Fashionable Nonsense

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Publisher : Picador
ISBN 13 : 1466862408
Total Pages : 317 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

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Book Synopsis Fashionable Nonsense by : Alan Sokal

Download or read book Fashionable Nonsense written by Alan Sokal and published by Picador. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1996 physicist Alan Sokal published an essay in Social Text--an influential academic journal of cultural studies--touting the deep similarities between quantum gravitational theory and postmodern philosophy. Soon thereafter, the essay was revealed as a brilliant parody, a catalog of nonsense written in the cutting-edge but impenetrable lingo of postmodern theorists. The event sparked a furious debate in academic circles and made the headlines of newspapers in the U.S. and abroad. In Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science, Sokal and his fellow physicist Jean Bricmont expand from where the hoax left off. In a delightfully witty and clear voice, the two thoughtfully and thoroughly dismantle the pseudo-scientific writings of some of the most fashionable French and American intellectuals. More generally, they challenge the widespread notion that scientific theories are mere "narrations" or social constructions.

After Poststructuralism

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Publisher : Psychology Press
ISBN 13 : 9780415316095
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (16 download)

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Book Synopsis After Poststructuralism by : Colin Davis

Download or read book After Poststructuralism written by Colin Davis and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "After Poststructuralism is an accessible account of the past and present fortunes of theory, suitable for anyone researching, teaching or studying in the field. However, it offers much more than this, by tracing the real contribution of poststructuralist thought to core philosophical and critical issues. Most importantly, Colin Davis's study offers a way forward for the humanities - a way forward in which theory will play a crucial part."--BOOK JACKET.

Intellectual Impostures

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Publisher : Profile Books
ISBN 13 : 1847657826
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (476 download)

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Book Synopsis Intellectual Impostures by : Jean Bricmont

Download or read book Intellectual Impostures written by Jean Bricmont and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2011-05-26 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Intellectual Impostures was published in France, it sent shock waves through the Left Bank establishment. When it was published in Britain, it provoked impassioned debate. Sokal and Bricmont examine the canon of French postmodernists - Lacan, Kristeva, Baudrillard, Irigaray, Latour, Virilio, Deleuze and Guattari - and systematically expose their abuse of science. This edition contains a new preface analysing the reactions to the book and answering some of the attacks.

Beyond the Hoax

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Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191623342
Total Pages : 771 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (916 download)

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Book Synopsis Beyond the Hoax by : Alan Sokal

Download or read book Beyond the Hoax written by Alan Sokal and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-02-11 with total page 771 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1996, Alan Sokal, a Professor of Physics at New York University, wrote a paper for the cultural-studies journal Social Text, entitled 'Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity'. It was reviewed, accepted and published. Sokal immediately confessed that the whole article was a hoax - a cunningly worded paper designed to expose and parody the style of extreme postmodernist criticism of science. The story became front-page news around the world and triggered fierce and wide-ranging controversy. Sokal is one of the most powerful voices in the continuing debate about the status of evidence-based knowledge. In Beyond the Hoax he turns his attention to a new set of targets - pseudo-science, religion, and misinformation in public life. 'Whether my targets are the postmodernists of the left, the fundamentalists of the right, or the muddle-headed of all political and apolitical stripes, the bottom line is that clear thinking, combined with a respect for evidence, are of the utmost importance to the survival of the human race in the twenty-first century.' The book also includes a hugely illuminating annotated text of the Hoax itself, and a reflection on the furore it provoked.

Intellectual Impostures

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (855 download)

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Book Synopsis Intellectual Impostures by : Alan D. Sokal

Download or read book Intellectual Impostures written by Alan D. Sokal and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Crying of Lot 49

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101594608
Total Pages : 134 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (15 download)

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Book Synopsis The Crying of Lot 49 by : Thomas Pynchon

Download or read book The Crying of Lot 49 written by Thomas Pynchon and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-06-13 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years “The comedy crackles, the puns pop, the satire explodes.”—The New York Times “The work of a virtuoso with prose . . . His intricate symbolic order [is] akin to that of Joyce’s Ulysses.”—Chicago Tribune “A puzzle, an intrigue, a literary and historical tour de force.”—San Francsisco Examiner The highly original satire about Oedipa Maas, a woman who finds herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy. When her ex-lover, wealthy real-estate tycoon Pierce Inverarity, dies and designates her the coexecutor of his estate, California housewife Oedipa Maas is thrust into a paranoid mystery of metaphors, symbols, and the United States Postal Service. Traveling across Southern California, she meets some extremely interesting characters, and attains a not inconsiderable amount of self-knowledge.

