Haim
Posts:
7,807
Registered:
12/6/04
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Re: Don't Let Math Pull the Wool Over Your Eyes
Posted:
Jan 15, 2013 6:50 AM
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Jerry P. Becker Posted: Jan 14, 2013 2:40 PM
>Alan Sokal, the physicist who in 1996 hoaxed a journal
>of cultural studies with an article he wrote as a jest
>that the journal published, called Prof. Eriksson's
>study "very interesting." He would like it replicated
>with a more credentialed group, such as university
>professors, who are more likely to review articles for
>publication.
The notorious journal was "Social Text", published by Duke University Press. This is the same Duke University of the infamous Gang of 88
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_case
The now famous article,
"Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", may have been a hoax but it was certainly no jest. "Transgressing the Boundaries" was a serious effort by Sokal to discredit "Social Text" and, by extension, to discredit the intellectual fraud that is Postmodernism.
Sokal followed up with several books, including "Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science", "Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture", "Intellectual Impostures", and a number of journal articles in which he discusses his intent. Along with the famous,
"Higher Superstition"
http://www.amazon.com/Higher-Superstition-Academic-Quarrels-Science/dp/0801857074/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358250132&sr=8-1&keywords=higher+superstition
Sokal's work is a well established part of what Wikipedia calls
"The Science Wars",
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars
In Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science (1994), the scientists Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt attacked the anti-intellectual postmodernists, presented the shortcomings of relativism, and proposed that postmodernist critics knew little about the scientific theories they criticized and practiced poor scholarship for political reasons.
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"Poor scholarship for political reasons." Now, there is a lovely turn of phrase that rather nicely characterizes what is laughingly known as education research.
Haim
No representation without taxation.
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