The Truth about Pythagoras
Did Pythagoras really murder the unfortunate who discovered that the square
root of 2 is irrational, and then try to cover it all up?
Read all about it...
The Sokal Affair and the "Science Wars"
The latest flare-up of animosity between C. P. Snow's "two cultures"
started with a prank by
Alan Sokal, a
physicist at NYU. He
concocted an article laced with the jargon of cultural studies,
and submitted it to
Social Text.
Would the editorial board would accept a piece utterly lacking in logic and
sense if it looked like the work of sympathetic scientist?
Yes, they did. The ensuing controversy is only now beginning to calm
down. More information - much more than almost anyone would want to read -
can be found at
Sokal's site
and the others listed below.
Of the many quotations in Sokal's article from recent philosophers and
cultural
theorists, the most celebrated is a remark of Jacques Derrida: "the
Einsteinian constant is not constant, it is the very concept of
variability." Exactly what, if anything, could be meant by this was the
subject of an
article
by Arkady Plotnitsky in
Postmodern Culture.
I had some
comments and reservations
about this, which I wrote down for the benefit of the readers of
alt.postmodern. A
shortened version of this, together with a response from Plotnitsky,
appeared later in PMC.
Some "Science Wars" links:
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