more on the reverse Sokal

Catherine Driscoll catherine.driscoll at adelaide.edu.au
Sat Nov 9 16:23:51 PST 2002


There certainly were claims, including by Sokal, about the rigor instilled by science and the significance of truth-claims, upheld by science and lost by humanities and social science.

I'm keeping all of the Bogdanov pieces. I use some stuff on Sokal and the 'bad writing' debate to help frame an Honours subject on Critical Theory -- this is a great complement, and I can't wait to see what students make of the differences.

I've watched someone be taught empiricism this year -- not just if you can't graph it it isn't true, but also if you can graph it is true...

It's both funny and it matters. There's no sex, I grant you, at least not yet, but it's pretty damned excellent all the same.

Catherine

Quoting Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>:


> Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> >Doug Henwood wrote:
> >>
> >> [I love this. After Sokal was revealed as a hoaxter, no one doubted
> >> his paper was a hoax. With this, no one can really tell! So much for
> >> the more rigorous truth claims of hard science.]
> >>
> >
> >Aw, come on Doug. This is a caricature. Who speaks of "hard science"?
> >What do you mean by "the more rigorous truth claims of hard science"?
> >This is meaningless.
>
> As I remember the heat of the Sokal affair, there were all kinds of
> claims for the rigor of experimental science, which can easily tell
> truth from untruth, while charlatans like Derrida and Harding can
> pull one over on standardless humanists like Stanley A. Maybe you had
> to be there.
>
> Doug
>



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