Alan Sokal > Quotes

“Each religion makes scores of purportedly factual assertions about everything from the creation of the universe to the afterlife. But on what grounds can believers presume to know that these assertions are true? The reasons they give are various, but the ultimate justification for most religious people’s beliefs is a simple one: we believe what we believe because our holy scriptures say so. But how, then, do we know that our holy scriptures are factually accurate? Because the scriptures themselves say so. Theologians specialize in weaving elaborate webs of verbiage to avoid saying anything quite so bluntly, but this gem of circular reasoning really is the epistemological bottom line on which all 'faith' is grounded. In the words of Pope John Paul II: 'By the authority of his absolute transcendence, God who makes himself known is also the source of the credibility of what he reveals.' It goes without saying that this begs the question of whether the texts at issue really were authored or inspired by God, and on what grounds one knows this. 'Faith' is not in fact a rejection of reason, but simply a lazy acceptance of bad reasons. 'Faith' is the pseudo-justification that some people trot out when they want to make claims without the necessary evidence.

But of course we never apply these lax standards of evidence to the claims made in the other fellow’s holy scriptures: when it comes to religions other than one’s own, religious people are as rational as everyone else. Only our own religion, whatever it may be, seems to merit some special dispensation from the general standards of evidence.

And here, it seems to me, is the crux of the conflict between religion and science. Not the religious rejection of specific scientific theories (be it heliocentrism in the 17th century or evolutionary biology today); over time most religions do find some way to make peace with well-established science. Rather, the scientific worldview and the religious worldview come into conflict over a far more fundamental question: namely, what constitutes evidence.

Science relies on publicly reproducible sense experience (that is, experiments and observations) combined with rational reflection on those empirical observations. Religious people acknowledge the validity of that method, but then claim to be in the possession of additional methods for obtaining reliable knowledge of factual matters — methods that go beyond the mere assessment of empirical evidence — such as intuition, revelation, or the reliance on sacred texts. But the trouble is this: What good reason do we have to believe that such methods work, in the sense of steering us systematically (even if not invariably) towards true beliefs rather than towards false ones? At least in the domains where we have been able to test these methods — astronomy, geology and history, for instance — they have not proven terribly reliable. Why should we expect them to work any better when we apply them to problems that are even more difficult, such as the fundamental nature of the universe?

Last but not least, these non-empirical methods suffer from an insuperable logical problem: What should we do when different people’s intuitions or revelations conflict? How can we know which of the many purportedly sacred texts — whose assertions frequently contradict one another — are in fact sacred?”
― Alan Sokal

“A mode of thought does not become 'critical' simply by attributing that label to itself, but by virtue of its content.”
― Alan Sokal, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

“Thus, by science I mean, first of all, a worldview giving primacy to reason and observation and a methodology aimed at acquiring accurate knowledge of the natural and social world. This methodology is characterized, above all else, by the critical spirit: namely, the commitment to the incessant testing of assertions through observations and/or experiments — the more stringent the tests, the better — and to revising or discarding those theories that fail the test. One corollary of the critical spirit is fallibilism: namely, the understanding that all our empirical knowledge is tentative, incomplete and open to revision in the light of new evidence or cogent new arguments (though, of course, the most well-established aspects of scientific knowledge are unlikely to be discarded entirely).

. . . I stress that my use of the term 'science' is not limited to the natural sciences, but includes investigations aimed at acquiring accurate knowledge of factual matters relating to any aspect of the world by using rational empirical methods analogous to those employed in the natural sciences. (Please note the limitation to questions of fact. I intentionally exclude from my purview questions of ethics, aesthetics, ultimate purpose, and so forth.) Thus, 'science' (as I use the term) is routinely practiced not only by physicists, chemists and biologists, but also by historians, detectives, plumbers and indeed all human beings in (some aspects of) our daily lives. (Of course, the fact that we all practice science from time to time does not mean that we all practice it equally well, or that we practice it equally well in all areas of our lives.)”
― Alan Sokal

“The relativists’ stance is extremely condescending: it treats a complex society as a monolith, obscures the conflicts within it, and takes its most obscurantist factions as spokespeople for the whole.”
― Alan Sokal, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

