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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]
The affair, together with Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt's 1994 book Higher Superstition, can be considered to be a part of the so-called science wars. Sokal followed up in 1997 by co-authoring the book Impostures Intellectuelles with physicist and philosopher of science Jean Bricmont (published in English, a year later, as Fashionable Nonsense).
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 ...
Peter Gregory Boghossian (/ b ə ˈ ɡ oʊ z i ə n /; born July 25, 1966) [1] is an American philosopher and college professor. Born in Boston, [1] he was an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University for ten years, and his areas of academic focus include atheism, critical thinking, pedagogy, scientific skepticism, and the Socratic method.
In 1996, the journal published the paper as if it represented real scientific research, [148] an event that has come to be known as the Sokal affair. Sokal later said that he had suggested in the hoax paper that 'morphogenetic fields' constituted a cutting-edge theory of quantum gravity, adding that "This connection [was] pure invention; even ...
Lindsay and Pluckrose laughing at their grievance studies papers, in 2018. Alongside James A. Lindsay and Peter Boghossian, Pluckrose was involved in the 2017–18 grievance studies affair (also referred to as "Sokal Squared" in reference to the 1996 Sokal affair), a project which saw the group submitting a number of bogus academic papers to peer-reviewed journals in cultural, gender, queer ...
Reviewing Sokal's Beyond the Hoax, Mermin stated that "As a sign that the science wars are over, I cite the 2008 election of Bruno Latour [...] to Foreign Honorary Membership in that bastion of the establishment, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences" and opined that "we are not only beyond Sokal's hoax, but beyond the science wars themselves".