What Mark says about the Sokal hoax is right. As big an embarrassment as it was, when the NYU-sponsored journal Social Text printed as serious a total sendup of the idea of a postmodern critique of science as socially constructed rather than objectively verifiable, it didn’t even put a dent in the reign of pomo in the academy. A lot of people, especially the complacent types, thought it meant the left-wing academy was sinking, but no. We can’t assume that the force of events will do what people have to do themselves.