Sokal et al

[Craig Clark]

Bill Millard <millard at cuadmin.cis.columbia.edu> writes:
> Careful, Bonnie: I think a fully Pynchonian response here would
> steer far, far away from the temptation of triumphalism.  Could it be
> that the physicists and biologists ("They"? Not exactly the same Them
> that TRP warns us about...) have attained higher social prestige than
> the purported "We" of the postmod humanities, not because of some
> buck-naked-emperor-type plot, but precisely because they retain more
> humility toward their theories' explanatory power?  Science -- not to
> be confused w/ scientism -- continually strives for better answers,
> not The Absolute Objective Right Answer; thoughtful scientists know
> that the process is eternal, that closure ain't an option.  
> 
> Contrast this with the astonishing arrogance of various totalizing
> theorists (everybody will have their own favorite examples here, but
> I'd cite the Lacanians and Freudians as particularly noisome
> occupants of a cloud-cuckoo-land of circular logics and groundless,
> pseudoscientific, ahistorical baffle-gabbing rhetorical strategies)
> who lack the intellectual honesty and humility to subject their own
> discourse to the kinds of real-world corrective processes that are
> SOP in the physical- and biological-science communities.  Is it any
> wonder that Sokal's hoax basically worked, that the real buck-naked
> emperors and authority-mongers turned out to be the likes of Ross?  
> 
> I'd suggest that the Pynchonian binarism of
> Them/Counterforce does NOT map accurately onto the professional
> categories science/non-science.  After all, look at Alan Sokal's
> history of personal political engagement: he's clearly a hard-sci guy,
> and also clearly a member of a counterforce worth the name.
> 
> I'm not so sure that "confidence in explanatory power of theories" is
> such a valuable thing after all; it may be the confidence of a
> confidence man.  Maybe working in a field where hard data can verify
> or disconfirm one's ideas leads to an admirably Pynchonian humility,
> even a more social style of knowledge-construction (ever notice how
> few litcrit writings, compared w/ scientific monographs, are
> collaborations?), and maybe all the leftish posing in the world isn't
> going to make anything truly liberatory out of Ross's brand of cult
> studs.  (Not to give the whole CS discipline a bad name, but his
> performance in l'affaire Sokal didn't exactly do the field any
> favors.)  
> 
> I don't have my _GR_ handy here at this office, but the appropriate
> passage on science 'n' humility (one with some semi-obvious
> applications to CS as it's been developing) would seem to be that
> epigraph from "Tales of the Schwarzkommando" about letting the
> observable data determine one's mental constructs, not the other way
> around.  (Anybody wanna fill me in on chapter & verse here?)
> 
> Strapping on my Kevlar flameproof jacket,

Well, Bill, I'm gonna join youm in the trenches there before they let 
loose with those flames, because I believe your posting to be the 
most coherent on the subject of sciences vs humanities that I've ever 
read.

Craig Clark

"Living inside the system is like driving across
 the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
 on suicide."
   - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"