At around 5/2/06 10:33 am, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> I'd be the last to defend Stanley Aronowitz, the ST editor most
> responsible for publishing the Sokal piece. And I'll leave aside the
> fact that what Sokal did had nothing to do with deconstruction. But I
> do want to say that I had several long chats with Sokal in the weeks
> after the prank and it quickly became clear to me that he has a very
> conventional idea of scientific knowledge - and the problem with the
> ST crowd, from his point of view, was not that they weren't doing
> science studies very well (i.e., informed by a knowledge of both
> science and politics), but that they were doing it at all. I asked
> him how he'd feel about a Frankfurt-style critique of instrumental
> reason, and he had no idea what I was talking about.
>
What is interesting is that there are more sophisticated critiques of
the pomo (or relativism etc) approach than Sokal/Bricmont's book. Take
for example Jerry Fodor's comments on the issue. Even Martha Nussbaum
had some worthwhile things to say. I do not find them necessarily
convincing (and that could be my own failing) but they are at least
edifying. I will hunt up links shortly and post.
> I don't think
> his prank did very much to improve the quality of science studies; it
> just confirmed a lot of pre-existing prejudices about the authority
> of science.
Exactly Zeilberger's point.
--ravi
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