Intellectual Impostures

Author : Alan Sokal,Jean Bricmont
Publisher : Picador
Page : 317 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2014-01-14
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781466862401

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Fashionable Nonsense by Alan Sokal,Jean Bricmont Pdf

In 1996 physicist Alan Sokal published an essay in Social Text--an influential academic journal of cultural studies--touting the deep similarities between quantum gravitational theory and postmodern philosophy. Soon thereafter, the essay was revealed as a brilliant parody, a catalog of nonsense written in the cutting-edge but impenetrable lingo of postmodern theorists. The event sparked a furious debate in academic circles and made the headlines of newspapers in the U.S. and abroad. In Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science, Sokal and his fellow physicist Jean Bricmont expand from where the hoax left off. In a delightfully witty and clear voice, the two thoughtfully and thoroughly dismantle the pseudo-scientific writings of some of the most fashionable French and American intellectuals. More generally, they challenge the widespread notion that scientific theories are mere "narrations" or social constructions.

Author : Jean Bricmont,Alan Sokal
Publisher : Profile Books
Page : 491 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2011-05-26
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781847657824

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Intellectual Impostures by Jean Bricmont,Alan Sokal Pdf

When Intellectual Impostures was published in France, it sent shock waves through the Left Bank establishment. When it was published in Britain, it provoked impassioned debate. Sokal and Bricmont examine the canon of French postmodernists - Lacan, Kristeva, Baudrillard, Irigaray, Latour, Virilio, Deleuze and Guattari - and systematically expose their abuse of science. This edition contains a new preface analysing the reactions to the book and answering some of the attacks.

Author : Alan Sokal
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 771 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2010-02-11
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780191623349

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Beyond the Hoax by Alan Sokal Pdf

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.

Author : Paul R. Gross,Norman Levitt
Publisher : JHU Press
Page : 348 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 1997-12-03
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781421404875

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Higher Superstition by Paul R. Gross,Norman Levitt Pdf

The widely acclaimed response to the postmodernists attacks on science, with a new afterword. With the emergence of "cultural studies" and the blurring of once-clear academic boundaries, scholars are turning to subjects far outside their traditional disciplines and areas of expertise. In Higher Superstition scientists Paul Gross and Norman Levitt raise serious questions about the growing criticism of science by humanists and social scientists on the "academic left." This edition of Higher Superstition includes a new afterword by the authors.

Author : Alan D. Sokal
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : Fraud in science
ISBN : OCLC:855203942

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Intellectual Impostures by Alan D. Sokal Pdf

Author : al-Ḥarīrī
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 586 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2021-09-07
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9781479810567

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Impostures by al-Ḥarīrī Pdf

One of the Wall Street Journal's Top 10 Books of the Year Winner, 2020 Sheikh Zayed Book Award, Translation Category Shortlist, 2021 National Translation Award Finalist, 2021 PROSE Award, Literature Category Fifty rogue’s tales translated fifty ways An itinerant con man. A gullible eyewitness narrator. Voices spanning continents and centuries. These elements come together in Impostures, a groundbreaking new translation of a celebrated work of Arabic literature. Impostures follows the roguish Abū Zayd al-Sarūjī in his adventures around the medieval Middle East—we encounter him impersonating a preacher, pretending to be blind, and lying to a judge. In every escapade he shows himself to be a brilliant and persuasive wordsmith, composing poetry, palindromes, and riddles on the spot. Award-winning translator Michael Cooperson transforms Arabic wordplay into English wordplay of his own, using fifty different registers of English, from the distinctive literary styles of authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf, to global varieties of English including Cockney rhyming slang, Nigerian English, and Singaporean English. Featuring picaresque adventures and linguistic acrobatics, Impostures brings the spirit of this masterpiece of Arabic literature into English in a dazzling display of translation. An English-only edition.

Author : Jean Bricmont
Publisher : Springer
Page : 286 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2017-10-27
Category : Science
ISBN : 9783319652719

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Quantum Sense and Nonsense by Jean Bricmont Pdf

Permeated by the author's delightful humor, this little book explains, with nearly no mathematics, the main conceptual issues associated with quantum mechanics: The issue of determinism. Does quantum mechanics signify the end of a deterministic word-view? The role of the human subject or of the "observer" in science. Since Copernicus, science has increasingly tended to dethrone Man from his formerly held special position in the Universe. But quantum mechanics, with its emphasis on the notion of observation, may once more have given a central role to the human subject. The issue of locality. Does quantum mechanics imply that instantaneous actions at a distance exist in Nature? In these pages the author offers a variety of views and answers - bad as well as good - to these questions. The reader will be both entertained and enlightened by Jean Bricmont's clear and incisive arguments.

