[aruanan]

The Scottish Parliament's winning effort is taken from Paragraph 59 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act (2002), Part 5. It reads: "The Scottish Ministers may by order amend subsection (1) of section 57 or paragraph (a) or (b) of subsection (2) of section 58 so as to substitute for the number of years for the time being mentioned in the provision in question such other number of years (not being a number which exceeds that being mentioned in the provision as originally enacted) as may be specified in the order."

What's so unintelligible about this? It's clear and specific. If you want to see real examples of writing that appears to mean something but means nothing or means something other than what the writer intended, read The Graves of Academe, or Less than Words Can Say, or The Leaning Tower of Babel by Richard Mitchell.

[Dan Day]

If you want to see real examples of writing that appears to mean something but means nothing or means something other than what the writer intended,

One of the absolutely classic examples is Alan Sokal's hoax contribution to "Social Text".

"Social Text" is a quarterly publication which describes itself as "a journal of cultural and political analysis", and the founding editors announced that "the framework of the journal is Marxist in the broadest sense of the term."

The publication, like a lot of other leftist "deconstructionist", "postmodern" forums, is full of rhetorical buzzword-laden twaddle which drones on and on without ever actually saying anything (or if it says something, never actually provides evidence for its claims).

So as a test Alan Sokal wrote a *purposely* nonsensical piece for the journal, entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", AND THEY PUBLISHED IT.

As Sokol describes his piece:

The answer comes from examining the content of the parody. In this regard, one important point has gotten lost in much of the discussion of my article: Yes, the article is screamingly funny -- I'm not modest, I'm proud of my work -- but the most hilarious parts of my article were not written by me. Rather, they're direct quotes from the postmodern Masters, whom I shower with mock praise. In fact, the article is structured around the silliest quotations I could find about mathematics and physics (and the philosophy of mathematics and physics) from some of the most prominent French and American intellectuals; my only contribution was to invent a nonsensical argument linking these quotations together and praising them. This involved, of course, advocating an incoherent mishmash of trendy ideas -- deconstructive literary theory, New Age ecology, so-called ``feminist epistemology''[15], extreme social-constructivist philosophy of science, even Lacanian psychoanalysis -- but that just made the parody all the more fun. Indeed, in some cases I took the liberty of parodying extreme or ambiguously stated versions of views that I myself hold in a more moderate and precisely stated form.

After publication, Sokal then revealed the hoax in an article in another journal, and soon all hell broke loose.

The resulting fall-out is a hoot to read. It includes the editors of "Social Text" lamely trying (and failing) to salvage their dignity and just digging themselves deeper. It includes dozens of "postmodern" leftists revealing that they still don't "get it" (and a few that to their credit do). It includes a lot of writers cheering the exposure of the literary quacks, like this letter to the editor:

I am happy to see someone demonstrate the literary theory emperor has no clothes. It is a hard and bitter lesson which I, a relatively new literary scholar, have only recently accepted. I started on the theory bandwagon and began my dissertation excited about showing how postmodern fiction reveals the cultural constructedness of scientific "discourse." But the more I read, the more I realized that thinkers who attack scientific discourse were not thinking at all, just playing with ideas. What caused my turnaround was a suspicion shared by Alan Sokal -- that theorists use concepts of limited application as universals, that those who most vehemently oppose science know very little about it, that, like editors of tabloid newspapers, many theorists are unable to distinguish ideas from nonsense.

[snip]

So the grads who get hired most often are those who mouth the theory platitudes, repeat the theory mantras, and turn a blind eye to real concerns about the place of academic studies in the world.

Sokal himself has what may be the best short summary of the mess:

The results of my little experiment demonstrate, at the very least, that some fashionable sectors of the American academic Left have been getting intellectually lazy. The editors of Social Text liked my article because they liked its conclusion: that "the content and methodology of postmodern science provide powerful intellectual support for the progressive political project." They apparently felt no need to analyze the quality of the evidence, the cogency of the arguments, or even the relevance of the arguments to the purported conclusion.

The original hoax article (in all its glory), the exposure article, the editors' excuses and Sokal's response, as well as practically all existing debate on this event, can be found here. It makes fascinating and hilarious reading.