Full name: Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

Authors: Alan Sokal, Jean Bricmont Year: 1997 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Philosophy, Science, Non Fiction, Politics Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9780312204075 0312204078

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. Similar books: A House Built on Sand by Noretta Koertge Beyond the Hoax by Alan Sokal Science and the Modern World by Alfred North Whitehead The Island of Knowledge by Marcelo Gleiser Introducing Postmodernism by Richard Appignanesi The Flight from Science and Reason by Paul R. Gross Higher Superstition by Paul R. Gross The Logic of Scientific Discovery by Karl Popper The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn The Meaning of Human Existence by Edward O. Wilson Conjectures and Refutations by Karl Popper A Sense of the Mysterious: Science and the Human Spirit by Alan Lightman The Social Construction of What? by Ian Hacking Consilience by Edward O. Wilson Postmodernism by Christopher Butler Mutual Aid by Peter Kropotkin The Revenge of Gaia by James E. Lovelock What We Leave Behind by Derrick Jensen All Life is Problem Solving by Karl Popper 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari