Post-Modern Logic
I was in graduate school (for the second time) when Alan Sokal pulled off his controversial hoax. The fame it generated and the shame it heap upon the postmodern academic movement flared up for a brief time. Unfortunately, based on a recent article by Peter Dreier, it seems that any lessons learned from it were lost of many academics. Fortunately it made a lasting impression on me.
For those who aren’t familiar, Sokal, a physicist at NYU specializing in quantum field theory and quantization of gravity, wrote an article for the social studies magazine Social Text, an academic journal that prided itself on being a champion of postmodern thinking. In his article, entitled Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, Sokal attacks the very basis of the Western scientific method. His opening paragraphs read
and
For those who don’t have the stomach to wade through that gibberish (let alone what followed), what Sokal is trying to say is that scientific principles and results depend upon the culture and class from which one comes. He backs up this assertion by blurring the meaning of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics into saying that the essential role of observer brings a social or cultural aspect to all science.
After the publication of this ridiculous nonsense, Sokal publicly announced that his article was a hoax. His aim in perpetrating this hoax was to demonstrate both the lack of rigor in certain academic circles and the clear introduction of bias if the writing appealed to the editorial slant of the journal. In his own words, Sokal said that he undertook this bit of hokum in order to see if a leading journal of cultural studies would
An example of these very preconceptions is on display in the discussion where Sokal cites Madsen and Maden who, according to the article, have two criteria for distinguishing between modernist and postmodernist science. Their criteria for postmodern science are:
- it be free from any dependence on the concept of objective truth
- it be constructed from those theoretical elements which are essential for the consistency and utility of the theory.
Earlier this week, Peter Dreier came clean about a similar hoax he had pulled-off in 2010. In his article entitled Confessing my sins and exposing my academic hoax, Dreier describes writing a sham abstract for a social studies panel on the “Absence of Absences”. In his narrative, he talks about how he wanted to see if he could write pure gibberish and still get it accepted to an academic conference. About the abstract that got him an invitation to the conference being held in Tokyo, Dreier says
After describing his flirtation with obfuscation, Dreier goes on to show that the desire by certain academics to indulge in abuses against the language is, by no means, limited to his little jaunt. He cites several cases of overly complicated postmodern phrasing which desperately tries to mask silly ideas with “academic pomposity”. In one particularly biting paragraph, he says
I applaud both Sokal and Dreier for making a vivid point about what sometimes passes for academic thinking in institutions of higher education but I can’t help but feel that they miss a bigger point. In both of their critiques, the notion of postmodern thinking is held up as an object of ridicule. But pointing out the ‘silliness’ of the postmodern logic isn’t enough. Sokal actually comes fairly close (whether accidentally or intentionally I don’t know) to what I am advocating in his treatment of Madsen and Madsen’s criteria for a science to be regarded as postmodern. Sokals passage shows, without explicitly stating so, the inherent contradictions of postmodern thought.
Briefly summarized, postmodern points-of-view use objective truths and logical tools built upon them, to try to prove the lack of objective truths. Each of the arguments rests firmly upon the unspoken and unrecognized assumptions that words mean something, that conclusions have a decidable truth value, that arguments supporting these conclusions can be logically derived, and that the argument put forth is objective – that is to say anyone of any culture will agree with the conclusions.
So how can postmodernism logically argue against logic? It can’t. It just isn’t consistent – and that is the real lesson of these hoaxes.