In defence of the objective world | Eurozine

Postmodern ideas have gained the status of absolute truths. Relativism, selectively appropriated into the language of both left and right politics, has metamorphosed into dogma. As oversimplification distorts communication, public trust in scientific fact has eroded. Could renewed ideas of objectivity be a way out?

Alan Sokal, author of ‘Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity’ (a hoax article that exposed some of the more bizarre influences of postmodern philosophy on contemporary scholarship), in conversation with Péter Krekó. Péter Krekó: In 1996 you famously published a deliberately nonsensical article in a postmodern cultural studies journal,1 which claimed that quantum gravity is no more than a social and linguistic construct. Who were the main subjects of the hoax and of your critique as a scientist, and why? Alan Sokal: The social sciences are a…

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