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Alan David Sokal (/ˈsoʊkəl/; born 1955) is a professor of mathematics at University College London and professor of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. He is best known to the wider public for his criticism of postmodernism, after the Sokal affair in 1996 when his deliberately nonsensical paper was published by Duke University's Social Text. He also works to counter faulty scientific reasoning, as seen with his involvement in criticising the critical positivity ratio concept in positive psychology.
Sokal received his B.A. from Harvard College in 1976 and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1981. He was advised by Arthur Wightman. In the summers of 1986-1988, Sokal taught mathematics at the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua, when the Sandinistas were heading the elected government.
Sokal’s research lies in mathematical physics and combinatorics. In particular, he studies the interplay between these fields based on questions arising in statistical mechanics and quantum field theory. This includes work on the chromatic polynomial and the Tutte polynomial, which appear both in algebraic graph theory and in the study of phase transitions in statistical mechanics. His interests include computational physics and algorithms, such as Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms for problems in statistical physics. He also co-authored a book on quantum triviality.
Sokal (Ukrainian: Сокаль, translit. Sokal’) is a city located on the banks of the Bug River in Lviv Oblast of western Ukraine. It serves as the administrative center of Sokal Raion (district). Population: 21,386 (2013 est.).
Until 1951 the town was located in Poland, and then transferred to the Soviet Union in the framework of 1951 Polish–Soviet territorial exchange.
First written mention of Sokal comes from 1377. In 1424, it received Magdeburg rights from prince of Mazovia Ziemowit, and in 1462, the town became part of Belz Voivodeship, Lesser Poland Province of the Polish Crown. On August 2, 1519, a Polish - Lithuanian army under Hetman Konstanty Ostrogski lost here a battle with Crimean Tatars, after which the town was completely burned by the invaders. Mikolaj Sep-Szarzynski later dedicated one of his poems to this battle.
The town remained in Poland until the first partition of Poland, when it was annexed by the Habsburg Empire, as part of Galicia. It was the capital of the Sokal district, one of the 78 Bezirkshauptmannschaften in Austrian Galicia province (Crown land) in 1900. After World War One, the fate of this province was disputed between Poland and Soviet Russia, until the Peace of Riga in 1921, attributing Eastern Galicia to Poland. In the Second Polish Republic, Sokal was the seat of a county in Lwow Voivodeship.
Jean Bricmont (French: [bʁikmɔ̃]; born 12 April 1952) is a Belgian theoretical physicist, philosopher of science and a professor at the Université catholique de Louvain. He works on renormalization group and nonlinear differential equations.
He is mostly known to the non-academic audience for co-authoring Fashionable Nonsense (published in the Commonwealth as Intellectual Impostures) with Alan Sokal, in which they criticise relativism in the philosophy of science. Jean Bricmont also collaborates with activist Noam Chomsky and campaigns on a variety of progressive causes.
In 2005 he published Impérialisme humanitaire. Droits de l’homme, droit d’ingérence, droit du plus fort ?, published in English as Humanitarian Imperialism in 2006.
In 2006, he wrote the preface to L'Atlas alternatif - Frédéric Delorca (ed), Pantin, Temps des Cerises. He is a member of the Division of Sciences of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts of Belgium.
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (/ləˈkɑːn/;French: [ʒak lakɑ̃]; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981), known simply as Jacques Lacan, was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced many leading French intellectuals in the 1960s and the 1970s, especially those associated with post-structuralism. His ideas had a significant impact on post-structuralism, critical theory, linguistics, 20th-century French philosophy, film theory and clinical psychoanalysis.
Lacan was born in Paris, the eldest of Emilie and Alfred Lacan's three children. His father was a successful soap and oils salesman. His mother was ardently Catholic—his younger brother went to a monastery in 1929 and Lacan attended the Jesuit Collège Stanislas. During the early 1920s, Lacan attended right-wing Action Française political meetings, of which he would later be highly critical, and met the founder, Charles Maurras. By the mid-1920s, Lacan had become dissatisfied with religion and became an atheist. He quarreled with his family over this issue.
Alan may refer to:
A speech recorded by Henrik Thomé in Stockholm May 2009. Alan David Sokal is a professor of mathematics at University College London and professor of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. To the general public he is best known for his criticism of postmodernism, resulting in the Sokal affair in 1996.
Alan Sokal is an American physicist famous for successfully submitting a nonsense hoax article to a postmodernist journal (Journal "Social Text", the title of his article "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"). This clip is taken from a speech he gave in May 2009 to the Swedish Humanist Association. He looks at the adversaries of an evidence-based worldview, including religion. To watch his entire presentation, which also includes the topics of alternative medicine and spin doctor politics, go to: http://www.humanisterna.se/video/alan-sokal-in-stockholm-may-2009-39-minuter/
"There's this thing called being so open-minded your brains drop out" http://richarddawkins.net/ Read further criticism here: http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/dawkins.html ...also from Noam Chomsky: http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#Opinion_on_cultural_criticism_of_science ...Dan Dennett: http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/postmod.tru.htm ...Steven Weinberg: http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/weinberg.html ...Victor J Stenger: http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/reality.html ...PZ Myers (sweeping remarks): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1Rzd3r3Mvc ...Michael Baum (6 videos, sweeping remarks): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grWfxsFWOFI&feature;=PlayList&p;=1...
