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Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals/ Abuse of Science Pdf, Epub, Ebook FASHIONABLE NONSENSE: POSTMODERN INTELLECTUALS/ ABUSE OF SCIENCE PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Alan Sokal | 300 pages | 01 Nov 1999 | Saint Martin/'s Press Inc. | 9780312204075 | English | New York, United States Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals/ Abuse of Science PDF Book That 'special relativity' and 'cultural relativism' share the same etymological root does not mean they share the same epistemological foundation. The works of Baudrillard, Deleuze, Guattari and Virilio are filled with seemingly erudite references to relativity, quantum mechanics, chaos theory, etc. I admit, I stopped reading when he started digging into Latour, a philosopher who has himself bridged the same gap, and sought to understand science in post-modern, intersubjective way, by moving from sociology of science through posthuman politics. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are as essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. The citations also include many prominent American academics in Cultural Studies and related fields; but these authors are often, at least in part, disciples of or commentators on the French masters. Similar to the subject matter of the book, Sokal is best known for his eponymous hoaxing affair , whereby he was able to get published a deliberately absurd article that he submitted to Social Text , a critical theory journal. New York: Picador. When Sokal holes the literarizing of meta-literature up to the standards of scientific analysis, it's worse than the structuralism shown earlier by some of his targets. View all 3 comments. You don't understand the context. In many cases we shall demonstrate that if the texts seem incomprehensible, it is for the excellent reason that they mean precisely nothing. Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment. We do not need the mathematical expertise of Sokal and Bricmont to assure us that the author of this stuff is a fake. I use the word "respectable" contextually: the perpetrators of this furtherance of discursive entropy are respected by many of the academics within their own fields. Some not all philosophers sprinkle their texts with allusions to scientific or mathematical concepts that they do not appear to understand, and do not seem to care that they don't understand. Enemies of these agendas then use this as ammunition against them. Seeing this done over and over really made me a more critical reader by strengthening my own ability to see through arguments that abuse science and distort the facts for the sake of ideology. As you can see from my comments I found other qualms other than what the authors provided, so in this case it was a little fun. Retrieved February 21, September To give their ideas the impression of being involved and complicated, and impress their peers and readers and satisfy their vanity, they resort to mixing pomposity with nonsense. Learn more about Amazon Prime. Luce Irigaray, 6. Intermezzo: Chaos Theory and "Postmodern Science", 8. Contemporary Cultural Theory 3rd ed. Claiming it to be outside of Latour's dissection and inversion of it indicates an enclosed dogmatism as thorough of that he thinks he sees in postmodern theory. The editors of Social Text liked my article because they liked its conclusion: that "the content and methodology of postmodern science provide powerful intellectual support for the progressive political project" [sec. They might also claim that the translation of the work in question was a poor one, or that their critics have a very particular axe to grind against them, whether it be political, racial, or class-based. To respond to this phenomenon, one of us Sokal decided to try an unorthodox and admittedly uncontrolled experiment: submit to a fashionable American cultural-studies journal, Social Text, a parody of the type of work that has proliferated in recent years, to see whether they would publish it. What We Intend to Show The goal of this book is to make a limited but original contribution toward the critique of the admittedly nebulous Zeitgeist that we have called "postmodernism". A major portion of the book is given over to reproductions of original 'postmodernist' sources that ramble for pages on end, with trifling comments by the authors on how the different scientific concepts have been misinterpreted or misused. Sociology of science, at its best, has done much to clarify these issues. This thirty page rambling pushes all the right postmodern buttons: appeals to authority, an overabundance of footnotes, moral and ontological relativism, pompous claims about social implications of quantum physics, and leftist politics. His interests include computational physics and algorithms, such as Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms for problems in statistical physics. Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals/ Abuse of Science Writer Intellectual Impostures. Retrieved March 11, Even if I didn't happen to know anything about the mathematics of infinity, I imagine I would be confused if someone started telling me that it can help us understand the human subconscious; at the very least I would want an acknowledgement that this is an outlandish claim, and that it requires some legwork to get the reader "on board. And they seem confident that no one will notice their misuse of scientific concepts. Print Hardcover and Paperback. The preface and introduction to my edition make this clear, and the care Sokal and Bricmont employ in defining terms and not overstepping their boundaries of expertise is commendable. The most common tactic is to use scientific or pseudo-scientific terminology without bothering much about what the words actually mean. Page 1 of imposturs Start over Page 1 of 1. Return to Book Page. Namespaces Article Talk. Here, Sokal teams up with Jean Bricmont to expose the abuse of scientific concepts in the writings of today's most fashionable postmodern thinkers. Stemming from the like of Lacan, Deleuze, Kristeva, Baudrillard, Irigaray, Latour, Virilio and co to name just the ones targeted here there One will never be grateful enough to Sokal and Bricmont for pointing fingers towards a naked emperor. The equivocation is blatant enough to be funny; though Sokal shows that we should temper our laughter. Views Read Edit View history. Set out to show how numerous key intellectuals have used concepts from the physical sciences and mathematics incorrectly, Sokal and Bricmont intentionally provide considerably lengthy extracts in order to avoid accusations of taking sentences out of context. An enjoyable, somewhat academic discussion, but food for thought for those who feel comfortable with this genre. For a long time I thought that Sokal's famous hoax publication, plus this book, were intended to show that modern philosophers, particularly in France, are spouting nothing but nonsense. Postmodernism, a trend fashionable in some social science and humanist circles, adopts the view that rejects the rationalism of the enlightenment and proposes that science is a "social construction" or "narration" and that there is no need to look for empirical evidence. I'm sick of the contempt for the sciences communicated by the humanities even after their posts dialogue with scientific language. View all 4 comments. Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals/ Abuse of Science Reviews Firstly, because clear and logical thinking leads to a cumulation of knowledge of which the progress of the natural sciences provides the best example and the advance of knowledge sooner or later undermines the traditional order. Point taken. For example, although the quotation from Derrida contained in Sokal's parody is rather amusing, it is a one-shot abuse; since there is no systematic misuse of or indeed attention to science in Derrida's work, there is no chapter on Derrida in this book. New Politics. Such reading, beyond its denunciation of ignorant and incompetent nonsense, serves on the contrary as a warning against that so called 'postmodern Zeitgeist', a dangerous and irresponsible way of thinking in a world prey to obscurantism, fanaticism and superstition. If you're like Sokal and Bricmont and me, you'll agree with Fashionable Nonsense, but you probably don't have to read it in the first place; if you're not like us, it probably won't convince you of anything, because it mainly argues by exhibiting its targets as though their flaws were self-evident. This book, like much of Sokal's work, is aimed at debunking the modern powerhouses of literary criticism, by the simple act of pointing out that their rhetoric, definitions, and understanding of the scientific principles they invoke are entirely flawed and amount to nonsense. The results of my little experiment demonstrate, at the very least, that some fashionable sectors of the American academic Left have been getting intellectually lazy. Along with this, accusations of right-wing politics and conservatism were made. In it he demonstrates every abuse of science he's seen, conflating subjects that have nothing to do with each other, exaggerating, distorting, misunderstanding, and mis-stating scientific facts. The rest is in the same vein. Download as PDF Printable version. I speak as someone who understands and appreciates science, here, dammit, and I don't like the reputation he's giving it. This book is thus a pure delight for anyone fed up and annoyed by pompous and farcical 'philosophers' being, dangerously enough, taken seriously among some pedantic leftist circles. The authors, by analysis of several postmodernist French philosophers, show how they misuse, misrepresent, and misunderstand basic science. It was completely relevant to my interests. When Sokal laments that they seem to at least know the sciences they "abuse" but are deliberately obfuscating to "impress their readers", he could use that same recognition of their trans-disciplinary research to guide him into fucking Getting It.
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