Author : Peter Collier,David Horowitz
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Antisemitism
ISBN : 1590458613

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The Anti-Chomsky Reader by Peter Collier,David Horowitz Pdf

Author : François Cusset
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 414 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780816647323

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French Theory by François Cusset Pdf

Explores how the French theory of philosophy, which became popular during the last three decades of the twentieth century, spread to America and examines the critical practices that French theory inspired.

Author : Jeremy Stangroom,Ophelia Benson
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 215 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2006-02-09
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781441161925

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Why Truth Matters by Jeremy Stangroom,Ophelia Benson Pdf

Truth has always been a central preoccupation of philosophy in allits forms and traditions. Yet in the late twentieth century truth became suddenly rather unfashionable. The precedence given to assortedpolitical and ideological agendas, along with the rise of relativism, postmodernism and pseudoscience in academia, led to a decline both of truth as a serious subject, and an intellectual tradition thatbegan with the Enlightenment. Why Truth Matters is a timely, incisive and entertaining look at how and why modern thought and culture lost sight of the importance of truth. It is also an eloquent and inspiring argument for restoring truth to its rightful place. Jeremy Stangroom and Ophelia Benson, editors of the successful butterfliesandwheels website-itself established to "fight fashionable nonsense"-identify and debunk such senselessness, and the spurious claims made for it, in all its forms. Their account ranges over religious fundamentalism, Holocaust denial, the challenges of postmodernism and deconstruction, the wilful misinterpretation of evolutionary biology, identity politics and wishful thinking. Why Truth Matters is both a rallying cry for the enlightened vision and an essential read for anyone who's everbeen bored, frustrated, bewildered or plain enraged by the worst excesses of the fashionable intelligentsia.

Author : Jean Bricmont
Publisher : Springer
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2016-01-12
Category : Science
ISBN : 9783319258898

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Making Sense of Quantum Mechanics by Jean Bricmont Pdf

This book explains, in simple terms, with a minimum of mathematics, why things can appear to be in two places at the same time, why correlations between simultaneous events occurring far apart cannot be explained by local mechanisms, and why, nevertheless, the quantum theory can be understood in terms of matter in motion. No need to worry, as some people do, whether a cat can be both dead and alive, whether the moon is there when nobody looks at it, or whether quantum systems need an observer to acquire definite properties. The author’s inimitable and even humorous style makes the book a pleasure to read while bringing a new clarity to many of the longstanding puzzles of quantum physics.

Author : Peter Burke
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 353 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2020-09-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780300250022

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The Polymath by Peter Burke Pdf

The first history of the western polymath, from the fifteenth century to the present day From Leonardo Da Vinci to John Dee and Comenius, from George Eliot to Oliver Sacks and Susan Sontag, polymaths have moved the frontiers of knowledge in countless ways. But history can be unkind to scholars with such encyclopaedic interests. All too often these individuals are remembered for just one part of their valuable achievements. In this engaging, erudite account, renowned cultural historian Peter Burke argues for a more rounded view. Identifying 500 western polymaths, Burke explores their wide-ranging successes and shows how their rise matched a rapid growth of knowledge in the age of the invention of printing, the discovery of the New World and the Scientific Revolution. It is only more recently that the further acceleration of knowledge has led to increased specialisation and to an environment that is less supportive of wide-ranging scholars and scientists. Spanning the Renaissance to the present day, Burke changes our understanding of this remarkable intellectual species.

Author : Colin Davis
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0415316081

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After Poststructuralism by Colin Davis Pdf

"After Poststructuralism is an accessible account of the past and present fortunes of theory, suitable for anyone researching, teaching or studying in the field. However, it offers much more than this, by tracing the real contribution of poststructuralist thought to core philosophical and critical issues. Most importantly, Colin Davis's study offers a way forward for the humanities - a way forward in which theory will play a crucial part."--BOOK JACKET.

Author : Shaun Best
Publisher : SAGE
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2003-02-24
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0761965335

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A Beginner's Guide to Social Theory by Shaun Best Pdf

Offering a comprehensive overview of social theory from classical sociology to the present day, this text guides students through the work of Durkheim, Marx and Weber, feminism, postmodernism and contemporary thinkers like Foucault.

Author : Magda Stroinska
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 1571812024

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Relative Points of View by Magda Stroinska Pdf

The relationship between language and various kinds of non-linguistic behavior has been of great fascination for many of those working in the fields of cultural anthropology, linguistics, and philosophy, or, broadly understood, cultural studies. The authors in this volume explore this relationship in a number of cultures and social contexts and discuss the problem of linguistic relativism and its application to several areas of social interaction across cultures. The authors deal with such questions as how language and culture intersect resulting in different points of view on reality that are all equally authentic and rooted in experience. The question of the influence of language and culture on our perceptino of physical and social reality is re-examined for such domains as politics, commerce, working with people, religion, and gender relations.