The Sokal Hoax: The Sham That Shook the Academy PDF
Preview The Sokal Hoax: The Sham That Shook the Academy
THE SOKAL HoaX The Sham That Shook the Academy Edited by the editors of Lingua Franca University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London Acknowledgments for the use of copyrighted material appear on pages 267–69, which constitute an extension of the copyright page. ∫ 2000 by the University of Nebraska Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America ! Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Sokal hoax : the sham that shook the academy / edited by the editors of Lingua Franca. p. cm. ‘‘A Lingua Franca book.’’ Includes bibliographical references. isbn 0-8032-7995-7 (pa: alk. paper) 1. Fraud in science. 2. Science—Philosophy. 3. Science— Social aspects. 4. Humanities. 5. Sokal, Alan D., 1955– I. Sokal, Alan D., 1955– II. Lingua Franca. q175.37 .s65 2000 501—dc21 00-026113 N CONTENTS * The Editors of Lingua Franca 1 Introduction 1 T H E A R T I C L E Alan Sokal 11 Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity Social Text, Spring–Summer 1996 2 R E V E L AT I O N A N D R E S P O N S E Alan Sokal 49 Revelation: A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies Lingua Franca, May–June 1996 Bruce Robbins and Andrew Ross, coeditors of Social Text 54 Response: Mystery Science Theater Lingua Franca, July–August 1996 Selected Letters to the Editor 59 Lingua Franca, July–August 1996 3 P R E S S R E A C T I O N S Linda Seebach 71 Scientist Takes Academia for a Ride with Parody Contra Costa (Calif.) Times, 12 May 1996 Mitchell Landsberg 74 Is It Gibberish or Merely Obscure? Scientist Hoaxes Academic Journal Associated Press, 16 May 1996 Janny Scott 76 Postmodern Gravity Deconstructed, Slyly New York Times, 18 May 1996 John Yemma 79 Hokum for High-Brows Boston Globe, 18 May 1996 Stanley Fish 81 Professor Sokal’s Bad Joke New York Times, 21 May 1996 Scott McConnell 85 When Pretension Reigns Supreme New York Post , 22 May 1996 Ruth Rosen 88 A Physics Prof Drops a Bomb on the Faux Left Los Angeles Times, 23 May 1996 George F. Will 91 Smitten with Gibberish Washington Post, 30 May 1996 John Omicinski 93 Hoax Article Yanks Academics’ Legs Gannett News Service, 3 June 1996 Katha Pollitt 96 Pomolotov Cocktail, and selected responses The Nation, 10 June 1996 James Terry 101 Another Dispatch from the Culture Wars Kansas City (Mo.) New Times , 13 June 1996 vi Contents Editorial 104 Scholarly Article a Fine Hoax: Social Scientists Wore No Clothes Fort Meyers (Fla.) News-Press , 23 July 1996 4 F O R E I G N P R E S S C O V E R A G E Euan Ferguson 107 Illogical Dons Swallow Hoaxer’s Leap into Quantum Gibberish The Observer (London), 19 May 1996 Roberto Campos 109 Sokal’s Prank Folha de São Paulo (Brazil), 22 September 1996 Olavo de Carvalho 112 Sokal, a Self-Parodist Folha de São Paulo (Brazil), 21 October 1996 Marco d’Eramo 115 Academic Insult in Greenwich Village, and selected responses Il manifesto (Rome), 6 November 1996 A. N. Wilson 119 When Clever Men Think Rubbish, Sound the Alarm Bells Evening Standard (London), 17 December 1996 Denis Duclos 122 Sokal Is No Socrates Le Monde (Paris), 3 January 1997 Bruno Latour 124 Is There Science after the Cold War? Le Monde (Paris), 18 January 1997 Alan Sokal 127 Why I Wrote My Parody Le Monde (Paris), 31 January 1997 Contents vii 5 L O N G E R E S S AY S Ellen Willis 133 My Sokaled Life; Or, Revenge of the Nerds Village Voice, 25 June 1996 Michael Bérubé and Alan Sokal 139 The Sokal Hoax University Of Chicago Free Press, August 1996 Steven Weinberg 148 Sokal’s Hoax, and selected responses New York Review of Books , 8 August 1996 Paul Boghossian 172 What the Sokal Hoax Ought to Teach Us, and selected responses Times Literary Supplement, 13 December 1996 Kurt Gottfried 187 Was Sokal’s Hoax Justified? Physics Today, January 1997 David Dickson 192 The ‘‘Sokal A√air’’ Takes Transatlantic Turn Nature, 30 January 1997 Peter Osborne 195 Friendly Fire: The Hoaxing of Social Text Radical Philosophy, January–February 1997 Stanley Aronowitz 200 Alan Sokal’s ‘‘Transgression’’ Dissent, Winter 1997 Meera Nanda 205 The Science Wars in India Dissent, Winter 1997 Barbara Epstein 214 Postmodernism and the Left New Politics, Winter 1997 viii Contents Ken Hirschkop 230 Cultural Studies and Its Discontents: A Comment on the Sokal A√air Social Text, Spring 1997 Bruce Robbins 234 Just Doing Your Job: Some Lessons of the Sokal A√air Yale Journal of Criticism, Fall 1997 6 C O L L O Q U I E S Andrew Ross 245 Reflections on the Sokal A√air Forum at New York University, October 1996 Alan Sokal 249 A Plea for Reason, Evidence, and Logic Forum at New York University, October 1996 Lingua Franca Roundtable, May 1997253 Participants: David Z. Albert, John Brenkman, Elisabeth Lloyd, Lingua Franca representatives Contributors 267 Source Acknowledgments 269 Contents ix
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