Beyond the Hoax

When physicist Alan Sokal revealed that his 1996 article, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," published in Social Text , was a hoax, the ensuing scandal made the front page of the New York Times and caused an uproar amongst the post-modernists he had so hilariously-and convincingly-parodied. Now, in Beyond the Hoax , Sokal revisits this remarkable chapter in our intellectual history to illuminate issues that are with us even more pressingly today than they were a decade ago. Sokal´s main argument, then and now, is for the centrality of evidence in all matters of public debate. The original article, (included in the book, with new explanatory footnotes), exposed the faulty thinking and outright nonsense of the postmodernist critique of science, which asserts that facts, truth, evidence, even reality itself are all merely social constructs. Today, right wing politicians and industry executives are happily manipulating these basic tenents of postmodernism to obscure the scientific consensus on global warming, biological evolution, second-hand smoke, and a host of other issues. Indeed, Sokal shows that academic leftists have unwittingly abetted right wing ideologies by wrapping themselves in a relativistic fog where any belief is as valid as any other because all claims to truth must be regarded as equally suspect. Sokal´s goal, throughout the book, is to expose the dangers in such thinking and to defend a scientific worldview based on respect for evidence, logic, and reasoned argument over wishful thinking, superstition, and demagoguery of any kind.

Table of Contents
Part I: The Social Text Affair
1. Transgressing the boundaries: Towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity [annotated version]
2. Transgressing the boundaries: An afterword
3. Truth, reason, objectivity, and the Left
4. Science studies: Less than meets the eye
5. What the Social Text affair does and does not prove
Part II: Science and Philosophy
6. Cognitive relativism in the philosophy of science
7. Defense of a modest scientific realism
Part III: Science and Culture
8. Pseudoscience and postmodernism: Antagonists or fellow-travelers?
9. Religion, politics and survival
10. Epilogue: Epistemology and ethics
Index