“We have seen in this book numerous ambiguous texts that can be interpreted in two different ways: as an assertion that is true but relatively banal, or as one that is radical but manifestly false. And we cannot help thinking that, in many cases, these ambiguities are deliberate. Indeed, they offer a great advantage in intellectual battles: the radical interpretation can serve to attract relatively inexperienced listeners or readers; and if the absurdity of this version is exposed, the author can always defend himself by claiming to have been misunderstood, and retreat to the innocuous interpretation.”
― Alan Sokal, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

“None of us, I think, in the mid-’70s … would have thought we’d be devoting so much mental space now to confront religion. We thought that matter had long been closed. — Ian McEwan”
― Alan Sokal, Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture

“But why did I do it? I confess that I'm an unabashed Old Leftist who never quite understood how deconstruction was supposed to help the working class. And I'm a stodgy old scientist who believes, naively, that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them.”
― Alan Sokal

“In this atmosphere of general discouragement, it is tempting to attack something that is sufficiently linked to the powers-that-be so as not to appear very sympathetic, but sufficiently weak to be a more-or-less accessible target (since the concentration of power and money are beyond reach). Science fulfills these conditions, and this partly explains the attacks against it.”
― Alan Sokal, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

“Why does it matter? The concept of ‘truth’ as something dependent upon facts largely outside human control has been one of the ways in which philosophy hitherto has inculcated the necessary element of humility. When this check upon pride is removed, a further step is taken on the road towards a certain kind of madness – the intoxication of power which invaded philosophy with Fichte, and to which modern men, whether philosophers or not, are prone. I am persuaded that this intoxication is the greatest danger of our time, and that any philosophy which, however unintentionally, contributes to it is increasing the danger of vast social disaster. (Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 1961a, p. 782) Why spend so much time exposing these abuses? Do the postmodernists represent a real danger? Certainly not for the natural sciences, at least not at present.”
― Alan Sokal, Intellectual Impostures

“Nevertheless, it seems to us that there are some criteria that can be used to help distinguish between the two sorts of difficulty. First, when the difficulty is genuine, it is usually possible to explain in simple terms, at some rudimentary level, what phenomena the theory is examining, what are its main results and what are the strongest arguments in its favour.247 For example, although neither of us has any training in biology, we are able to follow, at some basic level, developments in that field by reading good popular or semi-popular books. Second, in these cases there is a clear path – possibly a long one – that will lead to a deeper knowledge of the subject. By contrast, some obscure discourses give the impression that the reader is being asked to make a qualitative jump, or to undergo an experience similar to a revelation, in order to understand them.”
― Alan Sokal, Intellectual Impostures

“first of all, to give a criterion for demarcating between scientific and nonscientific theories, and he thinks he has found it in the notion of falsifiability: in order to be scientific, a theory must make predictions that can, in principle, be false in the real world.”
― Alan Sokal, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

“They imagine,perhaps, that they can exploit the prestige of the natural sciences in order to give their own discourse a veneer of rigor. And they seem confident that no one will notice their misuse of scientific concepts. No one is going to cry out that the king is naked. Our goal is precisely to say that the king is naked (and the queen too).”
― Alan Sokal, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

“the mere fact that an idea is irrefutable does not imply that there is any reason to believe it is true.”
― Alan Sokal, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

“In opposition to this old-fashioned way of thinking, they advocate a postmodern ‘nonlinear thought’. The precise content of the latter is not clearly explained either, but it is, apparently, a methodology that goes beyond reason by insisting on intuition and subjective perception.183 And it is frequently claimed that so-called postmodern science – and particularly chaos theory – justifies and supports this new ‘nonlinear thought’. But this assertion rests simply on a confusion between the three meanings of the word ‘linear’.184”
― Alan Sokal, Intellectual Impostures

“Of course, no work in this genre would be complete without an allusion to Gödel’s theorem: This drifting of figures and geometric figuring, this irruption of dimensions and transcendental mathematics, leads us to the promised surrealist peaks of scientific theory, peaks that culminate in Gödel’s theorem: the existential proof, a method that mathematically proves the existence of an object without producing that object. (Virilio 1991, p. 66) In reality, existential proofs are much older than Gödel’s work; and the proof of his theorem is, by contrast, completely constructive: it exhibits a proposition that is neither provable nor falsifiable”
― Alan Sokal, Intellectual Impostures

“However, we have never met a sincere solipsist and we doubt that any exist.52 This illustrates an important principle that we shall use several times in this chapter: the mere fact that an idea is irrefutable does not imply that there is any reason to believe it is true.”
― Alan Sokal, Intellectual Impostures

