Beyond the Hoax

Download or Read eBook Beyond the Hoax PDF written by Alan Sokal and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-02-11 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle.
Beyond the Hoax
Author :
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Total Pages : 769
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780191623349
ISBN-13 : 0191623342
Rating : 4/5 (49 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Beyond the Hoax by : Alan Sokal

Book excerpt: 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.


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