Fashionable Nonsense - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Fashionable Nonsense write by Alan Sokal. This book was released on 2014-01-14. Fashionable Nonsense available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 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.
Beyond the Hoax
Beyond the Hoax - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Beyond the Hoax write by Alan Sokal. This book was released on 2010-02-11. Beyond the Hoax available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 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.
Intellectual Impostures
Intellectual Impostures - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Intellectual Impostures write by Jean Bricmont. This book was released on 2011-05-26. Intellectual Impostures available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. When Intellectual Impostures was published in France, it sent shock waves through the Left Bank establishment. When it was published in Britain, it provoked impassioned debate. Sokal and Bricmont examine the canon of French postmodernists - Lacan, Kristeva, Baudrillard, Irigaray, Latour, Virilio, Deleuze and Guattari - and systematically expose their abuse of science. This edition contains a new preface analysing the reactions to the book and answering some of the attacks.
Quantum Sense and Nonsense
Quantum Sense and Nonsense - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Quantum Sense and Nonsense write by Jean Bricmont. This book was released on 2017-10-27. Quantum Sense and Nonsense available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Permeated by the author's delightful humor, this little book explains, with nearly no mathematics, the main conceptual issues associated with quantum mechanics: The issue of determinism. Does quantum mechanics signify the end of a deterministic word-view? The role of the human subject or of the "observer" in science. Since Copernicus, science has increasingly tended to dethrone Man from his formerly held special position in the Universe. But quantum mechanics, with its emphasis on the notion of observation, may once more have given a central role to the human subject. The issue of locality. Does quantum mechanics imply that instantaneous actions at a distance exist in Nature? In these pages the author offers a variety of views and answers - bad as well as good - to these questions. The reader will be both entertained and enlightened by Jean Bricmont's clear and incisive arguments.
Higher Superstition
Higher Superstition - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Higher Superstition write by Paul R. Gross. This book was released on 1997-12-03. Higher Superstition available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The widely acclaimed response to the postmodernists attacks on science, with a new afterword. With the emergence of "cultural studies" and the blurring of once-clear academic boundaries, scholars are turning to subjects far outside their traditional disciplines and areas of expertise. In Higher Superstition scientists Paul Gross and Norman Levitt raise serious questions about the growing criticism of science by humanists and social scientists on the "academic left." This edition of Higher Superstition includes a new afterword by the authors.
