Exposing Anti-Science
The Sokal Affair
by
T. Jayaraman
The Institute of Mathematical Sciences
C.I.T. Campus, Madras-600 113, INDIA
The working scientist who enters the public arena to explain his or her work and its relevance to society can often be taken by surprise by the range of anti-science views and attitudes that are at large. Explaining one's scientific work itself to the lay-person is pleasurable and with some commitment and effort it can be a rewarding thing to do. There is of course the phenomena of "pseudo-science" or crackpot science, but though widespread, it can be dealt with.
But it is in dealing with the social relevance of science that the real difficulties begin. Where does one even begin in combating the wide spectrum of anti-science attitudes that are to be found in society? The primary problem, especially in countries like India, arises from religious obscurantism and superstition, compounded by the severe lack of education and information on science. This category can be a serious political problem for science, especially if it is assisted by a fundamentalist movement. But the arguments against these positions are classic, and many scientists and their organisations are quick to recognise this kind of attack and speak up when necessary. At the academic level, there are a broad range of philosophical positions that are anti-science,( Paul Feyerabend being an example in this category) that however accept some of the rigor of philosophical analysis and can at least be dealt with at a serious intellectual level.
But there is also an attack in recent times from another intellectual quarter (that can also shape popular perceptions on scientific issues at times) that can be particularly bewildering, especially to scientists who take progressive positions on social and political issues. The proponents of these ``critiques" of science, often claim to be on the ``left" in political terms, and regard themselves as part of a tradition of radical social and political thought. But when it comes to science, they deny the objective reality of the laws of nature and claim that science does not have any way a "privileged position" in understanding nature. For them, scientific research can produce no objective conclusions; the results of science are socially, ideologically and culturally conditioned. For others, science is a ``patriarchal'', ``white", ``colonial" enterprise, to be challenged by "alternate" sciences. For yet others, science itself is the source of the violence and authoritarianism of the capitalist world; the struggle for an alternate path of development must necessarily involve the development of an alternate science. It is difficult to penetrate their arguments, shrouded as they are by rhetoric that can often be aggressive, and plain ignorance of basic scientific facts. These critiques have appalled many progressive scientists and indeed anyone who has thought seriously on the subject of science and society. Over the years though, these arguments, broadly associated with the intellectual trend known as "post-modernism", have gained some currency the world over, the academic scene in the U.S. being particularly badly affected. These ideas have also had a serious influence outside academia, particularly in the ecology and feminist movements.
Small wonder then that there has been a growing feeling among many scientists of the need to tackle these critics head-on. And in a debate of this nature, parody and satire clearly play an useful role. That is precisely what Alan D. Sokal, mathematical physicist at New York University, used.
Alan Sokal submitted a hoax paper dated November 28, 1994, to the journal ``Social Text", well-known in academic circles and published by the Duke University press. The journal itself is well-known in the area of cultural studies, and its editorial board includes several members whose theoretical positions Sokal was parodying in his paper. After some correspondence with the editors of the journal, and, it is clear, a certain amount of editorial review, the paper was ``revised" by Sokal and accepted for publication. At no point was the paper submitted to a scientist for comments or review. The paper appeared in a special number of the journal (the Spring/Summer 1996) devoted to the debate on science styled the ``Science Wars". Shortly after the paper appeared in print, Sokal revealed in the May/June issue of the magazine ``Lingua Franca" (a journal devoted to issues in American academics)that his article was a hoax. In his words, "Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies .... publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions?"
What exactly was Sokal's paper about? The paper's title itself - ``Transgressing the boundaries- Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"- should have been sufficient to set the alarm bells ringing for a serious reviewer. It is a patently absurd sounding title and to anyone with even passing knowledge of the tentative nature of the research on quantum gravity, such philosophical speculation would have appeared completely premature. Sokal begins by establishing that he is on the ``right" side. He derides the notion that there exists an external world whose properties are independent of any individual human being; he describes as out-dated post-Enlightenment dogma the idea that science can produce any objective knowledge of this external world and its natural laws. Reinforcing the image he has created, Sokal asserts that physical laws are merely social and linguistic constructs with no claim to objective reality and that they merely reflect the dominant ideologies of the culture that produced it.
Having established his ``credentials", Sokal merrily produces a blend of
physicist jargon, wild philosophizing and sheer nonsense, with liberal
doses of footnotes, references and quotations. The effect on anyone
with basic scientific knowledge, of even the undergraduate level,
is one of unrestrained hilarity. The following sentence is one of
the gems he produces:``...the 
of Euclid and the G of Newton, formerly thought to be constant and
universal, are now perceived in their ineluctable historicity;
and the putative observer becomes fatally de-centered, disconnected from
any epistemic link to a space-time point that can no longer be defined
by geometry alone." Sokal, in the manner of those that he
caricatures, repeatedly plays on the difference in meaning
between words used as plain English and as technical terminology.
There is a constant play on the words ``linear"
and ``non-linear". Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg points out, in
his comment on the Sokal affair in The New York Review of Books,
that to some postmodern intellectuals ``linear" has come to mean
old-fashioned while ``non-linear" is somehow understood to be perceptive
and avant-garde. Sokal parodies this by constantly mixing up the precise
mathematical use of the terms with the other sloppier one. There is yet
another play of words dealing with the use of the word ``boundary".
There is a hilarious connection made between differential topology,
psycho-analysis and quantum gravity.
