by Alan Sokal
Nasio, Juan-David. 1992. “Le concept de sujet de l’inconscient”. Texte d’une intervention realisée dans le cadre du séminaire de Jacques Lacan “La topologie et le temps”, le mardi 15 mai 1979. In: Cinq leçons sur la théorie de Jacques Lacan. Paris: Éditions Rivages.
Nelkin, Dorothy. 1996. “What are the Science Wars really about?” Chronicle of Higher Education (July 26): A52. [See also Letters (September 6): B6–B7.]
Newton-Smith, W.H. 1981. The Rationality of Science. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Nordon, Didier. 1998. “Analyse du livre Impostures intellectuelles”. Pour la Science 243 (January).
Norris, Christopher. 1992. Uncritical Theory: Postmodernism, Intellectuals and the Gulf War. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Perrin, Jean. 1990 [1913]. Atoms. Translated by D. Ll. Hammick. Woodbridge, Conn.: Ox Bow Press. [French original: Les Atomes. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1970.]
Petitjean, Patrick. 1998. “La critique des sciences en France”. In: Impostures scientifiques: Les Malentendus de l’affaire Sokal, edited by Baudouin Jurdant. Paris: La Découverte/Alliage, pp. 118–133.
Pinker, Steven. 1995. The Language Instinct. London: Penguin.
Plotnitsky, Arkady. 1997. “‘But it is above all not true’: Derrida, relativity, and the ‘science wars’”. Postmodern Culture 7, no. 2. Available on-line at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/v007/7.2plotnitsky.html
Poincaré, Henri. 1952 [1909]. Science and Method. Translated by Francis Maitland. New York: Dover. [French original: Science et méthode. Paris: Flammarion, 1909.]
Pollitt, Katha. 1996. “Pomolotov cocktail”. The Nation (10 June): 9.
Popper, Karl R. 1959. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Translation prepared by the author with the assistance of Julius Freed and Lan Freed. London: Hutchinson.
Popper, Karl. 1974. “Replies to my critics”. In: The Philosophy of Karl Popper, vol. 2, edited by Paul A. Schilpp. LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Company.
Prigogine, Ilya and Isabelle Stengers. 1988. Entre le temps et l’éternité. Paris: Fayard.
Putnam, Hilary. 1974. “The ‘corroboration’ of theories”. In: The Philosophy of Karl Popper, vol. 1, pp. 221–40. Edited by Paul A. Schilpp. LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Company.
Putnam, Hilary. 1978. “A critic replies to his philosopher”. In: Philosophy As It Is, pp. 377–80. Edited by Ted Honderich and M. Burnyeat. New York: Penguin.
Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1980. “Two dogmas of empiricism”. In: From a Logical Point of View, 2nd edn., revised [1st edn. 1953]. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Ragland-Sullivan, Ellie. 1990. “Counting from 0 to 6: Lacan, ‘suture’, and the imaginary order”. In: Criticism and Lacan: Essays and Dialogue on Language, Structure, and the Unconscious, pp. 31–63. Edited by Patrick Colm Hogan and Lalita Pandit. Athens, Ga: University of Georgia Press.
Ragon, Marc. 1998. “L’affaire Sokal, blague à part”. Libération (6 octobre): 31.
Raskin, Marcus G. and Herbert J. Bernstein. 1987. New Ways of Knowing: The Sciences, Society, and Reconstructive Knowledge. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield.
Rees, Martin. 1997. Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
Revel, Jean-François. 1997. “Les faux prophètes”. Le Point (11 October): 120–1.
Richelle, Marc. 1998. Défense des sciences humaines: Vers une désokalisation? Sprimont (Belgium): Mardaga.
Robbins, Bruce. 1998. “Science-envy: Sokal, science and the police”. Radical Philosophy 88 (March/April): 2–5.
Rosenberg, John R. 1992. “The clock and the cloud: Chaos and order in El diablo mundo”. Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 26: 203–25.
Rosenberg, Martin E. 1993. Dynamic and thermodynamic tropes of the subject in Freud and in Deleuze and Guattari. Postmodern Culture 4, no. 1. Available online at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/v004/4.1rosenberg.html
Roseveare, N.T. 1982. Mercury’s Perihelion from Le Verrier to Einstein. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Ross, Andrew. 1995. “Science backlash on technoskeptics”. The Nation 261(10) (2 October): 346–50.
Ross, Andrew. 1996. “Introduction”. Social Text 46/47 (Spring/Summer): 1–13.
Rötzer, Florian. 1994. Conversations with French Philosophers. Translated from the German by Gary E. Aylesworth. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press.
Roudinesco, Elisabeth. 1997. Jacques Lacan. Translated by Barbara Bray. New York: Columbia University Press. [French original: Jacques Lacan: Esquisse d’une vie, histoire d’un système de pensée. Paris: Fayard, 1993.]
