X-Nico

6 unusual facts about Alan Sokal


Alan Sokal

In the summers of 1986-1988, Sokal taught mathematics at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua, when the Sandinistas were heading the elected government.

Julia Kristeva

And in Intellectual Impostures, two professors of physics, Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, devote a chapter to Julia Kristeva's use of mathematics in her writings.

Marcial Losada

The concept has been heavily criticized and many of the mathematical findings disproved by scientists such as Alan Sokal.

Mediology

Physicists Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont have criticized Debray's work for using Godel's theorem as a metaphor without understanding its basic ideas, in their book Fashionable Nonsense.

Parody science

The Sokal Affair, physicist Alan Sokal's hoax paper entitled, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" was published in the journal Social Text.

The Logic of Sense

Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont write that The Logic of Sense prefigures the style of works that Deleuze later wrote in collaboration with Félix Guattari, and that, like them, it contains passages that misuse technical scientific terms.


Pseudomathematics

French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, and Bulgarian-French philosopher Julia Kristeva have been accused of misusing mathematics in their work; see Fashionable Nonsense (1998) by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont.


see also

Fashionable Nonsense

In Jacques Derrida's response, "Sokal and Bricmont Aren't Serious," first published in Le Monde, Derrida writes that the Sokal hoax is rather "sad triste," not only because Alan Sokal's name is now linked primarily to a hoax, not to science, but also because the chance to reflect seriously on this issue has been ruined for a broad public forum that deserves better.