Document (#24885)

Author

Graham, L.R.

Title

Do mathematical equations display social attributes?

Source

Mathematical intelligencer. 22(2000) no.3, S.31-36

Year

2000

Abstract

In the aftermath of the publication in 1996 of the famous spoof article by the New York University physicist Alan Sokal many scientists and mathematicians have considered the thesis of social constructivists-those specialists in science studies who maintain that science is shaped by social and cultural factors-as discredited. Sokal's article was, indeed, very clever, and he was correct in ridiculing the views of the most extreme social constructivists. The basic issue of the controversy remains, however, unresolved. To what extent are science and mathematics affected by the society in which they are developed? In this article I will maintain that even the mathematical equations used by outstanding physicists sometimes display attributes of their social environment. In a book I published in 1998 I argued that Russia was a particularly appropriate environment in which to test the social constructivist hypothesis. In the twentieth century Russia has had a large scientific establishment in a social, economic, political, and philosophical environment quite different from that of leading Western countries. If environmental factors affect science, the effects of those factors should show up in Russia. I concluded that these effects do indeed manifest themselves in Russian science, but that, perhaps surprisingly, Russian science reveals both the strengths and the weaknesses of the social constructivist hypothesis. An example of the weakness of the social constructivist thesis can be found in the overthrow of Lysenkoism biology in 1966, when Soviet biologists embraced the same biological principles as Western biologists after decades of rejecting these principles. This tardy but eventually successful worldwide agreement illustrated the universalism of much of science when open debate is permitted, and the existence of an objective biological world studied by biologists everywhere. The rejection of Lysenkoism showed that reality in nature does matter

Footnote

Vgl. auch die Erwiderungen dazu von M. Harris: Contexts of justification und M.B. Ruskai: Response to Graham: the quantum view in: Mathematical intelligencer 23(2001) no.1 sowie weitere Beiträge von J. Cronin u. M. Lipschütz-Yevick in 23(2001) H.4

Field

Mathematik

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