Sokal's writing is a model of ``political correctness". The post-modern science of quantum gravity, he assures us solemnly, would not only be free of the concept of objective truth it would also be ``liberatory". It would, in common with other post-modern sciences, be pro-feminist (by its emphasis on the importance of ``boundaries" and ``non-linearity" and ``discontinuity"!!); it would provide a ``ecological" perspective; it would take into account the emerging paradigm provided by chaos theory; it would ``deconstruct" Cartesian metaphysics and render space and time contextual and so on. All these are asserted, and as Sokal himself pointed out later, without the slightest attempt to justify, even in a speculative way, any of these assertions.
Sokal uses several direct quotations from those whose positions he seeks to mimic. From the quotations themselves it is clear that his parody was guaranteed to be undetectable by the editors of ``Social Text". Some of the quotations in their absurdity rival anything that Sokal can produce on his own. (In his exposure of the hoax, Sokal confessed to being not very good at producing ``syntactically correct sentences without any meaning".) Take for instance the quotation from Derrida, the high-priest of post-modern literary criticism, on the subject of Einstein and relativity:" The Einsteinian constant is not a constant, is not a center. It is the very concept of variability - it is, finally, the concept of the game. In other words, it is not the concept of something - of a center starting from which an observer could master the field - but the very concept of the game..." Or this one from the last section of Sokal's paper where he quotes Masden and Masden's criteria for what is post-modern science: ``A simple criterion for science to qualify as post-modern is that it be free from any dependence on the concept of objective truth....The other concept which can be taken as fundamental to post-modern science is that of essentiality. Postmodern scientific theories are constructed from those theoretical elements which are essential for the consistency and utility of the theory."
In his exposure of the real nature of his paper in his note in the journal "Lingua Franca" and in the subsequent afterword that he submitted to ``Social Text", Sokal makes clear his motivations. His main concern was not so much to defend science from the academic attack emerging from the literary criticism schools. He was more concerned with effect of these critiques of science emerging from the so-called "post-modernist" perspective on the values and future of the Left. Sokal himself is sympathetic to the left politically and had taught at the University in Nicaragua during the Sandinista government.
Sokal points out that political radicalism does not benefit from confused thinking. For Sokal, like many other leftists, the Left has always been identified with science and against obscurantism; "rational thought and analysis of objective reality are incisive tools for combating the mystifications promoted by the powerful..." The rejection of the concepts of truth and falsity by a vocal section that claims itself to be "left", does not help the development of a progressive social critique. No scientist would deny the need to analyse and understand the social and political implications of science and technological. But these have to be grounded not in wild, uninformed skepticism but in serious critique founded on evidence and logic. The development of an effective treatment for AIDS or the devising of strategies to combat global warming cannot be done, Sokal points out, Theorizing about "social constructions of reality", Sokal points out, is of little help in dealing with the several complex and subtle issues involving science and society.
The reponse to Sokal's exposure of the the parody drew a variety of repsonses, ranging from injured innocence and accusations of unethical behaviour to solemn lecturing on the meaning of the "social construction of reality". In particular, the responses scoffed at Sokal's view that many of them denied the existence of an objective external world. But here as Weinberg points out there is a problem. When explicitly challenged, many of those who critique the epistemology of science would agree that there does exist an objective external world. But then on other occassions when discussing the meaning of scientific laws, they do take up positions which would make no sense if one accepted the existence of an objective reality.
Sokal clearly distinguishes himself from a powerful critique of post-modernist positions on science by a section of scientists who are politically more to the right. Outstanding among these is the book "Higher Superstitions: The Academic Left and its Quarrel with Science" by Norman Levitt and Paul R. Gross. It is clear from the book that it has little sympathy with leftist political positions. But it concentrates mainly on a clear and convincing expose of the widespread ignorance of basic facts and the uninformed hostility of many of those who claim to develop a critique of science from a radical perspective. Many scientists in the U.S. have welcomed both Sokal's parody as well as the work of Gross and Levitt, as contributions to attacking a viewpoint that does little to promote serious, informed thinking about the role of science in society.
The debate around the Sokal affair, confined mainly to U.S. academic circles and the media is of relevance to science everywhere. In India too, the claim has been made that what India needs is an "Indian" science; more blatantly obscurantist variations on the theme have called for "Vedic" science. Others have rejected this in favour of "feminist" science that is more in tune with an ecological perspective. All this needless to say in the garb of "radical" perspective. After the "milk miracle" for instance, when hundreds of thousands fell victim to illusion, superstition and ignorance, some commentators claimed that this was a "popular" response to the "authoritarian" rhetoric of modern science. On a less obvious plane there have been critiques of the Green Revolution that have pinpointed science as the culprit behind its "failure". These critiques have not only been shoddy about the analysis of the success and failure of the Green Revolution, but have also completely left out the social and political aspects of the problem. It is strange when science is more to blame in the matter than the prevalence of landlordism in the Indian countryside.
If the spread of relativist notions about science alarms informed opinion in the U.S., especially on the Left, we in India can afford such illusions even less. The issue is of particular relevance to the ecology and popular science movements. Undoubtedly when a mass movement debates democratically, and rightfully so, the manner in which science and technology policies affect their lives, there could be many who might take, due to lack of knowledge, positions that are objectively anti-science. Clearly there is a need to speak to such persons, clarifying the difference between science itself and the manner in which the results of scientific and industrial research are sought to be used in society. But we would be ill-served if the leadership of these movements were to take the path of a "radical" critique of the post-modernist or relativist variety.
The lesson for scientists is clear. Science cannot be defended with kid gloves on. It is necessary to speak up sharply and clearly to expose those who seek to replace rational and logical debate on science and society with confusion, misrepresentation and hostility founded on ignorance.