McCloskey's Rhetoric

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134373201
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (343 download)

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Book Synopsis McCloskey's Rhetoric by : Benjamin Balak

Download or read book McCloskey's Rhetoric written by Benjamin Balak and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-11-25 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rhetoric of economics has long claimed scientific objectivity, however the late, great economist Joan Robinson argued that ‘the purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.’ This unique book examines the use of rhetoric in economics, focusing on the work of Deirdre McCloskey and other major economic philosophers. McCloskey is one of the most recognizable names in economics, yet this is the first real attempt to analyze her work in book form. She views economics as a language that uses all the rhetorical devices of everyday conversation, and her controversial standpoint on judging economics by aesthetic and literary standards has been hugely influential. Utilizing the views of Derrida and Foucualt amongst others, Benjamin Balak analyzes McCloskey’s major texts and critically evaluates the linguistic, literary and philosophical approaches they introduce. This long overdue examination of the methodological and philosophical consequences of McCloskey’s work will be of interest to philosophers and economists alike.

(in)fusion Approach

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Publisher : University Press of America
ISBN 13 : 9780761834649
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (346 download)

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Book Synopsis (in)fusion Approach by : Ranjan Ghosh

Download or read book (in)fusion Approach written by Ranjan Ghosh and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2006 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (In)fusion theory challenges efforts to see theory as inhibiting by presenting an approach that is innovative, eclectic, and subtle in order to draw out competing and constellating ideas and opinions. This collected volume of essays examines (In)fusion theory and demonstrates how the theory can be applied to the reading of various works of Indian English novelists.

Knowledge and the World: Challenges Beyond the Science Wars

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Author :
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 3662081296
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Knowledge and the World: Challenges Beyond the Science Wars by : Martin Carrier

Download or read book Knowledge and the World: Challenges Beyond the Science Wars written by Martin Carrier and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fundamental question whether, or in which sense, science informs us about the real world has pervaded the history of thought since antiquity. Is what science tells us about the world determined unambiguously by facts or does the content of any scientific theory in some way depend on the human condition? "Sokal`s hoax" added a new dimension to this controversial debate, which very quickly came to been known as "Science Wars". "Knowledge and the World" examines and reviews the broad range of philosophical positions on this issue, stretching from realism to relativism, to expound the epistemic merits of science, and to address the central question: in which sense can science justifiably claim to provide a truthful portrait of reality? This book addresses everyone interested in the philosophy and history of science, and in particular in the interplay between the social and natural sciences.

Why Psychoanalysis?

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231518420
Total Pages : 199 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Why Psychoanalysis? by : Elisabeth Roudinesco

Download or read book Why Psychoanalysis? written by Elisabeth Roudinesco and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2004-03-10 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do some people still choose psychoanalysis-Freud's so-called talking cure-when numerous medications are available that treat the symptoms of psychic distress so much faster? Elisabeth Roudinesco tackles this difficult question, exploring what she sees as a "depressive society": an epidemic of distress addressed only by an increasing reliance on prescription drugs. Far from contesting the efficacy of new medications like Prozac, Zoloft, and Viagra in alleviating the symptoms of any number of mental or nervous conditions, Roudinesco argues that the use of such drugs fails to solve patients' real problems. In the man who takes Viagra without ever wondering why he is suffering from impotence and the woman who is given antidepressants to deal with the loss of a loved one, Roudinesco sees a society obsessed with efficiency and desperate for the quick fix. She argues that "the talking cure" and pharmacology represent not just different approaches to psychiatry, but different worldviews. The rush to treat symptoms is itself symptomatic of an antiseptic and depressive culture in which thought is reduced to the firing of neurons and desire is just a chemical secretion. In contrast, psychoanalysis testifies to human freedom and the power of language.

