Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 00:37:20 -0400 (EDT)
Reply-To: CSALL@gmu.edu
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From: beth armitage
To: csall@gmu.edu
Subject: Afterword (Submitted to Social Text) (fwd)
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sokal's submitted (yet to be published) afterword to social text.
btw, he has a page at nyu with lots of links to stuff about all this. it
has the original article as well.
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/physics/faculty/sokal/index.htm
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Afterword (Submitted to Social Text)
* I did not write this work merely with the aim of setting the
exegetical record straight. My larger target is those
contemporaries who -- in repeated acts of wish-fulfillment --
have appropriated conclusions from the philosophy of science and
put them to work in aid of a variety of social cum political
causes for which those conclusions are ill adapted. Feminists,
religious apologists (including ``creation scientists''),
counterculturalists, neoconservatives, and a host of other
curious fellow-travelers have claimed to find crucial grist for
their mills in, for instance, the avowed incommensurability and
underdetermination of scientific theories. 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, p. x)
* Les grandes personnes sont dicidiment bien bizarres, se dit le
petit prince.
-- Antoine de Saint Exupiry, Le Petit Prince
Alas, the editors of Social Text have discovered that my article,
``Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics
of Quantum Gravity'', which appeared in Social Text #46/47, is a
parody. In view of the important intellectual and political issues
raised by this episode, they have generously agreed to publish this
(non-parodic) Afterword, in which I explain my motives and my true
views. [gif] One of my goals is to make a small contribution toward a
dialogue on the Left between humanists and natural scientists -- ``two
cultures'' which, contrary to some optimistic pronouncements (mostly
by the former group), are probably farther apart in mentality than at
any time in the past 50 years.
Like the genre it is meant to satirize -- myriad exemplars of which
can be found in my reference list -- my article is a milange of
truths, half-truths, quarter-truths, falsehoods, non sequiturs, and
syntactically correct sentences that have no meaning whatsoever.
(Sadly, there are only a handful of the latter: I tried hard to
produce them, but I found that, save for rare bursts of inspiration, I
just didn't have the knack.) I also employed some other strategies
that are well-established (albeit sometimes inadvertently) in the
genre: appeals to authority in lieu of logic; speculative theories
passed off as established science; strained and even absurd analogies;
rhetoric that sounds good but whose meaning is ambiguous; and
confusion between the technical and everyday senses of English words.
[gif] (N.B. All works cited in my article are real, and all
quotations are rigorously accurate; none are invented.)
But why did I do it? I confess that I'm an unabashed Old Leftist who
never quite understood how deconstruction was supposed to help the
working class. And I'm a stodgy old scientist who believes, naively,
that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths
about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them. (If
science were merely a negotiation of social conventions about what is
agreed to be ``true'', why would I bother devoting a large fraction of
my all-too-short life to it? I don't aspire to be the Emily Post of
quantum field theory.[gif] )
But my main concern isn't to defend science from the barbarian hordes
of lit crit (we'll survive just fine, thank you). Rather, my concern
is explicitly political: to combat a currently fashionable
postmodernist/poststructuralist/social-constructivist discourse -- and
more generally a penchant for subjectivism -- which is, I believe,
inimical to the values and future of the Left. [gif] Alan Ryan said
it well:
It is, for instance, pretty suicidal for embattled
minorities to embrace Michel Foucault, let alone Jacques
Derrida. The minority view was always that power could be
undermined by truth ...Once you read Foucault as saying that
truth is simply an effect of power, you've had it. ...But
American departments of literature, history and sociology
contain large numbers of self-described leftists who have
confused radical doubts about objectivity with political
radicalism, and are in a mess.[gif]
Likewise, Eric Hobsbawm has decried
the rise of ``postmodernist'' intellectual fashions in
Western universities, particularly in departments of
literature and anthropology, which imply that all ``facts''
claiming objective existence are simply intellectual
constructions. In short, that there is no clear difference
between fact and fiction. But there is, and for historians,
even for the most militantly antipositivist ones among us,
the ability to distinguish between the two is absolutely
fundamental.[gif]
(Hobsbawm goes on to show how rigorous historical work can refute the
fictions propounded by reactionary nationalists in India, Israel, the
Balkans and elsewhere.) And finally Stanislav Andreski:
So long as authority inspires awe, confusion and absurdity
enhance conservative tendencies in society. Firstly, because
clear and logical thinking leads to a cumulation of
knowledge (of which the progress of the natural sciences
provides the best example) and the advance of knowledge
sooner or later undermines the traditional order. Confused
thinking, on the other hand, leads nowhere in particular and
can be indulged indefinitely without producing any impact
upon the world.[gif]
As an example of ``confused thinking'', I would like to consider a
chapter from Harding (1991) entitled ``Why `Physics' Is a Bad Model
for Physics''. I select this example both because of Harding's
prestige in certain (but by no means all) feminist circles, and
because her essay is (unlike much of this genre) very clearly written.
