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基本説明
When physicist Alan Sokal revealed that his 1996 article, published in Social Text , was a hoax, the ensuing scandal caused an uproar amongst the post-modernists he had so hilariously-and convincingly-parodied. Now, Sokal revisits this remarkable chapter in our intellectual history to illuminate issues that are with us even more pressingly today. The original article is included in the book, with new explanatory footnotes. Sokal shows that academic leftists have unwittingly abetted right wing ideologies by wrapping themselves in a relativistic fog where any belief is as valid as any other because all claims to truth must be regarded as equally suspect.
Full Description
In 1996, Alan Sokal, a Professor of Physics at New York University, wrote a paper for the cultural-studies journal Social Text, entitled: 'Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity'. It was reviewed, accepted and published. Sokal immediately confessed that the whole article was a hoax - a cunningly worded paper designed to expose and parody the style of extreme postmodernist criticism of science. The story became front-page news around the world and triggered fierce and wide-ranging controversy. Sokal is one of the most powerful voices in the continuing debate about the status of evidence-based knowledge. In Beyond the Hoax he turns his attention to a new set of targets - pseudo-science, religion, and misinformation in public life. 'Whether my targets are the postmodernists of the left, the fundamentalists of the right, or the muddle-headed of all political and apolitical stripes, the bottom line is that clear thinking, combined with a respect for evidence, are of the utmost importance to the survival of the human race in the twenty-first century.'
The book also includes a hugely illuminating annotated text of the Hoax itself, and a reflection on the furore it provoked.
Contents
PART I: THE SOCIAL TEXT AFFAIR ; 1. Transgressing the boundaries: Towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity [annotated version] ; 2. Transgressing the boundaries: An afterword ; 3. Truth, reason, objectivity, and the Left ; 4. Science studies: Less than meets the eye ; 5. What the Social Text affair does and does not prove ; PART II: SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY ; 6. Cognitive relativism in the philosophy of science ; 7. Defense of a modest scientific realism ; PART III: SCIENCE AND CULTURE ; 8. Pseudoscience and postmodernism: Antagonists or fellow-travelers? ; 9. Religion, politics and survival ; 10. Epilogue: Epistemology and ethics ; Index
