Some things really did happen

Am distracted / engrossed in life and so little to post here, but some more from that Sokal book that I want to keep online.

Whether the accused in a murder trial is or is not guilty depends on the assessment of old-fashioned positivity evidence, if such evidence is available. Any innocent readers who find themselves in the dock will do well to appeal to it. It is the lawyers for the guilty ones who fall back on postmodern lines of defence.

Eric Hobsbawm, On History pviii, quoted in Sokal p321

It is [...] pretty suicidal for embattled minorities to embrace Michel Foucault, let alone Jacques Derrida. The minority view was always that power could be undermined by truth ...Once you read Foucault as saying that truth is simply an effect of power, you've had it. ...But American departments of literature, history and sociology contain large numbers of self-described leftists who have confused radical doubts about objectivity with political radicalism, and are in a mess.

Alan Ryan, quoted in Sokal p95