Search Images Maps Play YouTube News Gmail Drive More »
My library | Help | Advanced Book Search | Web History | Sign in

Books

Fashionable Nonsense:

Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science
Front Cover
56 Reviews
Picador, 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.

What people are saying - Write a review

User ratings

5 stars
22
4 stars
17
3 stars
11
2 stars
4
1 star
2

Review: Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

User Review  - Marshall - Goodreads

Oh, how badly the Left needs more books like this, boldly championing scientific objectivity and facts over political or spiritual ideologies that abuse science to gain legitimacy and further their ... Read full review

Review: Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

User Review  - Xinyu - Goodreads

"Here, by contrast, we learn from Lacan that the structure of the neurotic subject is exactly the torus (it is no less than reality itself, cf. p. 20), from Kristeva that poetic language can be ... Read full review

All 56 reviews »

Related books

Other editions - View all

References to this book

From other books

Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory
Evaluating the Cost-Effectiveness of Counselling in Health Care
All Book Search results »

From Google Scholar

An Anthropology of Knowledge 1
Fredrik Barth, Chi-Yue Chiu, Lars Rodseth, John Robb, Alan Rumsey, Bob Simpson, James F Weiner ... - 2002 - Current Anthropology
History, Rhetoric, and Reality
KENNETH A KAVALE, STEVEN R FORNESS - Remedial and Special Education
in Special Education
Gary M Sasso - The Journal of Special Education
Separate and Better: A Special Public School Class for Students ...
James M Kauffman, Jeanmarie Bantz, Jenn McCullough - EXCEPTIONALITY
All Scholar search results »

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.

Bibliographic information