Whitehead's Pancreativism

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Author :
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
ISBN 13 : 311032976X
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Whitehead's Pancreativism by : Michel Weber

Download or read book Whitehead's Pancreativism written by Michel Weber and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whitehead's Pancreativism: The Basics has provided tools to understand Whitehead secundum Whitehead. We now seek to bring him in dialogue with James. It will be a pragmatic dialogue looking for two types of synergy: to establish the relevance of a Jamesian background to read Whitehead, and to adumbrate how Whitehead can help us understand the stakes of James's works. After one hundred years of scholarship, it appears that James's legacy has mainly been studied from the perspective of his own blend of pragmatism and that this blend has moreover chiefly been put into dialogue with Peirce and analytic philosophy at large. This double interpretational shift has allowed James to keep a fair amount of visibility on the academic scene but, over the years, it has significantly obliterated his vision. It is time to rediscover James from the perspective of his radical empiricism.

The New Century

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317546938
Total Pages : 457 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (175 download)

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Book Synopsis The New Century by : Keith Ansell-Pearson

Download or read book The New Century written by Keith Ansell-Pearson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-03 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume covers the period between the 1890s and 1930s, a period that witnessed revolutions in the arts and society which set the agenda for the rest of the century. In philosophy, the period saw the birth of analytic philosophy, the development of new programmes and new modes of inquiry, the emergence of phenomenology as a new rigorous science, the birth of Freudian psychoanalysis, and the maturing of the discipline of sociology. This period saw the most influential work of a remarkable series of thinkers who reviewed, evaluated and transformed 19th-century thought. A generation of thinkers - among them, Henri Bergson, Emile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Karl Jaspers, Max Scheler, and Ludwig Wittgenstein - completed the disenchantment of the world and sought a new re-enchantment.

Archives and Recordkeeping

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Publisher : Facet Publishing
ISBN 13 : 185604825X
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (56 download)

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Book Synopsis Archives and Recordkeeping by : Caroline Brown

Download or read book Archives and Recordkeeping written by Caroline Brown and published by Facet Publishing. This book was released on 2013-11-23 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking text demystifies archival and recordkeeping theory and its role in modern day practice. The book's great strength is in articulating some of the core principles and issues that shape the discipline and the impact and relevance they have for the 21st century professional. Using an accessible approach, it outlines and explores key literature and concepts and the role they can play in practice. Leading international thinkers and practitioners from the archives and records management world, Jeannette Bastian, Alan Bell, Anne Gilliland, Rachel Hardiman, Eric Ketelaar, Jennifer Meehan and Caroline Williams, consider the concepts and ideas behind the practicalities of archives and records management to draw out their importance and relevance. Key topics covered include: • Concepts, roles and definitions of records and archives • Archival appraisal • Arrangement and description • Ethics for archivists and records managers • Archives, memories and identities • The impact of philosophy on archives and records management • Does technological change marginalize recordkeeping theory? Readership: This is essential reading for students and educators in archives and recordkeeping and invaluable as a guide for practitioners who want to better understand and inform their day-to-day work. It is also a useful guide across related disciplines in the information sciences and humanities.

Reassembling the Social

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Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191622893
Total Pages : 813 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (916 download)

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Book Synopsis Reassembling the Social by : Bruno Latour

Download or read book Reassembling the Social written by Bruno Latour and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2007-09-06 with total page 813 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reassembling the Social is a fundamental challenge from one of the world's leading social theorists to how we understand society and the 'social'. Bruno Latour's contention is that the word 'social', as used by Social Scientists, has become laden with assumptions to the point where it has become misnomer. When the adjective is applied to a phenomenon, it is used to indicate a stablilized state of affairs, a bundle of ties that in due course may be used to account for another phenomenon. But Latour also finds the word used as if it described a type of material, in a comparable way to an adjective such as 'wooden' or 'steely'. Rather than simply indicating what is already assembled together, it is now used in a way that makes assumptions about the nature of what is assembled. It has become a word that designates two distinct things: a process of assembling; and a type of material, distinct from others. Latour shows why 'the social' cannot be thought of as a kind of material or domain, and disputes attempts to provide a 'social explanations' of other states of affairs. While these attempts have been productive (and probably necessary) in the past, the very success of the social sciences mean that they are largely no longer so. At the present stage it is no longer possible to inspect the precise constituents entering the social domain. Latour returns to the original meaning of 'the social' to redefine the notion, and allow it to trace connections again. It will then be possible to resume the traditional goal of the social sciences, but using more refined tools. Drawing on his extensive work examining the 'assemblages' of nature, Latour finds it necessary to scrutinize thoroughly the exact content of what is assembled under the umbrella of Society. This approach, a 'sociology of associations', has become known as Actor-Network-Theory, and this book is an essential introduction both for those seeking to understand Actor-Network Theory, or the ideas of one of its most influential proponents.

