Lakshmi Rhone wrote: > http://www.mathematik.uni-muenchen.de/~bohmmech/BohmHome/sokalhoax.html >
Precisely! I pointed out earlier in this discussion that Neils Bohr and the followers of the Copenhagen school in quantum mechanics opposed materialism in the name of dialectics, and thus deserved to be regarded as vintage postmodernists. >From the conceptions of various quantum physicists, it follows that the issue raised by modern science is the compatibility of materialism and dialectics. The postmodernists, along with Bohr, oppose materialism. And certain leftist scientists -- including Sokal and Bricmont apparently -- believe that, to uphold materialism, they have to denounce dialectics. This shows the wisdom of Marx and Engels in insisting on dialectical materialism, and indeed that materialism had to be dialectical in its conception of nature as well as in its application to social problems. Engels referred to dialectical issues in 19th century science, but the prestige of mechanical materialism was high back then. With quantum mechanics and relativity theory, dialectics forces itself into consideration. The article you refer to, Mara Beller's "The Sokal Hoax: At Whom Are We Laughing? The philosophical pronouncements of Bohr, Born, Heisenberg and Pauli deserve some of the blame for the excesses of the postmodernist critique of science" provides some interesting material on the debates over materialism and dialectics with reference to modern physics. It is, however, flawed by its apparent inability to distinguish clearly between the well-founded part of a physicists' work, and their opinions and speculations and social and political ideas. She doesn't seem to realize that we can "laugh" at the postmodernism of various scientists, at the same time as paying respect to the well-founded aspect of their work. Some of her article seems to be simply pointing out that we can't rely on the physicists for an understanding of the philosophical significance of physics, and that's certainly correct. But she also seems to identifies physics, and the implications of physics, with scientists' personally. Or more generally, she seems to make the issue scientists vs. non-scientists, rather than the followers of bourgeois idealism (scientists or non-scientists) vs. materialism. As a result, she seems to think that it throws doubt on the usefulness of Sokal's hoax that Bohr and Born and other scientists wrote postmodernist nonsense. She fails to see that the fact that scientists also engage in postmodernism, makes Sokal's hoax more useful. Those who become skeptical of the pseudo-scientific speculations of the postmodernist authors criticized by Sokal, are much more likely to become skeptical of the postmodernist babble from certain physicists, and to ask for proof. Ironically, for all the venom thrown by raghu at Sokal for allegedly engaging in "imperialist" colonization of social science on behalf of physics, Beller's article shows that it is postmodernist conceptions, as put forward by scientists as well as postmodernists ignorant of science, that has sought to engage in such imperialist aggression, especially aiming at materialism. Also, she puts forward such things as the work of the brilliant leftist physicist David Bohm as the alleged way to maintain materialism. His work is of interest. But he is also in the sphere of those who thought they had to defend various aspects of the old materialism in order to defend materialism. Various of the technical arguments over localism and determinism in theoretical physics, while of great interest in physics, don't actually speak to the issue of whether the world exists objectively, independently of our social constructions, so to speak. Bohm's conceptions may turn out true or not, but the fate of materialism doesn't hang on them. Hmm, it just struck me to see if Sokal and Bricmont had an opinion on Beller's article. It turns out they have commented on it. Their comments can be found in the midst of the following letter to a journal: http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/pt_v5.pdf. One part of it goes: "...we find ourselves in agreement with most of the points made in Mara Beller's article 'The Sokal hoax: At whom are we laughing?'. Beller observes, correctly, that famous physicists such as Bohr, Born and Paul engaged at times in dubious (to say the least) extrapolations of ideas from quantum phsyics to politics, psychology, philosophy and religion. She also notes that these writings were sometimes treated by physicists with excessive reverence, rather than being subjected to the critical analysis they deserve. Finally, she observes, again correctly, that the popular writings of these and other physicists -- in which the foundational issues associated with quantum mechanics are often grossly oversimplified -- served as one source of inspiratin (among many others) for postmodernist musings about science. "The only thing we find slightly irritating is that we have repeatedly met people who view Beller's article as a 'response' to us or even as a 'refutation' of our views. Of course, this may or may not be her intention -- and Beller is in no way responsible for other people's misinterpretations of her writings -- but we feel obliged to clarify this point. Beller's observations do nothing to justify the misuse of scientific concepts and terminology in the oeuvre of Lacan, Kristeva, Baudrillard, Deleuze, Virilio and others. At best, her remarks could be used to cast aspersions on our intentions (why do you criticize those people and your physicist colleagues?) To this, we would respond that we do object to the illegitimate speculations of physicists and have done so in print. ..." They go on further. But I would point out that one can see the mechanical materialist viewpoint in their response to Beller peek out. They implicitly regard all philosophical discussion as an absurd extrapolation, since mechanical materialism a la the Enlightenment is their end-all and be-all. So they implicitly denounce the bringing out of dialectics by Bohr and others as simply oversimplified nonsense, rather than denouncing the idealist dialectics from Bohr and company. They don't recognize that there is a legitimate and necessary discussion of how the discoveries of modern science impinge on materialism and dialectics. -- Joseph Green _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
