Alan Sokal is Professor of Physics at New York University and Professor of Mathematics at University College, London. His main research interests are in statistical mechanics and quantum field theory. Among non-physicists, Sokal is probably best known for his famous parody of postmodern science criticism, known as the 'Sokal Hoax', which aroused fierce debate in cultural circles, and received widespread coverage in the media, including front-page stories in the New York Times, the International Herald and Tribune, the Observer, and Le Monde. Alongside many publications in physics, Sokal's previous books include Intellectual Impostures (with Jean Bricmont, Profile Books, 1998; published as Fashionable Nonsense by Picador in the US).

• Part I: The Social Text Affair


• 1: The parody, annotated


• 2: Transgressing the boundaries: An afterword


• 3: Truth, reason, objectivity, and the Left


• 4: Science studies: Less than meets the eye


• 5: What the Social Text affair does and does not prove


• Part II: Science and Philosophy


• 6: Cognitive relativism in the philosophy of science


• 7: Defense of a modest scientific realism


• Part III: Science and Culture


• 8: Pseudoscience and postmodernism: Antagonists or fellow-travelers?


• 9: Religion, politics and survival


• 10: Epilogue: Epistemology and ethics


• Index

Famed for his 1996 hoax that parodied the extreme postmodernist criticism of science, Alan Sokal here exposes many other examples of charlatanism, deflating the postmodernists of the left, the fundamentalists of the right, and the muddle-headed of all political and apolitical stripes. Sokal does revisit his infamous hoax--the original article is included in the book, with new explanatory footnotes--to illuminate issues that are with us even more pressingly today. But the book ranges far beyond this one famous case, to reveal for instance how conservative politicians and industry executives are happily manipulating the vaporous tenets of postmodernism to obscure the scientific consensus on global warming, biological evolution, second-hand smoke, and a host of other issues. Written with rare lucidity, a lively wit, and a keen appreciation of the real-world consequences of sloppy thinking, Beyond the Hoax offers an engaging argument for the vital importance of evidence-based science, showing that clear thinking, combined with a respect for evidence, are of the utmost importance to the survival of the human race.