The Sokal Hoax: At Whom Are We Laughing?

SEP 01, 1998

The philosophical pronouncements of Bohr, Born, Heisenberg and Pauli deserve some of the blame for the excesses of the postmodernist critique of science.

DOI: 10.1063/1.882436

Mara Beller

The hoax perpetrated by New York University theorical physicist Alan Sokal in 1996 on the editors of the journal Social Text quickly became widely known and hotly debated. (See PHYSICS TODAY January 1997, page 61, and March 1997, page 73.) “Transgressing the Boundaries—Toward a Transformative Her‐meneutics of Quantum Gravity,” was the title of the parody he slipped past the unsuspecting editors. (See figure 1.)

References

1. A. D. Sokal, Social Text, Spring/Summer 1996, p. 216. A. D. Sokal, Lingua Franca, May/June 1996, p. 62.
2. K. Pollitt, The Nation, 10 June 1996. S. Weinberg, N. Y. Rev. Books, 8 Aug. 1996. G. Kamiya, Salon, 17 May 1996.
3. M. Born, Physics in My Generation, Pergamon, London (1956), pp. 107 and 232.
M. Born, Physics and Politics, Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh (1962).
4. Letter from W. Pauli to Markus Fierz on 12 August 1948, from the Pauli Letter Collection at CERN, Geneva, translation in K. V. Laurikainen, Beyond the Atom, Springer‐Verlag, Berlin (1988).
5. N. Bohr, “The Quantum of Action and the Description of Nature,” in Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature, N. Bohr, ed., U.P., Cambridge, England (1934).
6. N. Bohr, in Quantum Theory and Measurement, J. Wheeler, W. H. Zurek, eds., Princeton U.P., Princeton, N.J. (1983)p. 145.
7. C. F. von Weizsacker, in Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume, A French, J. Kennedy, eds., Harvard U.P., Cambridge, Mass. (1985) p. 183.
8. Letters from M. Born to N. Bohr (1952).
Archive for the History of Quantum Physics, T. Kuhn, J. Heilbron, eds. American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. P. Forman, L. Allen, Sources for History of Quantum Physics: An Inventory and Report, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. W. Heisenberg, Ph ilosophical Problems of Quantum Physics, Ox Bow Press, Woodbridge, Conn. (1952) p. 21.
9. Quoted in S. Weinberg, in ref. 2.
10. Letter from A. Einstein to Eduard Study, 25 Sept. 1918, in the Einstein Archive, Hebrew U., Jerusalem;
translation in D. Howard, Perspectives on Science 1, 225 (1993).
A. Einstein, L. Infeld, The Evolution of Physics, Simon and Schuster, New York (1938) p. 31. A. Fine, The Shaky Game:Einstein, Realism and the Quantum Theory, U. Chicago P., Chicago (1986).
11. D. N. Mermin, J. Philosophy 78, 397 (1981).
12. J. Wheeler, “Law Without Law,” in ref. 6.
13. D. Handelman, Models and Mirrors: Toward an Anthropology of the Public Events, U.P., Cambridge, England (1994), p. 25.
14. D. Wilshire, in Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Deconstructions of Being and Knowing, A. Jaggar, S. Bordo, eds., Rutgers U.P., New Brunswick, N.J. 11989), p. 105.
N. Bohr, in Essays, 1958–1962 on Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge, Wiley, New York, p. 8.
15. S. Weinberg, N. Y. Rev. Books. 3 October 1996.
16. D. Bohm, B. J. Hiley, The Undivided Universe: An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Routledge, London (1993).
D. Duörr, S. Goldstein, N. Zanghi, J. Stat. Phys. 67, 843 (1992)
andD. Duörr, S. Goldstein, N. Zanghi, Phys. Lett. A 172, 6 (1992). https://doi.org/JSTPBS
J. Cushing, in Quantum Mechanics, Historical Contingency and the Copenhagen Hegemony, J. Cushing, J. Fine, S. Goldstein, eds., U. Chicago P., Chicago (1994).
J. Cushing Bohmian Mechanics and Quantum Theory: An Appraisal, Kluwer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands (1995).
17. P. Gross, N. Levitt, Higher Superstition. Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science, Johns Hopkins U.P., Baltimore (1994), pp. 52, 261.
18. L. Seebach, Valley Times (Pleasanton, Calif.), 12 May 1996.

More about the Authors

Mara Beller. Hebrew University of Jerusalem.