Social Text issue

[Murthy Yenamandra]

In a previous message Tresy Kilbourne writes:
> >i have to say though, i appreciate the physicist's joke...I think he 
> >was less critiquing the philosophical position of relativism (which 
> >can & should be attacked philosophically, but on its own terms...) 
> >but instead critiquing the esotericism of academic writing, 
> >particularly in the lit crit field. 
> 
> I agree completely. It's about time someone on the left showed the reat 
> of the world we're not obscurantist jerkoff artists.

This might have been the original purpose of the parody, but Sokal's
reply to the NYTimes article by Fish is entirely about critiquing the
"reality" of sociology of science - he seemed to be saying that
sociology of science is all fine, as long as they're just playing at it
and not taking themselves seriously as saying something about reality.
So, I think I can appreciate the parody of the jargon, but regarding
his critique of philosophy of science, I'd advise him to keep his day
job.

Coming back to the complaints about the academic jargon of the social
sciences (and humanities), here are my questions:

1) Do we have a right to expect the social scientists (and academics in
the humanities) to write their stuff in clear jargon-free English? Are
they not entitled to their own jargon just as the physical sciences
are? Should we conclude that just because a parody got past the editors
of journal (which I'm sure can be done in physics too), they should
abandon their language? Sure, clear English would be nice, but is that a
reasonable expectation?

2) Does this episode imply that, if anything, social scientists and
philosophers give way too much respect to anything said by a "real"
scientist? Does anybody think that philosophers are on the whole a bit
too defensive and respectful when they encounter "science" - they seem
to let their guard down as soon as someone refers to quantum mechanics
or artificial intelligence.

Murthy

-- 
Murthy Yenamandra, Dept of CompSci, U of Minnesota. Email: yenamand at cs.umn.edu
   "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the
    swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the
    wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour  
    to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all ..."