科学与人文的攻防——以“索卡尔事件”和柯林斯模仿游戏为例

Attack and Defense of Science and Humanities: A Case Study of the “Sokal Affair” and Collins Imitation Game

摘要: 关于科学与人文之争，没有哪一个世纪有最近这几十年这般激烈。1996年，物理学家索卡尔将一篇蓄谋已久的诈文发给美国一家很有影响力的社会文化期刊并通过审核得已发表，以几近完美的“表演”发起了一次对人文领域的“攻击”；与此同时，也将持社会建构论的SSK (Sociology of Scientific Knowledge)拖向了争论的泥潭，由此爆发了公开而全面的“科学论战”。后来，SSK的代表人物柯林斯通过模仿游戏也成功地骗过了引力波物理学核心专家而被当做该领域的专业人士。本文是想通过后者对于持这种观点——“索卡尔事件”对人文领域作出了终审判决——进行一种回应，并希望人们能对科学与人文领域之间的冲突给予更多的关注，以更加审慎的态度来对待两者，以求弥合。

Abstract: Regarding the dispute between science and humanity, no century has been so intense in recent decades. In 1996, physicist Sokal sent a long-deserved scam to an influential social and cultural journal in the United States and published it through an audit. He launched a field of humanities in a near-perfect “performance.” At the same time, the SSK of social constructivism was dragged to the quagmire of controversy, and an open and comprehensive “scientific debate” broke out. Later, SSK's representative Collins was successfully fooled into the core experts of gravitational wave physics by imitating the game and was regarded as a professional in the field. This article is intended to respond to this view by the latter, the “Sokal Affair”, which has made a final judgment in the humanities field, and hopes that people will pay more attention to the conflict between science and humanities, and treat the two with a more prudent attitude in order to bridge the gap.