Roudinesco, Elisabeth. 1998. “Sokal et Bricmont sont-ils des imposteurs?” L’Infini 62 (été): 25–27.
Roustang, François. 1990. The Lacanian Delusion. Translated by Greg Sims. New York: Oxford University Press. [French original: Lacan, de l’équivoque à l’impasse. Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1986.]
Ruelle, David. 1991. Chance and Chaos. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Ruelle, David. 1994. “Where can one hope to profitably apply the ideas of chaos?” Physics Today 47(7) (July): 24–30.
Russell, Bertrand. 1948. Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Russell, Bertrand. 1949 [1920]. The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, 2nd edn. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Russell, Bertrand. 1961a. History of Western Philosophy, 2nd edn. London: George Allen and Unwin. [Reprinted 1991, London: Routledge.]
Russell, Bertrand. 1961b. The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903–1959. Edited by Robert E. Egner and Lester E. Denonn. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Russell, Bertrand. 1995 [1959]. My Philosophical Development. London: Routledge.
Salanskis, Jean-Michel. 1998. “Pour une épistémologie de la lecture”. In: Impostures scientifiques: Les Malentendus de l’affaire Sokal, edited by Baudouin Jurdant. Paris: La Découverte/Alliage, pp. 157–194.
Sand, Patrick. 1998. “Left conservatism?” The Nation (9 March): 6–7.
Sartori, Leo. 1996. Understanding Relativity: A Simplified Approach to Einstein’s Theories. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Scott, Janny. 1996. “Postmodern gravity deconstructed, slyly”. New York Times (18 May): 1, 22.
Serres, Michel. 1995. “Paris 1800”. In: A History of Scientific Thought: Elements of a History of Science, pp. 422–54. Edited by Michel Serres. Translated from the French. Oxford: Blackwell. [French original: Eléments d’histoire des sciences. Sous la direction de Michel Serres. Paris: Bordas, 1989, pp. 337–61.]
Shimony, Abner. 1976. “Comments on two epistemological theses of Thomas Kuhn”. In: Essays in Memory of Imre Lakatos. Edited by R. Cohen et al. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Academic Publishers.
Siegel, Harvey. 1987. Relativism Refuted: A Critique of Contemporary Epistemological Relativism. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
Silk, Joseph. 1989. The Big Bang, revised and updated edn. New York: W.H. Freeman.
Slezak, Peter. 1994. “A second look at David Bloor’s Knowledge and Social Imagery”. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 24: 336–61.
Sokal, Alan D. 1996a. “Transgressing the boundaries: Toward a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity”. Social Text 46/47 (Spring/Summer): 217–52.
Sokal, Alan. 1996b. “A physicist experiments with cultural studies”. Lingua Franca 6(4) (May/June): 62–4.
Sokal, Alan D. 1996c. “Transgressing the boundaries: An afterword”. Dissent 43(4) (Fall): 93–9. [A slightly abridged version of this article was published also in Philosophy and Literature 20(2) (October): 338–46.]
Sokal, Alan D. 1997a. “A plea for reason, evidence and logic”. New Politics 6(2) (Winter): 126–9.
Sokal, Alan D. 1997b. “Alan Sokal replies [to Stanley Aronowitz]”. Dissent 44(1) (Winter): 110–11.
Sokal, Alan D. 1998. “What the Social Text affair does and does not prove”. In: A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmoderni
st Myths About Science, edited by Noretta Koertge. New York: Oxford University Press.
Staune, Jean. 1998. “Le Réel voilé et la fin des certitudes”. Convergences 6 (printemps).
Stengers, Isabelle. 1997. “Un impossible débat”. Interview with Eric de Bellefroid. La Libre Belgique (1 October): 21.
Stengers, Isabelle. 1998. “La guerre des sciences: et la paix?” In: Impostures scientifiques: Les Malentendus de l’affaire Sokal, edited by Baudouin Jurdant. Paris: La Découverte/Alliage, pp. 268–292.
Stove, D.C. 1982. Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Sturrock, John. 1998. “Le pauvre Sokal”. London Review of Books 20(14) (16 July): 8–9.
Sussmann, Hector J. and Raphael S. Zahler. 1978. “Catastrophe theory as applied to the social and biological sciences: A critique”. Synthese 37: 117–216.
Taylor, Edwin F. and John Archibald Wheeler. 1966. Spacetime Physics. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
University of Warwick. 1997. “DeleuzeGuattari and Matter: A conference”. Philosophy Department, University of Warwick (UK), 18–19 October. Conference description available on-line at http://www.csv.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/Philosophy/matter.html
Van Dyck, Robert S., Jr, Paul B. Schwinberg and Hans G. Dehmelt. 1987. “New high-precision comparison of electron and positron g factors”. Physical Review Letters 59: 26–9.
