>At 8:58 PM 11/15/96, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >>A quote from Sokal's "hoax" is supposed to constitute evidence that social >>constructionists deny physical reality? Doug, please. He sets up a straw >>theory to criticize. This is my point. > >They published the damn thing, didn't they? If someone submitted a paper to >RM whose opening paragraphs claimed that physical reality didn't exist, but >was merely a social/linguistic construct, what would you do? I'd toss it, >and wonder what drugs the author had been doing. And wasn't Aronowitz >himself, a "strong advocate" for publishing Sokal, cited as evidence for >the nonexistence of the physical? > >Doug I'm on the ed board of RM. We don't necessarily agree with everything we publish. We think everything we publish (ideally, at least) is interesting, relevant, thoughtful, provocative, etc. I can't defend Aronowitz; I don't know his stuff. Maybe he's *one* social constructionist who actually does not believe in material reality. I find this difficult to believe. I refer to my other comment, that the quotes cited do not deny material reality, but material reality "independent of... humanity." This is what the quote actually says, and this last clause, not the *existence* of material reality, is where all the action is. Your omission of the all-important phrase is telling. Blair Blair Sandler [EMAIL PROTECTED]
