" . . . [C]onservative professors tend to come from the math and computer science departments. In the social sciences, where human affairs are actually studied, liberalism predominates even more. What this suggests is really quite remarkable: that extensive study of humanity naturally leads one to liberal conclusions." — Steve Kangas."I'm worried about trends in the American Left — particularly here in academia — that at a minimum divert us from the task of formulating a progressive social critique, by leading smart and committed people into trendy but ultimately empty intellectual fashions . . . " — Alan Sokal.
Alan Sokal is a professor of physics at New York University. He lists his interests as computational physics, quantum field theory, statistical physics and mathematical physics. Add academic gadfly to this list.
Professor Sokal's left-wing credentials and human fallibility are evidenced by the fact he traveled to Nicaragua to teach mathematics for the Sandinista Regime. Sokal can not be dismissed as a right-wing complainer. What really rankles Sokal is the anti-intellectualism infecting campuses. He is critical of the deconstructist approach popular in humanities departments that argues there is no objective reality — that everything, even the sciences, are culturally dependent.
If you believe that physical laws are culturally dependent, walk out of a sixth story window in a different culture and see if gravity applies. Sokal affirms the Enlightment's rationalism and is disappointed and embarrassed by the embrace by some on the Left of alternate philosophies. While all sides of the political spectrum have their adherents who do not feel themselves constrained by rationalism, many of those on the Left have tenure.
In 1994 Sokal submitted a manuscript entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries — Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" to the prestigious journal Social Text published by Duke University Press. The editors accepted the manuscript and the article was published in the Spring/Summer 1996 issue. Sokal revealed the hoax soon after in another journal Lingua Franca.
The article was a parody, full of deliberate nonsense. Sokal made silly and grandiose analogies with gravity, relativity, quantum mechanics arguing that these theories supported deconstructist criticism and cultural relativism. This is reminiscent of the Chinese President Jiang recently dismissing U.S. concerns about human rights violations by stating that:
"The theory of relativity worked out by Mr. Einstein, which is in the domain of natural science, I believe can also be applied to the political field. Both democracy and human rights are relative concepts and not
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