Van Peer, Willie. 1998. “Sense and nonsense of chaos theory in literary studies”. In: The Third Culture: Literature and Science, pp. 40–48. Edited by Elinor S. Shaffer. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Vappereau, Jean Michel. 1985. Essaim: Le groupe fondamental du nœud. Psychanalyse et Topologie du Sujet. Paris: Point Hors Ligne.
Vappereau, Jean Michel. 1995. “Surmoi”. Encyclopaedia Universalis 21: 885–9.
Virilio, Paul. 1984. L’Espace critique. Paris: Christian Bourgois.
Virilio, Paul. 1989. “Trans-Appearance”. Translated by Diana Stoll. Artforum 27, no. 10 (1 June): 129–30.
Virilio, Paul. 1990. L’Inertie polaire. Paris: Christian Bourgois.
Virilio, Paul. 1991. The Lost Dimension. Translated by Daniel Moshenberg. New York: Semiotext(e). [French original: see Virilio 1984.]
Virilio, Paul. 1993. “The third interval: A critical transition”. Translated by Tom Conley. In Rethinking Technologies, pp. 3–12, edited by Verena Andermatt Conley on behalf of the Miami Theory Collective. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Virilio, Paul. 1995. La Vitesse de libération. Paris: Galilée.
Virilio, Paul. 1997. Open Sky. Translated by Julie Rose. London: Verso. [French original: see Virilio 1995.]
Weill, Nicolas. “La mystification pédagogique du professeur Sokal”. Le Monde (20 December): 1, 16.
Weinberg, Steven. 1977. The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe. New York: Basic Books.
Weinberg, Steven. 1992. Dreams of a Final Theory. New York: Pantheon. Weinberg, Steven. 1995. “Reductionism Redux”. New York Review of Books 42 (15) (5 October): 39–42.
Weinberg, Steven. 1996a. “Sokal’s hoax”. New York Review of Books 43(13) (8 August): 11–15.
Weinberg, Steven et al. 1996b. “Sokal’s hoax: An exchange”. New York Review of Books 43(15) (3 October): 54–6.
Willis, Ellen. 1996. “My Sokaled life”. Village Voice (25 June): 20–1.
Willis, Ellen et al. 1998. “Epistemology and vinegar”. [Letters in response to Sand 1998.] The Nation (11 May): 2, 59–60.
Zahler, Raphael S. and Hector J. Sussmann, 1977. “Claims and accomplishments of applied catastrophe theory”. Nature 269: 759–63.
Zarlengo, Kristina. 1998. “J’accuse!” Lingua Franca 8(3) (April): 10–11.
INDEX
‘abuse’, definition of 4–6
acceleration 160
Albert, David 176n, 255n
Albert, Michael xii, 2n, 192n
Allen, Woody 25
Althusser, Louis 17
ambiguity 50, 81–2, 85–6, 179
analogy 9–10
Andreski, Stanislav 1, 10, 42, 46, 194n
anthropology 183–5
anti-foundationalism 173n, 196
argument from authority 11, 56, 178–9
Aristotle 31, 33, 68, 71
Aronowitz, Stanley 242, 243
arrow of time 13n, 125
astrology 59, 65, 77, 175
atomic theory 69, 126–7
axiom of choice 8, 42–4, 171, 247
Badiou, Alain 171–2
Barnes, Barry 80–85, 175n, 193
Barthes, Roland 4, 37
Baudrillard, Jean 3n, 4, 7, 137–43
Bergson, Henri xii, 170
Big Bang 98–9, 125, 143n, 149
Bloor, David 79–85, 175n, 193
Boghossian, Paul 2n, 184n
Bohr, Niels 77, 242
Bourbaki, Nicolas 34, 45
calculus 47, 127n, 150–55
Cantor, Georg 29n, 39n, 40, 43n, 44n
Cantor’s paradox 29n, 45n
cardinal 43n
countable 43n
of the continuum 43n
cardinality of the continuum, see power of the continuum
cardinals, transfinite 146
catastrophe theory 127–8
Cauchy, Agustin Louis 21n, 151, 155n
chaos 13n, 125, 128–36, 140–42, 143n, 181n
Chomsky, Noam 2n, 10–11n, 177n, 189–92, 257
