Alan Sokal

Alan David Sokal ( born 1955 ) is an American physicist. He was a professor of physics at New York University and also in January 2006 Professor at University College London. Sokal has become known for his attack on postmodern and poststructuralist currents in the philosophy of science and epistemology.

Sokal graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's and master's degree in 1976 (summa cum laude) and was founded in 1981 with Arthur Wightman at Princeton University PhD (An Alternate Approach to the Constructive Quantum Field Theory, and a Possible Destructive Approach to ).

Sokal deals with quantum field theory, statistical mechanics, mathematical and numerical physics and related questions in combinatorics.

He has been a visiting professor in Nicaragua in the summer months from 1986 until 1988.

Published in 1996, Sokal an article Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity ( to German about: Crossing the boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity ) in the journal Social Text, and then explained in the journal Lingua franca that he had written this article as a parody. Goal of his coup (known as the " Sokal affair" ) had been there to point to poor academic standards and abuse of mathematical and scientific metaphors in which postmodern understanding of humanities and social science scene.

In the 1997 published jointly with Jean Bricmont book Impostures. As the thinkers of postmodernism abuse Sciences ( Intellectual Impostures, Fashionable Nonsense ) argues that in the writings of authors such as Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Paul Virilio physico- mathematical mystifications could find.

Writings

  • With R. Fernandez, Jürg Fröhlich Random Walks, Critical Phenomena, and triviality in quantum field theory, Springer Verlag 1992
  • Beyond the hoax: science, philosophy and culture, Oxford University Press 2008
  • With Jean Bricmont, Fashionable nonsense: postmodern intellectuals ' abuse of science, New York, Picador 1998 ( French original: Intellectual Impostures, Paris, Odile Jacob, 1997) German: Impostures. As the thinkers of postmodernism abuse the sciences, CH Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3,406,452,744th
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