“We've been focusing on the negative for too long: it's time I introduced you to my hero.” (Goldacre 2003, online) With these words, The Guardian started the article about “The Sokal affair”. I wanted to start with this quote as I rather share this opinion. To be honest, first I read the task, then read an Afterword, then watched an interview of Sokal speaking in Stockholm May 2009 and all videos about Sokal affair "destroy postmodernism" and all Philosophers which were involved in the discussion – Jacques Derrida and Paul-Michel Foucault (it was my “new impression” as I was not close to their theories). Only after this journey, I started to read the text in the article “Transgressing the Boundaries”.
Reading this article you need to be super focused on the mine idea and try to follow it... as I already knew that it was a mystification I couldn’t push myself to be focused on the all of this sophisticated words and especially when you are not native. So, I check out a couple of references and they were right. At least it was real people with real works. I left this idea, continued reading but completely have been lost in the terms. Here I better let the professionals conclude about the text:
“The article is a masterpiece of foggy prose. In it, Sokal claimed Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic speculations had been confirmed by recent work in quantum field theory. He suggested that the axiom of equality in mathematical set theory was analogous to the homonymous concept in feminist politics. He employed scientific and mathematical concepts in ways that even an A-level student should have spotted as rubbish, but crammed the article with nonsensical - but authentic - quotes about physics and mathematics, by prominent French and American postmodern intellectuals.” (Goldacre 2003, online)
Why Sokal did this? “...there exist objective truths about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them. ... 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.” (Sokal, 1996, 3). As I see it he wanted to position the problem in the scientific and philosophical world. In his speech about “The nature of scientific inquiry and its importance for public life” Sokal explain his position as - the established theories are verified on the basis of already existing theories and knowledge, they are not verified by new experiments. This methodology has developed on the basis of strange and complicated tests. He illustrates this with a crossword puzzle in the theory of sciences (about which Susan Haack wrote) where a change of the one word entails a change in the whole series of chains. In other words, he is asking us why we believe in what we read or why we get used to believing in all kind of theories…
Publishing this article, I think was necessary, as necessary continue to create similar examples in order to bring balance to the minds of the thinkers. Balance is black with white, not a grey. In order to keep on the right trek in development, it is also important to have a challenge on the side. I think it is very important when society criticizes itself, so its problems will become bare; therefore it is possible to cure it. With this “affair” Sokal improve things, at least now scientific publishers double-checking their articles.
Revising two previous parts of Visual Studies book I haven’t seen anything suspicious as I can understand a bit more in art and art theory than in mathematics and gravity. I can say that there are many things I didn’t share my opinion with, but these aspects are deeply theoretical so I assume that it can't be 100% right, as for each theory is a countertheory exists unless it’s physically proved. For instance, I have a different opinion about the beginning of Modernism. Alfred H. Barr just presented his point of view but it doesn’t mean that I take it for granted.
Bibliography and references
1. Alan D. Sokal (1996) Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity. Social Text, No. 46/47, Science Wars (Spring - Summer, 1996), pp. 217-252 Duke University Press [Online] Available from: http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html [Accessed 04/10/18]
2. Alan D. Sokal (May 9, 1996) Transgressing the Boundaries: An Afterword. New York
3. The Guardian, Ben Goldacre Thu 5 Jun 2003 02.21 BST, The Sokal affair [Online] Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/jun/05/badscience.research [Accessed 04/10/18]
4. Alan Sokal speaking in Stockholm. The nature of scientific inquiry and its importance for public life. A speech recorded by Henrik Thomé in Stockholm May 2009. [Online] Available from: https://youtu.be/kuKmMyhnG94
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