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The Sokal affair, also known as the Sokal hoax, [1] was a demonstrative scholarly hoax performed by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University and University College London. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text , an academic journal of cultural studies .
Similar to the subject matter of the book, Sokal is best known for his eponymous 1996 hoaxing affair, whereby he was able to get published a deliberately absurd article that he submitted to Social Text, a critical theory journal. [4] The article itself is included in Fashionable Nonsense as an appendix. [5]
Sokal's obliviousness to this is an early indication of a complacency about his own views, and a lack of imagination about what others might be thinking, that undermines much of what follows. [5] Mermin states that "I would like to think that we are not only beyond Sokal's hoax, but beyond the science wars themselves. This book might be a small ...
Alan David Sokal (/ ˈ s oʊ k əl / SOH-kəl; born January 24, 1955) is an American professor of mathematics at University College London and professor emeritus of physics at New York University. He works with statistical mechanics and combinatorics .
The Sokal affair: Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University and University College London, wrote a paper titled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", [23] which proposed that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct.
The matter became known as the "Sokal Affair" and brought greater public attention to the wider conflict. [17] Jacques Derrida, a frequent target of "anti-relativist" criticism in the wake of Sokal's article, responded to the hoax in "Sokal and Bricmont Aren't Serious", first published in Le Monde.
The journal gained notoriety in 1996 for the Sokal affair, when it published a nonsensical article that physicist Alan Sokal had deliberately written as a hoax. The editorial board, according to Editor Andrew Ross, published the article as a good faith attempt by Sokal, a well-known physicist, to develop a social theory of his field. [3]
The affair echoed Alan Sokal's 1996 hoax in Social Text, a cultural studies journal, which inspired Boghossian, Lindsay, and Pluckrose. The trio set out with the intent to expose problems in what they called "grievance studies", referring to academic areas where they claim "a culture has developed in which only certain conclusions are allowed ...