[ Top : Articles : "The 'Sokal Affair' Takes Transatlantic Turn" : Other Articles ]
Dickson, David. "The 'Sokal Affair' Takes
Transatlantic Turn," Nature 385 (30 January 1997) ,
p. 381.
[LONDON] A dispute that has been simmering since last
summer in the United State,, over the validity of
'postmodernist' idea,, about the nature of scientific
knowledge ha@ finally reached the point where many
such ideas originated - the banks of the river Seine in
Paris.
Over the past month, the newspaper Le Monde has
been running a series of articles triggered by an
account of the widely publicized hoax perpetrated last
year by Alan Sokal, a theoretical physicist at New
York University, on the journal Social Text.
The hoax took the form of an article submitted to
and accepted by the journal. It purported to
demonstrate the social and political origins of ideas
in quantum mechanics - but in fact was fabricated out
of miscellaneous (but accurate) quotations from
prominent postmodern writers and dubious statements of
scientific 'fact'.
Sokal's article has added fuel to a conflict that
has been growing in recent years between scientists
who argue that science is based on empirical fact,
and sociologists of science who argue that much of
scientific knowledge is 'constructed' out of debates
between researchers (see, for example, Nature 375,439;
1995).
In the United States, the hoax article and its
implications - namely that sociologists of science
have little regard for empirical truth and are more
interested in intellectual fashions - has set off a
wide debate on university campuses. "The reaction has
been a factor of ten bigger than I expected," says
Sokal. "And it is not letting up."
Until now, the response in Europe has been
relatively muted, even though many of the writers
quoted tend to be European, usually either British or
French. The main reaction has been a defence of
European academics whose work and US colleagues have
come under attack.
Positions, postmadernism and politics.
Last October, for example, many of those attending a
joint meeting of the US-based Society for Social
Studies in Science and the European Association for
Studies of Science and Technology, held in Bielefeld
in Germany, signed a petition protesting that some of
the recent US criticism of work by sociologists of
science could, in Europe, be regarded as potentially
defamatory.
But the recent series of articles in Le Monde,
widely regarded as the main public forum for both
intellectual and political debate in France, as well
as coverage in French publications Liberation and
Le Nouvel Observateur, indicate that the issue is
now hotting up in Europe too.
Further evidence comes from the fact that an
article by Paul Boghassian, a philosopher also at New
York University, attacking postmodernist views of
science, which appeared in the Times Literary
Supplement in December, has already been published in
Die Zeit, one of Germany's leading newspapers.
One of Sokal's strongest supporters is Jean
Bricmont,a theoretical physicist at the University of
Louvain in Belgium. He is writing a book with Sokal
on what both argue is the frequent misuse of scientific
concepts by prominent - and mainly French intellectual
figures ranging from the psychoanalyst Lacan to Bruno
Latour, an influential sociologist of science.
When is a fact is not fact?
Bricmont wrote in his contribution to the debate in Le
Monde that such allusions tended to be "at best
totally arbitrary and at worse erroneous". He says
he is keen to see a reinstatement of ideas
about science based on empiricism and the
analytical philosophy of individuals
such as the mathematician Bertrand Russell, rather
than those of German idealists such as the philosopher
Martin Heidegger.
He says he is concerned at a growing tendency to
see ideas in socially relative terms, criticizing, for
example, official guidelines on epistemology used by
highschool teachers in Belgium for stating that a fact
is not an empirical truth, but "something that
everyone agrees upon".
Like Sokal, Bricmont says that he has been
surprised by the level of interest he has stirred up.
"I seem to have put my finger on something bigger than
I realized," he says.
But some of those under attack, having initially
held back from the fray on the grounds that the debate
was primarily based on issues internal to the United
States, are now fighting back, arguing that it is
their critics who have an idealistic - and increasingly
outdated - vision of science and its role in contempo-
rary culture.
Last week, for example, Latour, who teaches the
sociology of innovation at the Ecole Supericure des
Mines in Paris, one of France's so-called 'grandes
ecoles, complained in Le Monde that he and fellow
sociologists were being treated as "drug peddlers" who
were corrupting the minds of American youth.
In fact, says Latour, one of his main concerns
has been to demonstrate how modern society - as
reflected in the public response to concerns about
bovine spongiform encephalopathy ('mad cow
disease') is transforming itself from a culture "based
on Science, with a capital S", to one based on
research more broadly, including the social sciences.
He writes: 'In place of an autonomous and
detached science, whose absolute knowledge
allows us to extinguish the fires of political
passions and subjectivity, we are entering a new
era in which scientific controversy becomes part of political
controversy.
The latest salvo in the French debate comes from
Sokal himself. In a response due to be published this
week, Sokal repeats his claim that every scientist is
aware that, although scientific knowledge is always
partial and subject to revision, "that does not
prevent it from being objective."
Sokal eschews charges of chauvinism, saying that
his target is not as some have suggested - French
intellectuals as such,
but "certain intellectuals who happen to live in
France." He also dismisses the criticism that his
concern about the growing influence of group of
'constructivist' ideas about science reflects worries
about a decline in both funding for physics and the
social status with the end of the Cold War.
Differences in culture and education
But Latour, too, who makes both claims, has his
supporters - and anot just in France. Simon Shaffer,
a lecturer in istory and philosophy of science at the
University of Cambridge, points to the irony that
Latour and others are trying to develop the public
understanding of science that, in other contexts,
Sokal and others argue is essential if they are to
retain respect.
Shaffer also points to the different cultural
environments, partly a product of different
educational traditions, in which French and
American scientists operate. "In France,
everyone believes that the
sciences are self-validating, and that the social
science refer to a world that exists outside
themselves," he says.
In contrast, he argues, the empircism that tends
to dominate the Anglo-American approach to science
means that "no one in the scientific community sees
themselves as an epistemologist or a constructivist."
With Europe facing important issues concerning
the relationship between science and politics -
ranging from the likely science policy of the British
Labour party if it wins the imminent general election,
to the squeeze by Germany on international
spending on particle physics - the public debate
set alight by Sokal appears unlikely to die down
rapidly.