“Putting aside the florid accusations of rape and torture, the argument of Merchant and Harding boils down to the assertion that the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century displaced a female-centered (spiritual, hermetic, organic, geocentric) universe in favor of a male-centered (rationalist, scientific, mechanical, heliocentric) one. 21 How should we evaluate this argument? To begin with, one might wonder whether the gender associations claimed for these two cosmologies are really as univocal as the feminist critics claim. 22 (After all, the main defender of the geocentric worldview — the Catholic Church — was not exactly a female-centered enterprise, its adoration of the Virgin Mary notwithstanding.) But let us put aside this objection and grant these gender associations for the sake of argument; for the principal flaw in the Merchant–Harding thesis is, once again, not historical but logical. Margarita Levin puts it bluntly: Do Merchant and Harding really “think we have a choice about which theory is correct? Masculine or feminine, the solar system is the way it is.”23 The same point applies not only to astronomy but to scientific theories quite generally; and the bottom line is that there is ample evidence, independent of any allegedly sexist imagery, for the epistemic value of modern science. Therefore, as Koertge remarks, “if it really could be shown that patriarchal thinking not only played a crucial role in the Scientific Revolution but is also necessary for carrying out scientific inquiry as we know it, that would constitute the strongest argument for patriarchy that I can think of!”
― Alan Sokal, Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture

“One could continue quoting Irigaray, but the reader is probably lost (so are we).”
― Alan Sokal, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

“a crucial asymmetry: one can never prove that a theory is true, because it makes, in general, an infinite number of empirical predictions, of which only a finite subset can ever be tested; but one can nevertheless prove that a theory is false, because, to do that, a single (reliable) observation contradicting the theory suffices.65”
― Alan Sokal, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

“To begin with, one might wonder whether the gender associations claimed for these two cosmologies are really as univocal as the feminist critics claim. 22 (After all, the main defender of the geocentric worldview — the Catholic Church — was not exactly a female-centered enterprise, its adoration of the Virgin Mary notwithstanding.) But let us put aside this objection and grant these gender associations for the sake of argument; for the principal flaw in the Merchant–Harding thesis is, once again, not historical but logical. Margarita Levin puts it bluntly: Do Merchant and Harding really “think we have a choice about which theory is correct? Masculine or feminine, the solar system is the way it is.”23 The same point applies not only to astronomy but to scientific theories quite generally; and the bottom line is that there is ample evidence, independent of any allegedly sexist imagery, for the epistemic value of modern science. Therefore, as Koertge remarks, “if it really could be shown that patriarchal thinking not only played a crucial role in the Scientific Revolution but is also necessary for carrying out scientific inquiry as we know it, that would constitute the strongest argument for patriarchy that I can think of!”
― Alan Sokal, Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture

“Roughly speaking, we shall use the term “relativism” to designate any philosophy that claims that the truth or falsity of a statement is relative to an individual or to a social group.”
― Alan Sokal, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

“the relativists’ stance is extremely condescending: it treats a complex society as a monolith, obscures the conflicts within it, and takes its most obscurantist factions as spokespeople for the whole. In a way, it’s a late-twentieth-century postmodern analogue of the nineteenth-century imperialist romanticization of the “exotic”. Are all Native Americans literal creationists? Are most of them? Has anyone bothered to ask them?”
― Alan Sokal, Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture

“cognitive or epistemic relativism when one is dealing with an assertion of fact (that is, about what exists or is claimed to exist); moral or ethical relativism when one is dealing with a value judgment (about what is good or bad, desirable or pernicious); and aesthetic relativism when one is dealing with an artistic judgment (about what is beautiful or ugly, pleasant or unpleasant). Here we shall be concerned only with epistemic relativism and not with moral or aesthetic relativism, which raise very different issues.”
― Alan Sokal, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

“But my main concern isn’t to defend science from the barbarian hordes of lit crit (we’ll survive just fine, thank you). Rather, my concern is explicitly political: to combat a currently fashionable postmodernist/poststructuralist/social-constructivist discourse—and more generally a penchant for subjectivism—which is, I believe, inimical to the values and future of the Left.”
― Alan Sokal, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

“the emphasis on falsifiability and falsification is salutary, provided it is not taken to extremes (e.g. the blanket rejection of induction).”
― Alan Sokal, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

“radical skepticism: “Of course there exists an external world, but it is impossible for me to obtain any reliable knowledge of that world.”
― Alan Sokal, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science