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Fashionable Nonsense:

Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science
Front Cover
58 Reviews
Macmillan, Oct 29, 1999 - Philosophy - 300 pages
In 1996, Alan Sokal published an essay in the hip intellectual magazine Social Text parodying the scientific but impenetrable lingo of contemporary theorists. Here, Sokal teams up with Jean Bricmont to expose the abuse of scientific concepts in the writings of today's most fashionable postmodern thinkers. From Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva to Luce Irigaray and Jean Baudrillard, the authors document the errors made by some postmodernists using science to bolster their arguments and theories. Witty and closely reasoned, Fashionable Nonsense dispels the notion that scientific theories are mere "narratives" or social constructions, and explored the abilities and the limits of science to describe the conditions of existence.
  

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Review: Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

User Review  - Will - Goodreads

"If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me, "Why, what a most exceptionally deep young man this deep young man must be." In the wake of Sokal's celebrated hoax paper on ... Read full review

Review: Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

User Review  - Sanedevil - Goodreads

read it if you are a scientist or such intellectual. I bought the book cos the title suggested that it might be for commoners, but it isn't. sadly. It talks about scientists and such guys who abuse or cross-polinate between topics Read full review

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Contents

Introduction
1
Jacques Lacan
18
Julia Kristeva
38
Intermezzo Epistemic Relativism in the Philosophy of Science
50
Luce Irigaray
106
Bruno Latour
124
Intermezzo Chaos Theory and Postmodern Science
134
Jean Baudrillard
147
Paul Virilio
169
Godels Theorem and Set Theory Some Examples of Abuse
176
Epilogue
182
Transgressing the Boundaries Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity
212
Some Comments on the Parody
259
Transgressing the Boundaries An Afterword
268
Bibliography
281
Index
297

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
154

Common terms and phrases

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About the author (1999)

Alan Sokal is a professor of physics at New York University.

Jean Bricmont is a theoretical physicist with the Université de Louvaine in Belgium.

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