A couple of thoughts and some questions.
Sokal's paper is a difficult read for anyone who is not conversant with the topics he's writing about. I've read through his paper a number of times, and I'm sure I haven't identified all the nonsensical parts.
Social Text is not a refereed journal, and did not vouch for the accuracy of the articles it printed. It also printed his article in a special edition called "Science Wars" - the article seemed pertinent to the topic. Should they have printed the article? What is the standard to be used? And does this standard apply universally?
The answers to those questions are important. If publishing nonsense in a non-refereed journal condemns all of post-modernism to ridicule, what are we to say of a number refereed physics journals that may have published nonsense (most physicists aren't sure). It's not as famous as the Sokal Hoax, but the
Bogdonoff Affair is fairly well-known. The jargon in their papers published in refereed physics journals is impenetrable to all but a few:
For example, here's the beginning of Igor Bogdanoff's paper "Topological Origin of Inertia":
The phenomenon of inertia - or "pseudo-force" according to E. Mach <1> - has recently been presented by J. P. Vigier as one of the "unsolved mysteries of modern physics". Indeed our point of view is that this important question, which is well formulated in the context of Mach's principle, cannot be resolved or even understood in the framework of conventional field theory.
Here we suggest a novel approach, a direct outcome of the topological field theory proposed by Edward Witten in 1988 <3>. According to this approach, beyond the interpretation proposed by Mach, we consider inertia as a topological field, linked to the topological charge Q = 1 of the "singular zero size gravitational instanton" <4> which, according to <5>, can be identified with the initial singularity of space-time in the standard model.
It goes on to discuss the supposed connection between N = 2 supergravity, Donaldson theory, KMS states and the Foucault pendulum experiment, which he claims "cannot be explained satisfactorily in either classical or relativistic mechanics". If you know some physics you'll find this statement odd. The Foucault pendulum behaves exactly the way classical mechanics predicts: it is a standard textbook exercise!
It's not only post-modernism that has a problem with jargon. The lesson from the Sokal Hoax may well be that we may never know what the hell someone else is actually saying.