Harding wishes to answer the question, ``Are feminist criticisms of
Western thought relevant to the natural sciences?'' She does so by
raising, and then rebutting, six ``false beliefs'' about the nature of
science. Some of her rebuttals are perfectly well-taken; but they
don't prove anything like what she claims they do. That is because she
confutes five quite distinct issues:
1) Ontology. What objects exist in the world? What statements about
these objects are true?
2) Epistemology. How can human beings obtain knowledge of truths
about the world? How can they assess the reliability of that
knowledge?
3) Sociology of knowledge. To what extent are the truths known (or
knowable) by humans in any given society influenced (or
determined) by social, economic, political, cultural and
ideological factors? Same question for the false statements
erroneously believed to be true.
4) Individual ethics. What types of research ought a scientist (or
technologist) to undertake (or refuse to undertake)?
5) Social ethics. What types of research ought society to encourage,
subsidize or publicly fund (or alternatively to discourage, tax
or forbid)?
These questions are obviously related -- e.g. if there are no
objective truths about the world, then there isn't much point in
asking how one can know those (nonexistent) truths -- but they are
conceptually distinct.
For example, Harding (citing Forman 1987) points out that American
research in the 1940s and 50s on quantum electronics was motivated in
large part by potential military applications. True enough. Now,
quantum mechanics made possible solid-state physics, which in turn
made possible quantum electronics (e.g. the transistor), which made
possible nearly all of modern technology (e.g. the computer).[gif]
And the computer has had applications that are beneficial to society
(e.g. in allowing the postmodern cultural critic to produce her
articles more efficiently) as well as applications that are harmful
(e.g. in allowing the U.S. military to kill human beings more
efficiently). This raises a host of social and individual ethical
questions: Ought society to forbid (or discourage) certain
applications of computers? Forbid (or discourage) research on
computers per se? Forbid (or discourage) research on quantum
electronics? On solid-state physics? On quantum mechanics? And
likewise for individual scientists and technologists. (Clearly, an
affirmative answer to these questions becomes harder to justify as one
goes down the list; but I do not want to declare any of these
questions a priori illegitimate.) Likewise, sociological questions
arise, for example: To what extent is our (true) knowledge of computer
science, quantum electronics, solid-state physics and quantum
mechanics -- and our lack of knowledge about other scientific
subjects, e.g. the global climate -- a result of public-policy choices
favoring militarism? To what extent have the erroneous theories (if
any) in computer science, quantum electronics, solid-state physics and
quantum mechanics been the result (in whole or in part) of social,
economic, political, cultural and ideological factors, in particular
the culture of militarism?[gif] These are all serious questions,
which deserve careful investigation adhering to the highest standards
of scientific and historical evidence. But they have no effect
whatsoever on the underlying scientific questions: whether atoms (and
silicon crystals, transistors and computers) really do behave
according to the laws of quantum mechanics (and solid-state physics,
quantum electronics and computer science). The militaristic
orientation of American science has quite simply no bearing whatsoever
on the ontological question, and only under a wildly implausible
scenario could it have any bearing on the epistemological question.
(E.g. if the worldwide community of solid-state physicists, following
what they believe to be the conventional standards of scientific
evidence, were to hastily accept an erroneous theory of semiconductor
behavior because of their enthusiasm for the breakthrough in military
technology that this theory would make possible.)
Andrew Ross has drawn an analogy between the hierarchical taste
cultures (high, middlebrow and popular) familiar to cultural critics,
and the demarcation between science and pseudoscience.[gif] At a
sociological level this is an incisive observation; but at an
ontological and epistemological level it is simply mad. Ross seems to
recognize this, because he immediately says:
I do not want to insist on a literal interpretation of this
analogy ...A more exhaustive treatment would take account of
the local, qualifying differences between the realm of
cultural taste and that of science [!], but it would run up,
finally, against the stand-off between the empiricist's
claim that non-context-dependent beliefs exist and that they
can be true, and the culturalist's claim that beliefs are
only socially accepted as true.[gif]
But such epistemological agnosticism simply won't suffice, at least
not for people who aspire to make social change. Deny that
non-context-dependent assertions can be true, and you don't just throw
out quantum mechanics and molecular biology: you also throw out the
Nazi gas chambers, the American enslavement of Africans, and the fact
that today in New York it's raining. Hobsbawm is right: facts do
matter, and some facts (like the first two cited here) matter a great
deal.
