Sexed equations and vexed physicists

Abstract

This article examines various issues raised by the famous Sokal hoax and in the follow-up book that Sokal coauthored with his physicist colleague Jean Bricmont. I argue that the episode cannot be dismissed as just a passing salvo in the ‘science wars’ but should be read in the wider context of present-day debates about science, cultural studies and the ‘strong programme’ in sociology of knowledge. Beyond that, it reveals some genuine problems with the kinds of anti-realist, cultural-relativist, or social-constructivist approach that Sokal/Bricmont take as their targets, often with good reason. However I suggest that some physicists - quantum theorists especially - have themselves encouraged this trend by advancing a range of dubious speculative arguments or by declaring scientific realism no longer tenable on the basis of far from decisive experimental evidence. This helps to explain why Sokal’s article manifests all the signs of ‘unstable’ irony, and perhaps why the Social Text editors were taken in by its motley parade of citations from cultural theorists and ‘respectable’ scientific sources alike. My discussion covers some basic issues in the interpretation of quantum mechanics by way of showing how they have influenced debate not only in post-Kuhnian history/philosophy of science but also in various quarters of postmodernist cultural theory. What limits the effectiveness of Sokal/Bricmont’s critique is their failure to acknowledge this further irony and their blanket attack on a range of (mainly French-influenced) movements of thought which require more discriminate treatment. Their case would have gained additional force had it taken account of other - e.g. Wittgensteinian - sources for this widespread turn toward cultural-relativist thinking.