Social Text, Sokal--A Modest Question

[Joe Varo]

On Wed, 29 May 1996, Paul L. Maliszewski wrote:

> Much of the talk I've heard about the Sokal article identifies it as a
> parody or a satire, which terms mean of course two different things, but
> the consensus seems to be that in some way it employed irony.  Which makes
> me want to ask a pretty simple question:  Did anyone find it funny?  I'm
> willing to accept that it's not laugh-out-loud funny, but is it even
> amusing?  I kinda have been operating under the assumption that irony is
> supposed to be a little funny.  Would someone mind quoting me the really 
> good parts?
> 
> I wanted to laugh.  Really.
> 
> Paul
> 

You don't find it ironic that a group of people who have developed and 
fostered the use of a very difficult and perhaps confusing jargon & 
buzzwords, when confronted by an essay using all the right buzzwords and 
phrasing, couldn't *tell* that it was just gobbledy-gook?

And I find the excuse given by the eds. (that they essentially knew that 
the essay was rather poor but just published it in an effort to reach out to 
the scientific community) to be rather sad.

Joe