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.
| ISBN | 0199561834 | | Pages | 488 | | ISBN13 | 9780199561834
(What's this?) | | Weight (grammes) | 847 | | Publisher | Oxford University Press | | Published in | Oxford | | Imprint | Oxford University Press | | Height (mm) | 246 | | Format | Paperback | | Width (mm) | 171 | | Publication date | 11 Feb 2010 | | Spine width (mm) | 27 | | DEWEY | 501 | | Academic level | Postgraduate | | DEWEY edition | DC22 | |
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PART I: THE SOCIAL TEXT AFFAIR; 1. The parody, annotated; 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
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