The physicist who wrote the notorious 1996 "transformative hermeneutics" paper satirizing postmodernist sophists goes on to give these Enlightenment-rejecting "sociologists of science" a well-deserved further bashing. He somewhat surprisingly finds a link between postmodernism and pseudoscience and classifies organized religions as pseudosciences. He also essays religion's massive delusionality, its implications for politics, and the danger it poses for civilizational survival.

Sokal's original hoax was hilarious, and his analysis of the french intellectual impostors even more so.

He now puts forward almost all organized religion as pseudo-science. I don't find it particularly offensive, but a bit sad that he does not seem to recognize that there are more ways than one to state, say or proclaim a message. According to Sokal, a scientific mindset almost necessarily leads to atheism. Given that Sokal has such a prominent place in the criticism of some very shoddy thinking that has been presented as serious science, I find it unfortunate that he ties this position to a pretty naive form of atheism. ( )

Postmodernism Turned Upside Down

I remember vaguely in my pre-academic days about this guy who wrote a spoof on postmodernism which was published by a journal. It hit the ivory tower like an earthquake and the so-called elitists were never the same after it. It was the moment we entered the post-postmodern age.

That man was Alan Sokal, NYU physicist, and his book "Beyond The Hoax" is a behind the scenes look at the article that rocked the Annales School of philosophy. Since I had never read the original article, I almost had to read the first section twice, first the article on its own, then going back to read Sokal's annotations. It is really quite remarkable what he got away with.

The primary motivations behind Sokal's philosophical critiques against postmodernism are simple: postmodernism was an elitist philosophy which undermined the shared commitment to the struggle for social justice. Throughout the book, you do get the sense of Sokal's own secular humanist convictions, progressivism without the pretension and condescension.

Perhaps even better are the series of essays he includes after his article hoax. In his polemic against the radical-social-constructivist philosophizing in "Science Studies," Sokal argues that it became an all-purpose tool with which to discredit any emperical study whose conclusions one dislikes. Like all hypocrites, the radical postmodernists are guilty of selectivity and reductionism that they so boldly proclaim they are against. The most fascinating of the essays though is "Pseudoscience and Postmodernism," where Sokal shows how paradoxically the mystical and the skeptical work to reinforce each other. Perhaps less well-thought out however is his essay "Religion, Politics, and Survival" where Sokal is clearly out of his depth when discussing topics related to Islam.

Overall, I found this to be one of the best philosophical books I've ever read. Sokal is straight-forward, exploratory, and sufficiently intriguing to read. I recommend this to anyone who wants an intellectual response to postmodernism. ( )

Sokal examines our understanding of what science means, and what it means to do science and use science in cultural theory. As a work of metatheory this is important for understanding what we do when we construct theory.