Cohen, Paul 43n, 171, 247
compact space 8, 21–23
complexity 135, 181n
continuum hypothesis 43, 171–2
Copenhagen interpretation 12, 13n, 76–7
corroboration 60n
countable 39n, 43n
criminal investigations 56–7, 66–7, 75, 76, 91–2
‘Culture Wars’ xii, 174n
d’Alembert, Jean 151
Darwin, Charles 65, 81, 185
Debray, Régis 167–70
Deleuze, Gilles xvi, xix, 3, 7, 145–56, 158, 194
denumerable 39n, 43n
Derrida, Jacques xviiin, xx, 3, 7, 244, 250
determinism 129–33, 177–8
discovery, context of 76
Duhem, Pierre xviin, 62n, 66n
Duhem–Quine thesis 66–7
Eagleton, Terry 187n, 189n
Ehrenreich, Barbara 2n, 192n, 196n
Einstein, Albert 4, 58, 64n, 65, 68, 81, 98–9, 115–23, 138n, 180n, 185n
Epstein, Barbara 2n, 187n, 189n, 192n
Euler, Leonhard 51–2
evolution 54n, 65, 68, 78
‘fact’, redefinition of 92–4
falsification 59–65
Feyerabend, Paul 50, 59, 72n, 73–9, 92n, 94n, 175
fluid mechanics 100–107, 177, 242
Foucault, Michel 120, 145, 151, 250
Foucault pendulum 81
Fourez, Gérard 92–4
fractal geometry 125, 127, 142, 157
frame of reference 116–20
inertial 71n
Frege, Gottlob 26, 38, 104, 108
Fuhrman, Mark 57n
Fuller, Steve 12n, 90n
Galilei, Galileo 68, 70, 71n, 74n, 81, 116, 118, 185
geometry: differential 4, 111, 245
fractal 125, 127, 142, 157
non-Euclidean 4, 137–40, 163
Riemannian 138n, 146
Gödel’s theorem 44–5, 125, 126, 128n, 145, 164, 167–70
Gross, Paul xvin, 2n, 86n, 143
Guattari, Félix 3, 7, 145–51, 156–8, 194
Halley’s comet 61, 64–5n,
Harding, Sandra 186n, 251–3
Hayles, N. Katherine 101–3, 112n, 242
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 150, 154–5n
Heisenberg, Werner 77, 242
Hobsbawm, Eric 195, 246
Holton, Gerald 2n
Hume, David 12, 26, 53, 57, 60
incommensurability of paradigms 50, 67–73
induction 57–8, 60–1, 65
infinites
imals 151–5
instrumentalism 50, 55n
integer 25–8
Irigaray, Luce 3, 97–113, 194, 242, 245
irreversibility 13n, 157
jouissance, space of 8, 19–23
justification, context of 76
knowledge, redefinition of 81n, 184–5
Kristeva, Julia xv, xviii, xixn, 3n, 4, 5n, 7, 37–47
Kuhn, Thomas 50, 59, 67–73
Lacan, Jacques xv, xvi, xviiin, xix, 3–5, 17–35, 46, 103, 104, 194
Lagrange, Joseph Louis 154, 155n
Laplace, Pierre Simon 61n, 125, 131
Latour, Bruno xv, xviin, xixn, 3, 4, 7, 85–90, 115–23, 193
Laudan, Larry 49, 59n, 66n, 83n
Lechte, John 3n, 38
‘Left Conservatism’ 196–7
Levitt, Norman xvin, 2n, 86n, 143
linearity 104n, 111, 133–5, 138, 140–1, 157, 243–5
Lodge, David 241
Lorentz transformations 118
Lyotard, Jean-François 3, 125–8, 181, 243–4
mathematical induction 25
mathematical logic 25–33, 38–45, 107–10, 128n, 167–72
Maudlin, Tim 67n, 70–2, 176n
Maxwell, James Clerk 55n, 132
‘memory of water’ 140–1
Mercury, orbit of 64, 65n, 74n, 76n
Mermin, N. David xv, 79n, 99n, 116n, 118n, 121–3, 175n
metaphor xvii, 9, 24, 37, 41, 107, 120, 137–8, 177
Milner, Jean-Claude 17
Möbius strip 18, 142–3
‘morphogenetic field’ 242, 244
Nanda, Meera 94–5
Neptune 61, 64n
‘New Age’ 73n, 191, 198, 242–4, 255n
Newton, Isaac 6–7, 68, 118, 151, 185
Newtonian mechanics 55n, 61–4, 66, 71n, 83, 99, 118, 134–5, 139, 164
nonlinearity 104n, 111, 133–5, 138, 140–1, 157, 243–5
nuclear fission 98–9
number: imaginary 23–5
irrational 23–4
natural 25–7
real 21n, 39n, 43n, 133, 153n
paradigms 50, 67–73
‘paralogy’ 128
Peano, Giuseppe 38, 167
Pinker, Steven 38n, 176–7n
Poincaré, Henri 132–3
Pollitt, Katha 2n, 194, 196n