Village Voice reviews Sokal-Bricmont

JKSCHW at aol.com JKSCHW at aol.com
Sun Dec 6 20:25:46 PST 1998


In a message dated 98-12-06 11:01:22 EST, you write:

<< Heidegger critiques technology, not science.

Well, I'm not so sure. Let's say he is umsympatheic to the scientific approach, to the idae that precisely formulated quantitative theories which are susceptoble to replicable empical testing can explain phenomena of importance and tell us the way way the wor;d is. Whatever alathea is about, it sure aint that.

>> (BTW, who is Croce?)

I presume Benedetto Croce, the late 19th-early 20th C Italian neo-Hegeliam, an influewnce on Gramsci.

>>Personally, I am more sympathetic to the political critics of science

and tech., who make connections between S & T, capital, and political

power. . . The folks doing this stuff

today don't offer *as* incisive a critique--I can't think of any Marxists

who do this stuff (as Marxists)

Well, there's Richard Lewontin, still kicking, though no spring chicken. Dan Kevles, a Marxist historian of science, is still doing work. But the big push has faded.

> At any rate, to the extent this substitution has been made and positivism,

> empiricism, science, reason, verification, and objectivity have become

> dirtier words than wage labor, capital and the state (note how Lott

> capitalizes the former kind of words as if such a juvenille act constitutes

> a criticism), then it is farcical that these critics don't even understand

> the science they have made the focal point of their attack.

Sure. I was talking with some students of Wolff and Resnick about cries theory and mentioned in the conversation that it seemed to me that amomng other problems with the Falling Rate of Profit theory, it didn't square with some data I'd seen. "But that's empiricism," they gasped in horror.

>> Feminist biologists have done really important work

unconvering masculinist biases in research programs, feminist philosophers

of science and epistemologists have done the same. If taken seriously,

such critique would strengthen rather than destroy (strong word) science &

technology.

Right. This is what Sandra Harding calls the "empiricist" program in science criticism. As a copper-bottomed scientific realist, I'm all for it.

>> Again, Sokal admits that much of stuff he criticizes is not central to the

projects of the theorists he looks at (other than Latour).

Yeah, but does rather deflate their pretenses to have anything relevant to say about science for it to be shown that they know nothing about it.

>>Again, he

isn't taking on the serious science critics (unless he has a chpt. on

Harding). Lacan and Irigaray might be important, but not in science

studies. Does Sokal take on Longino, Fuller, Ihde, etc...? They (among

others) are the folks doing the real work.

Fuller's an idiot. Longino is not a science critic, any more than Alison Wylie,w hose name you leave off the list.

--jks (a recovering philosopher of science)



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