Sokal replies

[Andrew Dinn]

Adam J. Thornton writes:

> Andrew Dinn writes:
> > Another hint to the Wittly-wise - Sokal is running up against a
> > sagen/zeigen distinction here. Why? because he has adopted the picture
> > (correspondence) theory of physical science. Unfortunately the picture
> > has nothing to correspond to but itself.

> I think it is precisely the last assertion that Sokal objects to.

> If the picture has nothing to correspond to, then why does that box you're
> typing letters into magically send them across the world so that we can
> read them?  How come your internal combustion engine combusts?  Why _won't_
> you accept Sokal's challenge and step from his twenty-first story window?

You seem to have acquired the following misapprehensions i) I am
denying that there is a law of gravity ii) it is wrong to expect
bodies to fall when dropped. I believe neither of these things. What I
actually said was iii) the law of gravity is not inherent in things
but rather a construction we place upon events.

The grounds for the claim are a reductio. In brief, assume that Nature
is subject to a particular immutable law. Our observations of past
events do not, indeed cannot, guarantee the course of future
events. So how can we ever know what that law is on the basis of what
we have observed? And as a corollary, how therefore can we give sense
to the notion of a natural law, it being an intangible? In case you
didn't follow I expand on this below.

> > It's not just the trendy field of cultural studies. Philosophers of
> > various hues and histories would also find Sokal's arguments
> > disagreeable. However much (and for however long) we profit by
> > regularities in Nature the notion that the Old Dame is thereby legally
> > bound to honour our expectations (Nature imitates Art, official!)
> > requires a mighty feat of jurisprudential prestidigitation.

> Or a realization that *every single time we've been watching*, Nature has
> done thus-and-such, and that it is much more reasonable to believe that
> thus-and-such will continue to happen than that it suddenly won't.

It's not a question of believing in `something' though. It's merely a
question of expecting continuity. Just because we expect phenomena to
display regular patterns doesn't mean that those patterns have to
occur, that what we are observing must by some supraphysical necessity
conform to those laws.

> The whole business of assigning agency and intentionality to inanimate
> actors makes a useful metaphor, but if you feel that {Nature/God/the
> Zeitgeist} can suddenly inject anomalous results into your experiment, then
> you are not going to be happy as a scientist.  If you're a programmer,
> you're probably the kind that blames the C compiler for all bugs.

Wait a minute. I never said that I expected any such things. Quite the
reverse. Bugs are just as much a human construction as anything
else. And actually, if we are going to get personal, I have found bugs
in several compilers, two of them built by me. I am not talking about
probabilities here, but rather logic. Are you suggesting that it is
absolutely ruled out that any phenomena could manifest which
contradict the law of gravity? If so then I'll accuse you of being a
bad scientist. If not then the claim that it is a natural law inherent
in the makeup of things is looking a bit weak.

> > What would the status of Sokal's `law of gravity' be if tomorrow
> > things started to behave differently.

> A theory, that was wrong.  And then the search for a new theory that
> explained why things used to fall and now they don't would commence.  You
> see, Francis Bacon wasn't a dumbass after all.

Oh, so suddenly what was a feature of `reality' might possibly be a
misguided theory. So you have just agreed that this `law of nature'
cannot be known to be hard-wired into nature, otherwise this
possibility could not exist. In fact, that any assumption of such a
hard-wired law also implies that the presence or absence of said law
is unverifiable. Well, in my ontology that's Plato's beard.

> > Today, while things drop from
> > great heights it's a `law of nature' which we approximate with
> > `theories'. Tomorrow, when things start floating gently to the ground,
> > or maybe the ceiling, it's a term without a referent. Nature just
> > turned out not to have a `law of gravity'. So what then is Sokal
> > talking about today? Something which is *real*, inherent in the *real
> > world*, unless of course phenomena take a turn for the worse and it
> > becomes horse feathers? 

> Something which is *real*, inherent in the *real world*, yes.

But you just agreed before that it is not logically impossible for the
law of gravity to turn out to be a theory that was wrong. In which
case how could it be inherent in the real world? Lemme see now, there
is this inherent feature of natural phenomena which governs how things
fall and its called the law of gravity. Only it might just be the case
that its some different inherent feature which governs how things fall
and that the law of gravity is a false theoretical construction on
events. So how do we know when we have identified one of these
inherent features for real? How do we know that we have not stumbled
on another false construction which just happens to have fitted
previous data but is about to be rubbished by lurking events? Seems to
me this places the concept of an inherent law beyond our ken and hence
out of our ontology.

> There *are*
> things, and sometimes they fall, and it might be useful to find out how and
> why they do so.  Assuming you really believe that there is an out there out
> there.  I know I do.  I suspect you do too.

The law of gravity does indeed tell you *how* things fall, but `why'?
Do you really think it tells you that?

And of course I don't deny the existence, utility or the credibility
of the law of gravity.  Don't be ridiculous. The question is its
status, whether it is a natural feature or a tool we use to describe
nature.

> > The point about physical laws is not that they
> > denote but that they can be (are) used as a basis for making
> > decisions.

> People engaged in the business of producing theories which correspond to
> these laws--to use Sokal's phrasing--would doubtless disagree with you
> strongly.  One consequence of finding theories that are a close
> approximation to the way *Nature has always behaved when we've been looking
> at it* is that you can make decisions with high confidence based on those
> theories.

Yes. But you can do this with just as much confidence without assuming
that you are approximating something, rather that you are finding a
neat accurate way to account for previopus measurements and predict
new ones. And lots of people in the business of producing theories
have agreed with me on this. Read up on the history of theoretical
physics during the development of quantum mechanics.

> > Any attempt to make them refer to something `out there'
> > falls foul of the possibility that Nature may throw a curve
> > ball. Ontology is a red herring.

> What possibility?  Are we finally getting down to the fundamental
> philosophical disagreement between a mechanistic nature in which the trick
> is to figure out, metaphorically, where all the epicycles and equants go,
> and a vitalistic nature in which the whole problem of mathematizing
> experience is illegitimate?  If so, I shall cast my vote for the former--I
> use and enjoy a lot of devices that make the former assumption and which
> seem to work quite well for me.

Boy, did I fail to make a point. No, I'm not a vitalizer and I don't
want to sacrifice mathematical rigour in science. I'm just steering
nearer to Aristotle than Plato. There is nothing wrong with
mathematical accounts of nature in fact there is everything right with
them. But mathematizing nature is different from mathematizing our
experience.


Andrew Dinn
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And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.