Alan Sokal

Professor of Physics, New York University

sokal@nyu.edu

Papers by Alan Sokal on the "Social Text Affair"

"Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"
This is the original "parody" article, published in Social Text #46/47, pp. 217-252 (spring/summer 1996).

Available in four formats:

"A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies"
This is the article in which I reveal the parody, published in Lingua Franca, May/June 1996, pp. 62-64.

Available in four formats:

Also available in German and in Finnish.

"Transgressing the Boundaries: An Afterword"
Here I explain in more detail why I wrote the parody. This article was submitted to Social Text but rejected by them on the grounds that it did not meet their intellectual standards. It has now appeared in Dissent 43(4), pp. 93-99 (Fall 1996) and, in slightly different form, in Philosophy and Literature 20(2), pp. 338-346 (October 1996).

Available in three formats:

"A Plea for Reason, Evidence and Logic"
Transcript of a talk presented at a forum at New York University on October 30, 1996. It was reprinted in New Politics 6(2), pp. 126-129 (Winter 1997). A slightly expanded version of this talk was presented at the Socialist Scholars Conference (New York, March 30, 1997) and was published under the title "Truth, Reason, Objectivity and the Left" in the Economic and Political Weekly (Bombay), April 18, 1998, pp. 913-914; and, in further revised form, in Mistaken Identities: The Second Wave of Controversy over "Political Correctness", edited by Cyril Levitt et al. (Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 1999), pp. 285-294.

"Les mystifications philosophiques du professeur Latour"
"Professor Latour's Philosophical Mystifications"
Reply to an article by Bruno Latour. Published in Le Monde, 31 January 1997, page 15.

"What the Social Text Affair Does and Does Not Prove"
Published in A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths about Science, edited by Noretta Koertge (Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 9-22. Reprinted, in slightly different form, in Critical Quarterly 40(2), pp. 3-18 (Summer 1998), and in After the Science Wars, edited by Keith M. Ashman and Philip S. Baringer (Routledge, January 2001). Also available in Japanese.

"Impostures Intellectuelles" / "Fashionable Nonsense" (by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont)
Book first published in French by Éditions Odile Jacob, October 1997. The second French edition -- which is much revised, and includes a new preface responding to our critics -- was published in March 1999 by Livre de Poche (price 50 FF), and can be ordered on-line from amazon.co.fr or FNAC.

The English edition was published in the UK in July 1998 by Profile Books under the title Intellectual Impostures; it can be ordered on-line from W.H. Smith or amazon.co.uk. It was published in the US in November 1998 by Picador USA, an imprint of St. Martin's Press, under the title Fashionable Nonsense; it can be ordered on-line from Barnes and Noble or amazon.com. Click here for the preface and first chapter in English.

Lecturers who are considering the book for potential student use may obtain an academic inspection copy: please direct your requests here for UK, Europe and the British Commonwealth, and here for US and Canada.

Translations into Catalan, Dutch, Farsi, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Spanish and Turkish have been published. Click here for the preface in Portuguese.

Translations into Chinese (PRC), Chinese (Taiwan) and Russian are in the works. I will post more information as it becomes available.

For reviews of Impostures Intellectuelles / Fashionable Nonsense, click here.

"The Furor over Impostures Intellectuelles"
"Les réactions face à la parution d'Impostures Intellectuelles"
"Réponse à Vincent Fleury et Yun Sun Limet"
Article, by Jean Bricmont and Alan Sokal, published in the Times Literary Supplement (London), 17 October 1997, p. 17 and, in slightly modified form, in Libération (Paris), 18-19 October 1997, p. 5.

"Du bon usage des métaphores"
Reply to an article by Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond. Published in La Recherche, November 1997, page 8.

"Les critiques de Derrida et de Dorra ratent leur cible"
Reply, by Jean Bricmont and Alan Sokal, to articles by Jacques Derrida and Max Dorra. Published in Le Monde, 12 December 1997, page 23. Also available in Portuguese and Spanish.

"Risposta a Gianni Vattimo"
Reply, by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, to Professor Vattimo's review of the Italian edition of Intellectual Impostures (La Stampa, 20 maggio 1999). Published in Il Sole 24 Ore, 23 maggio 1999.

"Science and Sociology of Science: Beyond War and Peace"
Article by Jean Bricmont and Alan Sokal, published in The One Culture?: A Conversation about Science, edited by Jay Labinger and Harry Collins (University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 27-47. Available in PDF and Postscript formats. See also our contributions to round 2 (pp. 179-183) and round 3 (pp. 243-254) of this debate, as well as our reply to Gabriel Stolzenberg's review of The One Culture? [published in Social Studies of Science 34, 107-113 (2004)].

"Modesty, Rigor and Irony: Some remarks on Prodiges et vertiges de l'analogie: De l'abus des belles lettres dans la pensée, by Jacques Bouveresse"
Article by Jean Bricmont and Alan Sokal. Published in French translation in Agone 24, 115-122 (2000); and in Spanish translation as the prologue to the Spanish edition of Bouveresse's book (Libros del Zorzal, Buenos Aires, 2001).

"Defense of a modest scientific realism"
Article by Jean Bricmont and Alan Sokal, published in Knowledge and the World: Challenges Beyond the Science Wars, edited by Martin Carrier, Johannes Roggenhofer, Günter Küppers and Philippe Blanchard (Springer-Verlag, 2004), pp. 17-45. Available in PDF and Postscript formats.

"Pseudoscience and Postmodernism: Antagonists or Fellow-Travelers?"
Essay by Alan Sokal, published in Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public, edited by Garrett G. Fagan (Routledge, 2006), pp. 286-361. Available in PDF and Postscript formats. Published in French translation, together with a very interesting preface by Jean Bricmont, by Éditions Odile Jacob (September 2005) under the title Pseudosciences et postmodernisme: Adversaires ou compagnons de route?.

"Taking the spin out of science"
Op-ed by Chris Mooney and Alan Sokal, published in the Los Angeles Times, February 4, 2007.

"Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture"
Book (486 pp.) published in March 2008 by Oxford University Press. It can be ordered on-line from amazon.co.uk, Barnes and Noble and amazon.com.

Click here for the Table of Contents and Preface. (Note that this is from my manuscript, not from the published book, so the page numbers are not exactly right.)

For reviews of Beyond the Hoax, click here.

"What is science and why should we care?"
Third annual Sense About Science lecture, given at University College London on February 27, 2008. Also available as an audio podcast on the Guardian website. A slightly modified version of this talk was given at the Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on May 27, 2009.

"Taking evidence seriously"
Published (in slightly edited form) in The Guardian online edition on February 28, 2008. Also available in Polish.

Debates

Commentary by other people

Interviews

Reviews of Impostures Intellectuelles / Fashionable Nonsense

Reviews of Beyond the Hoax

Some books of interest

Other useful Web sites on the "Social Text Affair"

physics.web@nyu.edu / Physics / GSAS / NYU

-- last modified 11 November 2009