Physicist Alan Sokal is famous for his 1996 Social Text article, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” written as a parody of postmodernism (it is included in this book). Of course, it caused much warranted fulmination in academic circles, as well as a stir in the world at large. In this tome, Sokal sees a vital need for “for the centrality of evidence in all matters of public debate,” as science, reality, and truth are being hijacked and manipulated, and know-nothings and hucksters obscure the facts about such issues as global warming, evolution, cigarette smoke and on and on. Sokal provides much-needed arguments for piercing the “relativist fog” that has engulfed science and public debate.
Reading
Beyond the Hoax
Physicist Alan Sokal is famous for his 1996 Social Text article, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” written as a parody of postmodernism (it is included in this book). Of course, it caused much warranted fulmination in academic circles, as well as a stir in the world at large. In this tome, Sokal sees a vital need for “for the centrality of evidence in all matters of public debate,” as science, reality, and truth are being hijacked and manipulated, and know-nothings and hucksters obscure the facts about such issues as global warming, evolution, cigarette smoke and on and on. Sokal provides much-needed arguments for piercing the “relativist fog” that has engulfed science and public debate.