Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

Voorkant
Macmillan, 29 okt 1999 - 300 pagina's

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.

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Inhoudsopgave

Introduction
1
Jacques Lacan
18
Julia Kristeva
38
Intermezzo Epistemic Relativism in the Philosophy of Science
50
Luce Irigaray
106
Bruno Latour
124
Intermezzo Chaos Theory and Postmodern Science
134
Jean Baudrillard
147
Paul Virilio
169
Godels Theorem and Set Theory Some Examples of Abuse
176
Epilogue
182
Transgressing the Boundaries Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity
212
Some Comments on the Parody
259
Transgressing the Boundaries An Afterword
268
Bibliography
281
Index
297

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
154

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Over de auteur (1999)

Jean Bricmont is a theoretical physicist with the Université de Louvaine in Belgium.

Bibliografische gegevens