Danny Yee reviews FASHIOnABLE NONSENSE

[Frances Bolton (PHI)]

		C. boddhisatva wrote:

> 	Social science is necessarily a science of argument whereas hard
> science, or more appropriately natural science, is one of experimentation
> and mathematics.

Not entirely true, is it? The questions being asked and the methodologies
employed are not determined by experimentation and mathematics. The
questions are problems that the particular scientist sees, and that is to
a large part determined by non-scientific causes. In *Beamtimes and
Lifetimes*, anthropologist Sharon Traweek writes about her time spent
with Japanese and U.S.particle physicists and how their work is culturally
determined. For example, the Japanese particle physicists live in a
culture where one expects that one will spend one's entire career with the
same company, in the US, people, including particle physicists, change
jobs frequently. The Japanese particle physicsts will ask questions and
address problems that take years and years to address, thr U.S. phyicists
don't because they want to accomplish something in the limited time they
spend in that particular lab. Donna Haraway's work, with which I am less
familiar, sows similar differences in primatologists, but she has a strong
gender element included. Also see Evelyn Fox Keller's *A Feeling for
the Organism*.

 
 Obviously there are overlaps, but the point is that
> science tests any doctrine or dogma (and there are many in science)
> against impartial nature 

But you seem to assuming that scientists will be good Popperians and look
to prove themselves false. Why do you assume that their testig of nature
won't look at nature selectively?

> Sokal
> seems to be doing exactly what a scientist should do when confronted with
> any theory that claims scientific validity: He picks it apart and finds
> ways to show any invalid construct in the theory that to be so.  This is a
> purely destructive process and entirely appropriate to science.

Diffference being that Hayles or Deleuze are not claiming to do
science.They are using science as a metaphor or trope.It would be equally
valid for a military analyst to attack Don Quixote for saying he's a
knight when he, in fact, is not. 

> is doing the right thing.  He is ridding the social sciences of bogus
> claims of scientific, natural truth.

All the people he is attacking are posties, and as such, they by
definition would not claim that they are promulgating any "natural" truth.
> 

	frances