Sokalism

I have been entertained this evening by the story of paper by a Professor Alan Sokal, a physicist from New York University. The paper was called  'Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity' and was published in the 'Science Wars' issue of spring/summer 1996 of 'Social Text'.

The paper is characterised by the inclusion of lots of quotations, names, footnotes, references, fancy sounding language and - twaddle (see illustration and reference 1). It seems that the editors of Social Text were rather lazy and published the thing as submitted, perhaps overly keen to include a paper by a real scientist in their magnum opus.

Social Text was, it seems, a journal of importance at that time and has survived to be found at reference 2. And I had thought that Duke University was a respectable university, well known among pencil engineers, despite its location. See reference 3.

I have been wondering how much time the professor put into the production of this elaborate spoof. Did he write it all out himself or did he get one his students to do a cut and paste job from somewhere? Are all the references genuine? He might have thought that the editors were fair game, and he may well have been right, but it does seem to be rather a big production. Did he not have any real work to do?

But he did get the satisfaction of spawning a famous controversy, famous enough to get its own article in wikipedia (see reference 4). Not so famous as to have reached into the murky depths of this part of Epsom though, as I am fairly sure I have not come across him or his work before.

With thanks for the tip to Messrs. Hohwy and Frith.

Reference 1: http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/transgress_v2_noafterword.pdf.

Reference 2: https://www.dukeupress.edu/social-text.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/a-disappointment.html.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair.