Dear Dr. Lauchlan A. K. Mackinnon and List
Regarding the Sokal Affair you may find the so called "Bogdanov Affair" an
interesting example of a possible "reverse Sokal" hoax. According to
wikipedia the "Bogdanov Affair is an academic dispute regarding the
legitimacy of a series of theoretical physics papers written by French twin
brothers Igor and Grichka Bogdanov".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_Affair
-snip-
postmodern thinking tends to have communication problems (it can appear
wooly and often if there is a way to say something in a more pretentious and
complicated way then that is preferred to any simple and direct form of
communication), and credibility problems (e.g. the tendency of post-modern
theorists to take a misnuderstanding of physics and apply it as an
authoritative source to whatever problem domain they are interested in, e.g.
see Alan Sokal's hoax article on the quantum hermeneutics of gravity). The
fact that anyone can easily jump on the bandwagon and pontificate, and that
the relativism that tends to come with the framework blurs the line between
better or worse lines of thinking, makes the whole framework of thought
rather problematic in my view.
-snip-
Luke
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