Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture

Famed for his 1996 hoax that parodied the extreme postmodernist criticism of science, Alan Sokal here exposes many other examples of charlatanism, deflating the postmodernists of the left, the fundamentalists of the right, and the muddle-headed of all political and apolitical stripes. Sokal does revisit his infamous hoax—the original article is included in the book, with new explanatory footnotes—to illuminate issues that are with us even more pressingly today. But the book ranges far beyon...