hat quantum physics, properly understood, dovetails with postmodern philosophy”. One of the final mistakes they made was giving in to Sokal’s resistance of their input to improve on his publication. Editors Robbins and Ross advise Sokal to: “a) to excise a good deal of the philosophical speculation and b) to excise most of his footnotes”.(Rosen)In a letter to the editor of the Social Text Sokal reveals his disgust in the way science evolves. His intentions of the essay was a test of “cultural studies of science”, to see if they were lacking “intellectual standards”(Sokal). According to Professor Paul Boghossian:Social Text is a political magazine in a deeper and more radical sense: under appropriate circumstances, it is prepared to let agreement with its ideological orientation trump every other criterion for publication, including something as basic as sheer intelligibility. Hickey 7Boghossian knows the fact the editors could not understand Sokal’s essay yet it still passed. He also points out exactly why they would do this.The prospect of being able to display in their pages a natural scientist -- a physicist, no less -- throwing the full weight of his authority behind their cause was compelling enough for them to overlook the fact that they didn't have much of a clue exactly what sort of support they were being offered. Sokal knew all this, he points out ”scientific research is increasingly funded by private corporations that have a financial interest in particular outcomes of that research”(Sokal Plea). He makes the point that there needs to be objectivity to research and not guided by fact that “universities are more interested in patent royalties than in the open sharing of scientific information”(Sokal Plea). Sokal had big intentions with his essay. By duping the Social Text, he made it very clear what it all meant. He knew that publications like this ...
