Alan Sokal

Infobox Scientist
name = Alan Sokal

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birth_date = 1955
birth_place = United States of America
death_date =
death_place =
residence = United States, Nicaragua, Great Britain
citizenship = American
ethnicity =
field = Physics, Mathematics, Philosophy of Science
work_institutions = New York University
National Autonomous University of Nicaragua
University College London
alma_mater = Princeton University (doctorate)
doctoral_advisor = Arthur Wightman
known_for = Sokal Affair
prizes =

Alan David Sokal (born 1955) is a professor of physics and faculty member of the physics department at New York University. In January 2006, he was appointed as the Chair of Statistical Mechanics & Combinatorics at University College London.

Academic career

Advised by Arthur Wightman, he received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1981. In an often-cited aspect of his personal history, Sokal taught mathematics at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua in the summers of 1986-1988, during the rule of the Sandinistas.

okal Affair

Sokal is best known to the general public for the Sokal Affair of 1996. Curious to see whether the then-non-peer-reviewed postmodern cultural studies journal "Social Text" (published by Duke University Press) would publish a submission which "flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions," Sokal submitted for publication a grand-sounding but largely nonsensical paper entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." [ cite journal | author= Sokal A. | title =Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity |year= 1996 | journal = Social Text |volume= 46/47| pages= 217–252| url=http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0164-2472%28199621%2F22%290%3A46%2F47%3C217%3ATTBTAT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S | doi =10.2307/466856] [ [http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity ] ]

The journal did publish it, and Sokal then revealed the hoax in the journal "Lingua Franca" [cite journal | author= Sokal A. | title = A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies | journal = Lingua Franca|year= 1996 | pages= 62–64 | url=http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/lingua_franca_v4.pdf] , arguing that the left and social science would be better served by intellectual underpinnings based on reason. He replied to leftist and postmodernist criticism of the deception by saying that his motivation had been to "defend the Left from a trendy segment of itself."

The affair, together with Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt's book "Higher Superstition", can be considered to be the beginnings of the so-called Science wars.

Thought

Sokal followed up by co-authoring the book "Impostures Intellectuelles" with Jean Bricmont in 1997 (published in English, a year later, as "Fashionable Nonsense"). The book accuses other academics of using scientific and mathematical terms incorrectly and criticizes proponents of the strong program for denying the value of truth. The book had mixed reviews, with some lauding the effort, some more reserved, and others pointing out alleged inconsistencies and criticizing the authors for ignorance of the fields under attack and taking passages out of context.

In 2008, Sokal revisited the Sokal affair and its implications in "Beyond the Hoax".

In physics, Sokal's research interests include statistical mechanics, quantum field theory, mathematical physics, and computational physics.

Quotes

*But why did I do it? I confess that I'm an unabashed Old Leftist who never quite understood how deconstruction was supposed to help the working class. And I'm a stodgy old scientist who believes, naively, that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them.
*Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor.)

ee also

*Cargo cult science
*Fashionable Nonsense
*Beyond the Hoax

References

External links

*
* [http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Mathematics/staff/ASokal.html University College London]
* [http://www.physics.nyu.edu/people/sokal.alan.html New York University]
* [http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"]
* [http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/index.html Alan Sokal on the Social Text Affair]