In message <Pine.GSO.4.02.9811151514060.26637-100000 at CHUMA.CAS.USF.EDU>,
Frances Bolton (PHI) <fbolton at chuma.cas.usf.edu> writes
>
>The only thing clear to me, Jim, is that you have made a tremendous leap
>in logic here. Sokal and Bricmont, deride french social theorists for
>using theory that they are not absolutely expert in.
OK so far.
>They (sokal and
>bricmont) then go on to use theory that they are not expert in.
But this is just your fertile imagination talking. When you have read Intellectual Impostures perhaps you would be good enough to explain what theory the authors 'use' that they are not expert in. They do not 'use' post-structural theory. They compare the intended and actual meaning of scientific and mathematical theory with its misquotation.
As Miles Jackson writes in another post:
"I must agree with S & B's basic observation about the use of scientific terminology in Kristeva, Lacan, et al. As far as I can see, it's simply introduced to add a veneer of apparent respectibility and rigor to the ideas (Lacan's topology, for instance). And it is ironic to me that people who often question science would slavishly mimic scientific terms to make their argument look better to naive readers."
> Admitting
>that they do not have expert knowledge in these theories does not excuse
>them. If expertise is a criterion that they expectother people to hew to,
>and they do not, it is a sign of the rankest hypocrisy.
This seems extremely odd to me. When I think of 'expertise' I think of something that you would dedicate a considerable part of your life to attain. You seem to think of expertise as something that you bone up on for a few months. Sokal and Bricmont are physicists. As physicists they have spent their careers developing that expertise. It is to their credit that they do not pretend to expertise in areas that they have not pursued so diligently. In this respect, they entirely proper caution is at odds with the demonstrable idiocy of Baudrillard and Lacan, in the misunderstanding of quantum mechanics and mathematics respectively.
Perhaps in the cultural studies programme expertise is acquired by a quick dash through 'Einstein for Beginners', but to these scientists, an understandable degree of caution about assuming full knowledge of a discipline from looking at just one aspect of it is to be respected, not derided.
>And really, all they've done is pull embarrassing quotations out of
>context.
But these quotations are embarrassing in their own right. No amount of context will justify what amounts to a childish attempt to invest philosophical investigations with a mock profundity by blinding the reader with ill-understood science.
>I'm not entirely convinced that Sokal has even read anything by
>Derrida, Irigaray, or Lacan. For his Social Text piece, he didn't read the
>authors he cited--he called people looking for quotations.
This story has done the rounds, but does not bear the interpretation put on it. As someone well read in Derrida, Lyotard, Heidegger etc I often ring other people to find a quotation that I have lost, or even to point me to something that I have overlooked. From reading Intellectual Impostures, I can assure you that S&B have a quite extensive knowledge of the work they are criticising. Indeed I learnt more from it than from scores of commentaries and texts generated within the humanities.
> My
>understanding is that Gross and Levitt used the same highly questionable
>methodology.
That would be quoting people - for shame!
>
>Sokal and Bricmont have, in my estimation, shown themselves to be little
>more than mean spirited bullies.
I take a different view. The somewhat hysterical reaction to Intellectual Impostures (see for example John Sturrock's review in London Review of Books, for which he quite clearly had not read the book) only tends to confirm the suspicion that these are indeed intellectual impostures. I have not seen such an irrational hostility to criticism since Ronald Reagan re-started the Cold War. -- Jim heartfield