Sokal affair

The Sokal affair (also Sokal debate, controversy ) was a dispute over the intellectual standards in the social sciences and humanities, which was triggered by the publication of a hoax article by physicist Alan Sokal in social science journal " Social Text ". Sokal's article appeared in 1996 in one of the Science Wars ( science wars ) dedicated output that should address the specific dispute between U.S. 's Scientific realism and postmodernism. Sokal's article was formulated in postmodern jargon and pretended to interpret the quantum gravity as linguistic and social construct, wherein the quantum physics support the postmodernist critique. Sokal had purposely interspersed with numerous logical and substantive errors, which by the editors of the magazine - was not recognized - they had consulted no physics expert for the final editing. There followed a philosophy of science, and public debate about the lack of intellectual rigor in the evaluation of pseudo-scientific articles in the social sciences and humanities, and a potentially harmful influence of postmodern philosophy to these sciences. Furthermore, these disciplines were accused of using scientific concepts in senseless and abused for their teachings.

Prehistory

The now teaches in New York American physicist Alan Sokal had noticed over the years that various authors of a school of thought in philosophy and sociology, which he himself roughly with the term " postmodern " describes, in their essays repeated on concepts and models from the physics relate (sometimes also use only terms and descriptions that are defined precisely in physics ) without suffice to show exactly where the similarities between their own and the physical theories are, or about to make clear to what extent it here any analogies or see parallels.

Therefore, he wrote in 1996 a paper entitled Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity ( German: Crossing the boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity ) and handed it to the U.S., known for its postmodern orientation magazine for cultural studies journal Social Text to a publication. Although Sokal rejected the changes requested by the editors, they printed it with others from in a special issue.

Known Shortly after the publication Sokal in another journal, Lingua Franca, that we are dealing with the essay a parody. He had sought together quotes from various postmodern thinkers assembled with the typical jargon of this mindset to a text whose senseless content, so the accusation to the editors of Social Text, as such, should have been detected in observance of scientific standards. He has already expressed in this first article of sympathy for left critical science discussions and describes himself as a leftist and internationalist.

Debate

This incident triggered in the academic world and the press ( after all, the case came up on the front page of The New York Times) of a public discussion, as this incident in particular, and the respectability of the post-modern philosophy in general should be evaluated. Sokal and representatives of the criticized group of people led the discussion continued in other journal articles and defended their positions.

Sokal published in 1997 together with his Belgian colleague Jean Bricmont to a book entitled Intellectual Impostures (translated: intellectual imposture, German Title: Impostures - How the thinkers of the postmodern sciences abuse ). This book contains the one hand as an attachment to the cause of the affair, the above-mentioned article, "The Crossing Borders: ...", as it was published in " Social Text ," and notes and an afterword to do so.

First and foremost, however, is the example of selected texts by authors who are to be counted, according to Sokal to " postmodernism " (notably Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Bruno Latour and Paul Virilio and - although no post-modernist, as a historical example - explained Henri Bergson ) with detailed citations and notes, what exactly is the " abuse" is, Sokal and Bricmont criticize.

In your introduction Sokal and Bricmont cause under the heading " What we want to show " from:

( " Impostures ", pp. 20 f), and a little later (page 23), they continue:

Finally, Sokal and Bricmont also mention a political motive for their advance: You confessed to the political left and were of the opinion that the increasing prevalence of post-modern mindset in his left hand their ability to effectively critique of society weakness.

Debate 2.0

About a further recent case of " abuse" report Nicholas JL Brown, (again), Alan D. Sokal, and Harris L. Friedman, entitled " The Complex Dynamics of Wishful Thinking: The Critical Positivity Ratio" in American Psychologist 68 (2013 ).

Add a comment to this Alexander Durin comes in " telepolis " concludes: