<< Sokal and Bricmont freely admit
they don't understand the work of Derrida, Lacan, & Irigaray (the objects
of attack), but they use their thoeretical work anyway. The postmodernists
do the same thing with math & physics, and that is why Sokal and Bricmont
attack them >>
It's quite possible they don't understand them. Neither do I, despite a Ph.D in philosophy and a reasonably sympathetic effort. I concluded that--with the exception of the early Derrida, who is respected by some people I respect--there';s nothing _to_ understand. I think the writings of the French poststructuralists are obscurantist fraud, sound and fury signifying nothing. What little that makes sense in this mass off clotted prose isn't new or deep; what's new is rubbish. I know Doug diusagrees, but that's what am English degree at Yale will do to you. It's amazing the rest of Doug's mind and his razotr sharp prose came througha s well as it did.
Besides, if Sokal has the narrow purpose of exposing the misuse of science by these guys and gals, he needn't attain a broad or deep understanding of them even if there is something to understand. There's a bit of an asymmetry: on the one hanbd you have philosophers using or misusing powerfful, precise, matheticalically expressiblew and in general predictive theories the mastry of which is a fair bit of heavy lifting. There';s no question but taht with the Goedel theorem of the Heisemberg indeterminacty principle there's some matter of afct about what is knowna nd whether you know it. On the other hanbd you have a lot of hifalutin French theory which you can doa lot of heavy lifting in and still not get, bewcause ot's not clear what would counta s getting it.
Personally, if talking the talking enough to fool the native speakers is enough to counta s getting it, Sokal has got it. That was the point of his joke.
--jks