Analysis Of “What The Sokal Hoax Ought To Teach Us”

3 Pages 788 Words

The analysis by Paul Boghossian is about the contradictions in an article submitted by a theoretical physicist, Alan Sokal. This author first had to discover the meaning of “postmodern relativism.” According to Professor Richard Evans of Cambridge University: “postmodernism is a convenient label covering a wide variety of positions, not a unitary body of theory, and recognizes that some of these positions are mutually contradictory or antagonistic” (In Defense of History: Reply to Critics).” This was my starting point in trying to understand and comprehend what Mr. Boghossian was trying to interpret.
In the writer’s opinion, Mr. Boghossian is concerned with the knowledge base of the editors that approved and submitted the article by Mr. Sokal for publication. Another concern is the submission and subsequent admission by Mr. Sokal that his essay was merely a “farrago of solecisms, howlers, and non-sequiturs” so as to look good and flatter the ideological preconceptions of the editors of Social Text.” Are scholars willing to publish an essay to which they haven’t a clue as to what the author is trying to present? Mr. Boghossian’s main concern: How does this affect the ethics of academia?
Boghossian’s epistemological concerns regarding relativism are as old as science itself. The challenge from post modernity, however, is more fundamental, because it challenges not only what science does, but what science is (Broks, p 77). Boghossian is trying to expose the disruption and instability, and loss of absolutes of earlier periods by referencing the possibility of a new “liberatory mathematics” that is inadequate and not based on the absolute framework of the Zermelo-Fraenkel framework of mathematics that is taught to all school age children. Is it possible that 2+2 may someday equal 5? In the writer’s opinion, Boghossian is trying to bring the public back into the realm of science and “critical thinking” ...