Last year, New York University physicist Alan Sokal decided to try an experiment. He submitted an article to Social Text, a leading journal in cultural studies, for a special issue devoted to "science studies." In the article, the researcher condemned "outmoded ideas of a physical reality," essentially arguing that reality does not exist because humans merely make it up. After the article appeared, Professor Sokal admitted that it was thoroughly bogus -- that he'd just wanted to see if the journal would publish an article "liberally salted with nonsense."
For many in academia, this incident underscored the schism that exists between the natural sciences and the humanities, as well as the effects of extremist claims on both sides of that divide. These issues and more will be explored in a conference being held on Friday, March 28, at the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St.
Some of the nation's leading scientists -- including paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard, and Yale provost and anthropologist Alison S. Richard -- will meet with noted researchers from the humanities to reflect on the problems hindering communication between their respective fields and to discuss questions about the nature of understanding. Titled "Literature and Science: The Crisis of Reductionism," the conference was organized by Robert G. Shulman, Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, and professor of chemistry; and Michael Holquist, professor of comparative literature and Slavic languages and literatures and chair of the Council on Russian and East European Studies. The event is cosponsored by the Trumbull and Woodward lectures.
"In both literature and science, new questions are being raised about objectivity, verifiability and what constitutes evidence," say the conference organizers. For instance, they note, there is a move away from studying the formal features of literary texts, such as their rhyme schemes or narrative structures, to focusing on the texts' historical or political contexts. In the sciences, say the researchers, a trend toward reductionism has led some to contend that "if we can just get down to the lowest layer of matter we shall have a Theory of Everything," while others "have gone far beyond the limits of their discipline to speculate on the origins of consciousness, self organization, emergence, etc., areas where formal proofs no longer apply. ..."
"Our conference seeks to identify, characterize, and isolate the extreme positions in science and humanism that allow the misbehavior illustrated by the Alan Sokal-Social Text hoax to occur," the organizers add.
The conference will consist of two sessions. The morning one, 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m., will be chaired by Peter Brooks, the Tripp Professor of the Humanities, acting director of the Whitney Humanities Center and chair of the department of comparative literature. The afternoon session, 2-5 p.m., will be chaired by Neil Ribe, associate professor of geology and geophysics. The sessions are free and open to the public.
Panelists will include Paisley Livingston of McGill University, Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, Wendy Steiner of the University of Pennsylvania, Liah Greenfeld of Boston University and Philip W. Anderson of Princeton University. In addition to the Yale scholars named earlier, the participants from the University will include Professors Tyrus Miller, Elisabeth Vrba, Ann Gaylin, David Apter and Martin Klein.