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- An Annotated Bibliography of Nonsense
Resource Type: Article
Published: 1998
Academic critics today not only question the impact of science upon society, but they also question the very idea of scientific rationality.
- Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science
Resource Type: Book
Published: 1998
The authors criticize postmodernism in academia for its misuses of scientific and mathematical concepts in postmodern writing. Fashionable Nonsense examines two related topics: (1) The incompetent and pretentious usage of scientific concepts by a small group of influential philosophers and intellectuals; (2) the problems of cognitive relativism, the idea that "modern science is nothing more than a 'myth', a 'narration' or a 'social construction' among many others". The stated goal of the book is not to attack "philosophy, the humanities or the social sciences in general...[but] to warn those who work in them (especially students) against some manifest cases of charlatanism," and in particular to "deconstruct" the notion that some books and writers are difficult because they deal with profound and difficult ideas. "If the texts seem incomprehensible, it is for the excellent reason that they mean precisely nothing." The book includes long extracts from the works of Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Paul Virilio, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, and Jean Baudrillard who are considered by some to be leading academics of Continental philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis or social sciences. Sokal and Bricmont set out to show how those intellectuals have used concepts from the physical sciences and mathematics incorrectly. The extracts are intentionally rather long to avoid accusations of taking sentences out of context.
Published in French as Impostures Intellectuelles and in the United Kingdom as Intellectual Impostures.
- Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - April 1, 2017
April 1 issue
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Published: 2017
Other Voices always strives to present you with alternative views on important topics. This issue offers some really alternative perspectives and even some "alternative facts." As always, read critically - and enjoy.
- Postmodern Disrobed
Review of Intellectual Impostures
Resource Type: Article
Published: 1998
An admirable job of exposing the daffy absurdity of postmodernism intellectuals.
- Postmodernism Generator
Resource Type: Website
Published: 2000
A computer program written by Andrew. C. Bulhak using the Dada Engine, a system for generating random text. Each time you click on the page, it generates a brand-new postmodernist essay, completely meaningless, but superficially plausible, just like 'real' postmodernist essays.
- Proof that leprechauns exist
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2008
One David Berlinski, of whose existence I was blissfully unaware until a few days ago, has written a book attacking atheism and science. It appears he doesn't think it’s very nice that atheists dismiss religious beliefs as illogical and unsupported by evidence.
- SCIgen
Wikipedia article
Resource Type: Article
SCIgen is a program created by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that randomly generates nonsense in the form of computer science research papers, including graphs, diagrams, and citations. It uses a context-free grammar to form all elements of the papers, and its authors state that their aim is "to maximize amusement, rather than coherence."
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