained
analogies, and bald assertions.
In its concluding passages, my article becomes especially egregious. Having
abolished reality as a constraint on science, I go on to suggest (once again
without argument) that science, in order to be ``liberatory,'' must be
subordinated to political strategies. I finish the article by observing that ``a
liberatory science cannot be complete without a profound revision of the canon
of mathematics.'' We can see hints of an ``emancipatory mathematics,'' I
suggest, ``in the multidimensional and nonlinear logic of fuzzy systems theory;
but this approach is still heavily marked by its origins in the crisis of
late-capitalist production relations.'' I add that ``catastrophe theory, with
its dialectical emphases on smoothness/discontinuity and
metamorphosis/unfolding, will indubitably play a major role in the future
mathematics; but much theoretical work remains to be done before this approach
can become a concrete tool of progressive political praxis.'' It's
understandable that the editors of Social Text were unable to evaluate
critically the technical aspects of my article (which is exactly why they should
have consulted a scientist). What's more surprising is how readily they accepted
my implication that the search for truth in science must be subordinated to a
political agenda, and how oblivious they were to the article's overall illogic.
Why did I do it? While my method was satirical, my motivation is utterly
serious. What concerns me is the proliferation, not just of nonsense and sloppy
thinking per se, but of a particular kind of nonsense and sloppy thinking: one
that denies the existence of objective realities, or (when challenged) admits
their existence but downplays their practical relevance. At its best, a journal
like Social Textraises important questions that no scientist should ignore --
questions, for example, about how corporate and government funding influence
scientific work. Unfortunately, epistemic relativism does little to further the
discussion of these matters.
In short, my concern over the spread of subjectivist thinking is both
intellectual and political. Intellectually, the problem with such doctrines is
that they are false (when not simply meaningless). There isa real world; its
properties are notmerely social constructions; facts and evidence domatter. What
sane person would contend otherwise? And yet, much contemporary academic
theorizing consists precisely of attempts to blur these obvious truths -- the
utter absurdity of it all being concealed through obscure and pretentious
language.
Social Text's acceptance of my article exemplifies the intellectual arrogance of
Theory -- meaning postmodernist literarytheory -- carried to its logical
extreme. No wonder they didn't bother to consult a physicist. If all is
discourse and ``text,'' then knowledge of the real world is superfluous; even
physics becomes just another branch of Cultural Studies. If, moreover, all is
rhetoric and ``language games,'' then internal logical consistency is
superfluous too: a patina of theoretical sophistication serves equally well.
Incomprehensibility becomes a virtue; allusions, metaphors and puns substitute
for evidence and logic. My own article is, if anything, an extremely modest
example of this well-established genre.
Politically, I'm angered because most (though not all) of this silliness is
emanating from the self-proclaimed Left. We're witnessing here a profound
historical volte-face. For most of the past two centuries, the Left has been
identified with science and against obscurantism; we have believed that rational
thought and the fearless analysis of objective reality (both natural and social)
are incisive tools for combating the mystifications promoted by the powerful --
not to mention being desirable human ends in their own right. The recent turn of
many ``progressive'' or ``leftist'' academic humanists and social scientists
toward one or another form of epistemic relativism betrays this worthy heritage
and undermines the already fragile prospects for progressive social critique.
Theorizing about ``the social construction of reality'' won't help us find an
effective treatment for AIDS or devise strategies for preventing global warming.
Nor can we combat false ideas in history, sociology, economics and politics if
we reject the notions of truth and falsity.
The results of my little experiment demonstrate, at the very least, that some
fashionable sectors of the American academic Left have been getting
intellectually lazy. The editors of Social Textliked my article because they
liked its conclusion: that ``the content and methodology of postmodern science
provide powerful intellectual support for the progressive political project.''
They apparently felt no need to analyze the quality of the evidence, the cogency
of the arguments, or even the relevance of the arguments to the purported
conclusion.
Of course, I'm not oblivious to the ethical issues involved in my rather
unorthodox experiment. Professional communities operate largely on trust;
deception undercuts that trust. But it is important to understand exactly what I
did. My article is a theoretical essay based entirely on publicly available
sources, all of which I have meticulously footnoted. All works cited are real,
and all quotations are rigorously accurate; none are invented. Now, it's true
that the author doesn't believe his own argument. But why should that matter?
The editors' duty as scholars is to judge the validity and interest of ideas,
without regard for their provenance. (That is why many scholarly journals
practice blind refereeing.) If the Social Texteditors find my arguments
convincing, then why should they be disconcerted simply because I don't? Or are
they more deferent to the so-called ``cultural authority of technoscience'' than
they would care to admit?
In the end, I resorted to parody for a simple pragmatic reason. The targets of
my critique have by now become a self-perpetuating academic subculture that
typically ignores (or disdains) reasoned criticism from the outside. In such a
situation, a more direct demonstration of the subculture's intellectual
standards was required. But how can one show that the emperor has no clothes?
Satire is by far the best weapon; and the blow that can't be brushed off is the
one that's self-inflicted. I offered the Social Texteditors an opportunity to
demonstrate their intellectual rigor. Did they meet the test? I don't think so.
I say this not in glee but in sadness. After all, I'm a leftist too (under the
Sandinista government I taught mathematics at the National University of
Nicaragua). On nearly all practical political issues -- including many
concerning science and technology -- I'm on the same side as the Social
Texteditors. But I'm a leftist (and feminist) becauseof evidence and logic, not
in spite of it. Why should the right wing be allowed to monopolize the
intellectual high ground?
And why should self-indulgent nonsense -- whatever its professed political
orientation -- be lauded as the height of scholarly achievement?
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