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The Sokal Hoax - The Sham That Shook the Academy
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List Price: $20.00Amazon.com's Price: $18.00 You Save: $2.00 (10%)Prices subject to change.
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 501
EAN: 9780803279957
ISBN: 0803279957
Label: Bison Books
Manufacturer: Bison Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 271
Publication Date: 2000-09
Publisher: Bison Books
Sales Rank: 86860
Studio: Bison Books
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
In 1995, a New York University physicist named Alan Sokal, frustrated by what he considered the misuse of science by academic philosophers and literary critics, decided to play a meaningful prank. After studying the arcane jargon of postmodernism, he cooked up a superficially au courant but patently ill-founded paper called "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" and submitted it to the journal Social Text, edited by a collective of academic celebrities. Wooed by the article's apparent endorsement of their approach and evidently unschooled in basic science, the editors accepted and published the paper.
The Sokal Hoax gathers Sokal's paper; the Social Text editors' arch, wounded reply when it was revealed, in the pages of the academic journal Lingua Franca, that the paper was a transparent scam; and a selection of journalistic accounts, letters to the editor, and accusations and counteraccusations surrounding what came to be called "the Sokal hoax." Some of these documents are thoughtful, addressing ways in which it might be possible to bridge the wide gap between the sciences and the humanities. Many, however, are defensive and polemical, almost embarrassing to read. They compound Sokal's charge that faddishness has overcome common sense in the halls of academe, and that the postmodern emperor has no clothes.
In its modest way, the collection is an entertainment, serving as an anthology of ivy-covered silliness. More seriously, it adds depth to Sokal's collaboration with physicist Jean Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense, and other books about the hoax and its implications, which continue to excite discussion. --Gregory McNamee
Product Description:
In May 1996 physicist Alan Sokal published an essay in the fashionable academic journal Social Text. The essay quoted hip theorists like Jacques Lacan, Donna Haraway, and Gilles Deleuze. The prose was thick with the jargon of poststructuralism. And the point the essay tried to make was counterintuitive: gravity, Sokal argued, was a fiction that society had agreed upon, and science needed to be liberated from its ideological blinders.
When Sokal revealed in the pages of Lingua Franca that he had written the article as a parody, the story hit the front page of the New York Times. It set off a national debate still raging today: Are scholars in the humanities trapped in a jargon-ridden Wonderland? Are scientists deluded in thinking their work is objective? Are literature professors suffering from science envy? Was Sokal's joke funny? Was the Enlightenment such a bad thing after all? And isn't it a little bit true that the meaning of gravity is contingent upon your cultural perspective?
Collected here for the first time are Sokal's original essay on "quantum gravity," his essay revealing the hoax, the newspaper articles that broke the story, and the angry op-eds, letters, and e-mail exchanges sparked by the hoax from intellectuals across the country, including Stanley Fish, George F. Will, Michael Bérubé, and Katha Pollitt. Also included are extended essays in which a wide range of scholars ponder the long-term lessons of the hoax.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
This is a nice variety of commentary on the Sokal Hoax, and includes Sokal's infamous paper, which I suspect few people read. This book reinforced my understanding of the "science wars" - that both sides are talking past each other. The PoMo people (i.e., postmodernist literary theorists, science studies people, sociologists of knowledge, etc.) are really looking as science AS DISCOURSE, using the tools of literary criticism and discursive genealogy (a la Foucault). They are often simply victims ... Read More
Rating:  -
The value of this book is not so much as a good read, but as a detailed account of a turning point in history. It is a great resource for anyone studying the history of philosophy, or the "science wars" in particular. It presents the hoax, the revelation, and the aftermath with an objective collection of the texts, correspondence, & articles as they appeared at the time.
I suspect that the significance of these events, and the value of this account, will be more greatly appreciated ... Read More
Rating: -
I had to read this for a class on the subject of the "Science Wars", and in this regard, it was very informative and useful. However, I would probably never have actually read it were it not for that assignment. The first article obfuscates needlessly on purpose, and the others tend to be polemics. Thus, if you want a survey of views on science and the like, I recommend it. If you do not want that, I would suggest something else to read.
Rating:  -
Although I applauded Alan Sokal for perpetrating his hoax, there's really not enough to it to justify this 264 page book. First you read Sokal's original essay, followed by his article exposing the piece as a hoax. And this is followed by the published response by the editors he duped in which they make even bigger fools of themselves. All well and good. But these are followed by endless articles and media coverage which discuss and encapsulate what we've just read -- it's like reading the same ... Read More
Rating: -
Before you get your hopes about the intellectual adventure Sokal & Bricmont have pretended to engage in, you should know what constitutes "scholarship" to these showmen by digging into their prior work a little.
Sokal, of course, wrote an article with many silly assertions, which he attributed, falsely, to French philosophers like Jacques Derrida (hence the "hoax") -- and he later tried to claim, with a straight face, that this pure fiction somehow "exposes" writers like Jacques Derrida. ... Read More
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