Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/t...singlefile.html
He explained himself, in part, thusly...
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For some years I've been troubled by an apparent decline in the standards of intellectual rigor in certain precincts of the American academic humanities. But I'm a mere physicist: if I find myself unable to make head or tail of jouissance and différance, perhaps that just reflects my own inadequacy.
So, to test the prevailing intellectual standards, I decided to try a modest (though admittedly uncontrolled) experiment: Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies -- whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross -- publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (
it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions?http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/l..._franca_v4.html
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... in the journal Lingua Franca, and went on to state...
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In sum, I intentionally wrote the article so that any competent physicist or mathematician (or undergraduate physics or math major) would realize that it is a spoof. Evidently the editors of Social Text felt comfortable publishing an article on quantum physics without bothering to consult anyone knowledgeable in the subject.
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... which brings us to the point of this thread. Not by way of challenge, but by way of learning exercise for some of us more qualitatively oriented folk who visit this board, I invite board members to lay into and utterly eviscerate the rather mischievious Doctor Sokal's arguments from the hard science perspective.
I'm sure Dr. Sokal wouldn't mind :-)
Best,
Raphie