Subject: Re: PKF: RE: Re: A reintroduction
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2004 08:14:25 +1000


FRed wrote: Please tell me, is PF also criticised by Sokal?

The reference here is a book by Sokal and Bricmont in the aftermath of the 
hoax which replies to criticism of Sokal.  In the book they criticise 
various philosophers of science who they depict as barbarians inside the 
gates of science, in the way that the posmoderns are barbarians outside.

They wrote under the influence of David Stove among others. The book is not 
at hand so I cannot recall what they said about PF but they were hard on 
Popper and Kuhn.

This is my Amazon US review. The book is called Intellectual Impostures.

When Alan Sokal revealed his hoax on the postmodernists he was subjected to 
a great deal of hostile criticism, including claims that he disparaged the 
social sciences at large and that he was a stooge for the rightwing cultural 
establishment. In the introduction to this book the authors carefully defuse 
many of these criticisms. They explain that their criticisms of the social 
sciences and social scientists are confined to carefully designated examples 
(Kristeva, Lacan and others), with lengthy quotes from primary sources. 
Derrida, for example, is not in the dock because he has not indulged in the 
abuse of scientific theories and terminology which is their prime target. 
Against the charge of rightwing political bias, Sokal has a strong track 
record as a Marxist, hardly a recommendation in my view but a handy 
rejoinder to leftwing critics.
Given their carefully limited aim, their critiques are devastating and their 
book deserves to be read with close and critical attention by all students 
who are concerned about the standards of scholarship in the humanities and 
the social sciences. In general they do not stray into the philosophy of 
postmodernism, that is not an area where they have the qualifications or the 
motivation, to engage with the likes of Derrida.

The area of philosophy where they do chance their arm is the philosophy of 
science and, ironically, this is the Achilles heel of the book, though it is 
not likely to be targeted by their major critics. They wrote:

"At a time when superstitions, obscurantism, and nationalist and religious 
fanaticism are spreading in many parts of the world--including the 
'developed' West--it is irresponsible, to say the least, to treat with such 
casualness what has historically been the principal defense against these 
follies, namely a rational vision of the world. It is doubtless not the 
intention of postmodern authors to favor obscurantism, but it is an 
inevitable consequence of their approach." (p.208)

The rational view of the world that they favour is of course the worldview 
of modern science. This is supposed to derive its authority from the 
so-called inductive methods championed by the logical positivists and 
logical empiricists. They consider that the rationality of science is not 
only under attack from the postmodernists (the barbarians at the gate) but 
from other misguide folk, especially T S Kuhn and Karl Popper, who have 
subverted the rationality of science from the inside.

That may be the case with Kuhn but it is not a valid criticism of Popper. 
His theory of conjectural objective knowledge provides a defensible 
rejoinder to relativism and nihilism in a way that the logical empiricists 
and other forms of positivism do not. The stakes are high in this contest 
and the authors are well aware of this. For more, do a google search on 
Rathouse+Popper. It is a cultural disaster of the first magnitude that 
Popper's ideas have been so thoroughly mangled,misunderstood and generally 
sidelined in the mainstream of philosophy, the social sciences and the 
humanities.



Rafe Champion






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