Featuring Clifford Goldstein. The first of 10 in a series. You can find the rest at http://www.youtube.com/myaxioo This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/lic enses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.
- Agradecimiento especial a Enrique Márquez por el audio cedido amablemente - Siguiente nota, extraída de http://www.antroposmoderno.com/textos/afsokal.html CLICK EN "MOSTRAR MAS" - Cuando el físico estadounidense , profesor de la Universidad de New York, cuarenta y tres años, Alan Sokal y su colega belga Jean Bricmont demostraron que prestigiosas revistas como Social Text eran capaces de publicar un delirante artículo que combinaba terminología fisico-matemática con estrafalarias extrapolaciones a las ciencias sociales, desató una ardiente polémica que puso en el banquillo de los acusados a la obra de los popes del posmodernismo y también a algunas escuelas psicoanalíticas. "En su artículo, Sokal se atrevió a tomarles el pelo a autores franceses consagrados como Jacques Lacan, Jean B...
Le canular d'Alan Sokal et le concept d'Imposture Intellectuelle. L'incroyable philosophie postmoderne et son mésusage des notions mathématiques ou physique. L’étonnant essor des nouvelles thérapies alternatives quantiques. __________________________________ L'Affaire Sokal : http://www.sceptiques.qc.ca/dictionnaire/sokal.html https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affaire_Sokal Tous les articles d'époques de la controverse qui a suivi : http://peccatte.karefil.com/SBPresse/SokalBricmontPresse.html _________________________________ Les vidéos originales des intervenants : Yannick Verité : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHHH6Rurdik Son institut : http://www.ibmqa.fr/devenir-bioenergeticien-formation-methode-quantique/formation-bioenergeticien Christian Tal Scholler : https://www.youtube.com/wat...
Snobismo, excesos y errores teóricos de Jacques Lacan
In the world of postmodernism, 'dancing hyena' is another term for 'the sun,' and men can bear children. Who knew?! Note: The individual in question was a graduate student at the time. Imagine how much more delusional her thinking must have likely become after being further exposed to these viruses of the mind throughout the remainder of her education. Correction: An astute viewer noted that Alan Sokal is American (and not French as stated in the clip). My oversight. Sorry. One of my earlier Psychology Today articles wherein I recount the story covered in the clip: http://bit.ly/1cIHKFC Like my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Dr.Gad.Saad Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GadSaad (@GadSaad) Psychology Today Blog: http://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/gad-saad-phd ...
Aclaraciones y comentarios sobre el texto
Sinsentidos del feminismo de Luce Irigaray
Snobismo, excesos y errores teóricos de Jacques Lacan
Mezcla extraña de filosofía, ciencias físicas y matemáticas
Asociaciones bizarras entre la sociología y la teorías de Einstein
Sinsentidos de algunos filósofos de la ciencia
Snobismo, excesos y errores teóricos de Julia Kristeva
Sinsentidos de la teoría del caos y la ciencia posmoderna, así como la extraña relación entre la sociología y los espaciosn no-euclideanos
A speech recorded by Henrik Thomé in Stockholm May 2009. Alan David Sokal is a professor of mathematics at University College London and professor of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. To the general public he is best known for his criticism of postmodernism, resulting in the Sokal affair in 1996.
First upload/podcast for the "Politics, Perception and Philosophy of Physics" module 2016 - 2017. This is a module delivered by the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Nottingham. Formally it is pitched to final year undergraduates but is also open to students from lower years. Commenting policy: https://muircheart.wordpress.com/2016/10/22/welcome-to-the-bear-pit-when-public-engagement-goes-to-pot/ Module website: https://politicsperceptionphilosophyphysics.wordpress.com/the-politics-perception-and-philosophy-of-physics-f34ppp/ Module blog (featuring student coursework posts/articles): https://politicsperceptionphilosophyphysics.wordpress.com/ James Ladyman: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/school-of-arts/people/james-a-ladyman/ Kristi Winters: https://gesis.academia.edu/Kr...
Jean Bricmont, co-author with Alan Sokal of Intellectual Impostures: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science, will share his thoughts on idealism and relativism, from the perspective of a physicist. Jean Bricmont, Université Catholique de Louvain A Physicist Looks at Idealism and Relativism June 6, 2014 Preceding the 2014 Metaphysics Within and Without Physics Conference June 7-8, 2014, Western University http://logicmathphysics.ca/philosophy-physics-conference/pop-2014/ Visit the Rotman website for more information on applications, events, project descriptions and openings. http://www.rotman.uwo.ca Follow The Rotman Institute on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rotmanphilo Like The Rotman Institute on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RotmanInstitute Subscribe to our channel: https:...