Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

Alan Sokal · Jean Bricmont

জানু ২০১৪ · Picadorৰ দ্বাৰা বিক্ৰী কৰা হৈছে

এই ইবুকখনৰ বিষয়ে

In 1996 physicist Alan Sokal published an essay in Social Text--an influential academic journal of cultural studies--touting the deep similarities between quantum gravitational theory and postmodern philosophy.

Soon thereafter, the essay was revealed as a brilliant parody, a catalog of nonsense written in the cutting-edge but impenetrable lingo of postmodern theorists. The event sparked a furious debate in academic circles and made the headlines of newspapers in the U.S. and abroad.

In Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science, Sokal and his fellow physicist Jean Bricmont expand from where the hoax left off. In a delightfully witty and clear voice, the two thoughtfully and thoroughly dismantle the pseudo-scientific writings of some of the most fashionable French and American intellectuals. More generally, they challenge the widespread notion that scientific theories are mere "narrations" or social constructions.

লিখকৰ বিষয়ে

Alan Sokal is a professor of Physics at New York University.

Jean Bricmont is a theoretical physicist with the Universite de Louvain in Belgium