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5 Res Publica 1 (1999)

handle is hein.journals/respub5 and id is 1 raw text is: ALAN HAWORTH ONLY ONE CHEER FOR SOKAL AND BRICMONT: OR, SCIENTISM IS NO RESPONSE TO RELATIVISM ABSTRACT. Macaulay was wrong: the British public in one of its periodic fits of morality may be a ridiculous spectacle but it has at least one rival in the reaction we have recently witnessed to 'cultural relativism', 'postmodernism', and suchlike phenomena. Thus, Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's Intellectual Impostures, while ridiculing postmodernism, con- tains a chapter which is a critique, not of postmodernism, but of epistemic relativism in the philosophy of science. But their case is unconvincing. For example: (i) they repeatedly imply that epistemic relativism is counter-intuitive. However, it can be objected that some quite ordinary propo- sition can be both true and, at the same time, only true for beings with certain types of visual apparatus or with a certain cultural history. Nor are they right in claiming that all scientists find epistemic relativism implausible. Some do, but Chomsky doesn't. Neither does Stephen Hawking; (ii) they suppose that there is a single, uniquely correct description of the universe 'out there' waiting to be discovered, but all the evidence we have suggests the contrary; (iii) it is not the case that epistemic relativism entails that any description is just as good as any other, so they are wrong to insist that it must endorse all manner of silly superstition; (iv) they frequently insist that the scientific method is not radically different from the rational attitude in everyday life or in other domains of human knowledge, but this glosses over great differences between the procedures appropriate to different areas of inquiry - science on the one hand, history and/or psychoanalysis on the other. Their protestations to the contrary, Sokal and Bricmont's insistence that the only ratio- nal procedures are those appropriate to natural science is scientistic, not scientific. Post- modernism is indeed a series of implausible exaggerations but, unfortunately, Sokal and Bricmont have reacted to it in a sort of moral panic with exaggerations of their own. KEY WORDS: Sokal, Bricmont, science, philosophy of science, relativism, epistemic relativism, Intellectual Impostures, two cultures Macaulay was wrong. The British public in one of its periodic fits of moral- ity may be a pretty ridiculous spectacle - it is certainly an unedifying one - but it does have its rivals. As another instance, take the reaction there has recently been in certain quarters to postmodernism, cultural relativism and the like. Here we see a section of the intellectual establishment in a moral panic of its very own. In morality, the immediate, prudish and self-righteous reaction of disgust is usually an unhelpful mistake, if only because it forecloses any attempt you may have been prepared to make to understand, and so come to terms with, whatever it is that has offended A Res Publica 5: 1-21, 1999. O © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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