Science Wars through the Stargate

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Author :
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1442256206
Total Pages : 211 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (422 download)

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Book Synopsis Science Wars through the Stargate by : Steven Gil

Download or read book Science Wars through the Stargate written by Steven Gil and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-10-08 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of an elite team of scientists and soldiers who travel to other worlds through an alien-built portal, Stargate SG-1 gave its viewers a weekly dose of spectacle and high adventure. Over its ten-season run (1997-2007), the series explored the interactions of the scientific and military cultures represented by its characters, as well as the place of science in society. The initial airing of Stargate SG-1 coincided with the “Science Wars,” a highly public clash among scholars and public intellectuals over the nature and value of scientific knowledge. Critics of science argued that it was merely one form of knowledge among many, subject to biases and blind spots imposed by the culture in which it was created. Defenders of science—mostly scientists themselves—contended that it possessed a unique ability to uncover universal truths, and thus was uniquely valuable to society. In Science Wars through the Stargate: Explorations of Science and Society in Stargate SG-1, Steven Gil offers the first in-depth analysis of the series and places it in the context of contemporary debates about the nature of scientific thought. Gil contends that representations of science within SG-1 can be more fully understood through the prism of the Science Wars. Scientific ideas put forth in SG-1 demonstrate how such complex intellectual exchanges and debates have a place in popular culture and can be further understood through these fictional articulations. Although SG-1 serves as the principal case study, the analysis also casts light on the role and position of science in science fiction television more generally. The long-form narrative of Stargate SG-1 enabled it to engage, in sophisticated ways, with many of the questions at issue in the Science Wars. As the author illustrates, the show presented a complex, sophisticated portrait of science and scientists at a time when the scientific enterprise was under intense public scrutiny. Science Wars through the Stargate will be of interest to science fiction scholars and fans of the series, but also to those interested in the public’s evolving understanding of science and its role in society.

Easternization of the West

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317260910
Total Pages : 449 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (172 download)

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Book Synopsis Easternization of the West by : Colin Campbell

Download or read book Easternization of the West written by Colin Campbell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative and groundbreaking book, Colin Campbell shows that the civilization of the West is undergoing a revolutionary process of change, one in which features that have characterized the West for two thousand years are in the process of being marginalized, to be replaced by those more often associated with the civilizations of the East. Moving far beyond popular trends, Campbell assembles a powerful range of evidence to show how "Easternization" has been building throughout the last century, especially since the 1960s. Campbell demonstrates how it was largely in the 1960s that new interpretations in theology, political thought, and science were widely adopted by a new generation of young "culture carriers." This highly original and wide-ranging book advances a thesis that will be of interest to scholars in many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.

Theory's Empire

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231508697
Total Pages : 739 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Theory's Empire by : Daphne Patai

Download or read book Theory's Empire written by Daphne Patai and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2005-04-20 with total page 739 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Not too long ago, literary theorists were writing about the death of the novel and the death of the author; today many are talking about the death of Theory. Theory, as the many theoretical ism's (among them postcolonialism, postmodernism, and New Historicism) are now known, once seemed so exciting but has become ossified and insular. This iconoclastic collection is an excellent companion to current anthologies of literary theory, which have embraced an uncritical stance toward Theory and its practitioners. Written by nearly fifty prominent scholars, the essays in Theory's Empire question the ideas, catchphrases, and excesses that have let Theory congeal into a predictable orthodoxy. More than just a critique, however, this collection provides readers with effective tools to redeem the study of literature, restore reason to our intellectual life, and redefine the role and place of Theory in the academy.