Still, Ross is correct that, at a sociological level, maintaining the
demarcation line between science and pseudoscience serves -- among
other things -- to maintain the social power of those who, whether or
not they have formal scientific credentials, stand on science's side
of the line. (It has also served to increase the mean life expectancy
in the United States from 47 years to 76 years in less than a century.
[gif] ) Ross notes that
Cultural critics have, for some time now, been faced with
the task of exposing similar vested institutional interests
in the debates about class, gender, race, and sexual
preference that touch upon the demarcations between taste
cultures, and I see no ultimate reason for us to abandon our
hard-earned skepticism when we confront science.[gif]
Fair enough: scientists are in fact the first to advise skepticism in
the face of other people's (and one's own) truth claims. But a
sophomoric skepticism, a bland (or blind) agnosticism, won't get you
anywhere. Cultural critics, like historians or scientists, need an
informed skepticism: one that can evaluate evidence and logic, and
come to reasoned (albeit tentative) judgments based on that evidence
and logic.
At this point Ross may object that I am rigging the power game in my
own favor: how is he, a professor of American Studies, to compete with
me, a physicist, in a discussion of quantum mechanics?[gif] (Or even
of nuclear power -- a subject on which I have no expertise
whatsoever.) But it is equally true that I would be unlikely to win a
debate with a professional historian on the causes of World War I.
Nevertheless, as an intelligent lay person with a modest knowledge of
history, I am capable of evaluating the evidence and logic offered by
competing historians, and of coming to some sort of reasoned (albeit
tentative) judgment. (Without that ability, how could any thoughtful
person justify being politically active?)
The trouble is that few non-scientists in our society feel this
self-confidence when dealing with scientific matters. As C.P. Snow
observed in his famous ``Two Cultures'' lecture 35 years ago:
A good many times I have been present at gatherings of
people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are
thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto
been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of
scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have
asked the company how many of them could describe the Second
Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also
negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the
scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of
Shakespeare's?
I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question
-- such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which
is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? -- not
more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt
that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice
of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest
people in the western world have about as much insight into
it as their neolithic ancestors would have had.[gif]
A lot of the blame for this state of affairs rests, I think, with the
scientists. The teaching of mathematics and science is often
authoritarian[gif] ; and this is antithetical not only to the
principles of radical/democratic pedagogy but to the principles of
science itself. No wonder most Americans can't distinguish between
science and pseudoscience: their science teachers have never given
them any rational grounds for doing so. (Ask an average undergraduate:
Is matter composed of atoms? Yes. Why do you think so? The reader can
fill in the response.) Is it then any surprise that 36% of Americans
believe in telepathy, and that 47% believe in the creation account of
Genesis?[gif]
As Ross has noted[gif] , many of the central political issues of the
coming decades -- from health care to global warming to Third World
development -- depend in part on subtle (and hotly debated) questions
of scientific fact. But they don't depend only on scientific fact:
they depend also on ethical values and -- in this journal it hardly
needs to be added -- on naked economic interests. No Left can be
effective unless it takes seriously questions of scientific fact and
of ethical values and of economic interests. The issues at stake are
too important to be left to the capitalists or to the scientists -- or
to the postmodernists.
A quarter-century ago, at the height of the U.S. invasion of Vietnam,
Noam Chomsky observed that:
George Orwell once remarked that political thought,
especially on the left, is a sort of masturbation fantasy in
which the world of fact hardly matters. That's true,
unfortunately, and it's part of the reason that our society
lacks a genuine, responsible, serious left-wing movement.
[gif]
Perhaps that's unduly harsh, but there's unfortunately a significant
kernel of truth in it. Nowadays the erotic text tends to be written in
(broken) French rather than Chinese, but the real-life consequences
remain the same. Here's Alan Ryan in 1992, concluding his wry analysis
of American intellectual fashions with a lament that
the number of people who combine intellectual toughness with
even a modest political radicalism is pitifully small.
Which, in a country that has George Bush as President and
Danforth Quayle lined up for 1996, is not very funny.[gif]
Four years later, with Bill Clinton installed as our supposedly
``progressive'' president and Newt Gingrich already preparing for the
new millenium, it still isn't funny.
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Next: Works Cited Up: Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards Previous:
Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards
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Daniel Sleator
Thu Jun 6 15:34:37 EDT 1996http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/physics/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/node7.html
