Janet Jul 17, 2012

did not like it 's review

I wanted to like this, I really did. It was completely relevant to my interests. I'm sick of the contempt for the sciences communicated by the humanities even after their post-60s dialogue with scientific language. I think that actually understanding the concepts one uses to break down the convention of analogy is interesting. I don't think that the doubts and complexities of actual science are fundamentally responsible for political and social damage. Sokal could have been moderate, understanding, and just as open to understanding the doubts and complexities of pomo gibberish.

Instead, here are these assholes, and here's the joke, flying over them beyond the orbit of the moon. See, the whole point of cultural theorists "abusing" (that sure is some strong language, sure glad it's sworn to protect and serve) math and science is not to actually draw analogies, but to manifest the underlying absurdity of analogies, to create greater confusion and that unique feel of incomprehensibility. They write ABOUT the sensation of encountering the arcane, the gaps between realms of knowledge, the incommensurability of intellectual (and otherwise) cultures. When Sokal laments that they seem to at least know the sciences they "abuse" but are deliberately obfuscating to "impress their readers", he could use that same recognition of their trans-disciplinary research to guide him into fucking Getting It.

I admit, I stopped reading when he started digging into Latour, a philosopher who has himself bridged the same gap, and sought to understand science in post-modern, intersubjective way, by moving from sociology of science through posthuman politics. Admittedly, he can be dry and Gallically smug, but Latour understands how science does and does not work, and how applying it to itself engages a worlds-enclosing-worlds-that-enclose-them dynamic that non-Euclidean mathematics has probably also gotten around to, no conceptual misuse accusations necessary. Claiming it to be outside of Latour's dissection and inversion of it indicates an enclosed dogmatism as thorough of that he thinks he sees in postmodern theory.

When Sokal holes the literarizing of meta-literature up to the standards of scientific analysis, it's worse than the structuralism shown earlier by some of his targets. Postmodern theory aimed to establish a place in an academy based on Enlightenment (and prior) rationalism for irrationality. The potentialities of nonsense are a larger infinity than those of rationality, itself, as Sokal univentively connected, undermined within mathematics. The concept of an intellectual institution without a place for and vigorous exploration of nonsense horrifies me, as does Sokal's highly unscientific failure to self-examine. I speak as someone who understands and appreciates science, here, dammit, and I don't like the reputation he's giving it.

When Sokal published his famous joke paper, the joke was really that he didn't realize it was all a joke already.