292. Sokal Hoax

I like the occult and the supernatural and pretend as if they are real. But I have a real distaste for pseudo-science, the kind that cooks up mumbo jumbo just to sound important and sell books.

Case in point, the sine curve. Earlier in the year, I saw someone reading a book about metaphysics (or meaning of life, something or other) where this curve was juxtaposed with something like a biorythm, and a whole chapter written up about it.
I tried to read it, and found a big load of horse manure. But the reader was enthralled with it, and that's the danger I see. At the risk of sounding elitist, people who didn't study science should read science from scientists, not philosophers who claim to interpret science.

One of my favorite stories happened when I was at Bard. Dan, my chemistry teacher had a good laugh while he described the story of Alan Sokal, a professor of physics at NYU, who published an fake article in the journal, Social Text. The article was called "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." If you don't feel like reading the entire article, here's a quick summary from Museum of Hoaxes.

The author made the case that recent developments in the scientific concept of 'quantum gravity' pointed the way towards a future in which science would be freed from the "tyranny of 'absolute truth' and 'objective reality.'" Or, to put it another way, he argued that the traditional concept of gravity was just a capitalist fiction that would be made irrelevant by the socialist/feminist/relativist theory of 'quantum gravity.'

The day that Social Text was circulated, Sokal published another article in Lingua Franca titled, A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies. In it, he writes:

For some years I've been troubled by an apparent decline in the standards of intellectual rigor in certain precincts of the American academic humanities. But I'm a mere physicist: if I find myself unable to make head or tail of jouissance and différance, perhaps that just reflects my own inadequacy.

So, to test the prevailing intellectual standards, I decided to try a modest (though admittedly uncontrolled) experiment: Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies -- whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross -- publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions?

The answer, unfortunately, is yes. Interested readers can find my article, ``Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,'' in the Spring/Summer 1996 issue of Social Text. It appears in a special number of the magazine devoted to the ``Science Wars.''

This hoax was named one of the most important literary hoax of 20th century by Guardian magazine.

But, as they say, the band plays on...