He had made it all up, he said, and gloated that his "prank" proved that sociologists and humanists who spoke of science as a "social construction" didn't know what they were talking about. Acknowledging the ethical issues raised by his deception, Professor Sokal declared it justified by the importance of the truths he was defending from postmodernist attack: "There is a world; its properties are not merely social constructions; facts and evidence do matter. What sane person would contend otherwise?".

The displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is -- second only to American political campaigns -- the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time.

ABSTRACT This essay presents a historical epistemology of the nineteenth‐century controversy concerning a scientific hoax, the Cardiff giant. My focus is on the shifting meanings given to the giant, which were based on epistemologies derived from scientific authority, religious belief, and market relations. In 1869 a farmer in Cardiff, New York, claimed to have discovered the fossilized remains of a prehistoric, perhaps biblical, giant on his property. While some scientists stressed the need to cooperate with commercial showmen, enthusiasm for the (...) giant incited the ire of others, who sought to debunk it and the culture that sustained it. Drawing on local newspaper reports, memoirs, nineteenth‐century exposés, and publicity materials associated with the giant’s display, I link the episode to the history of popular and scientific observation. The giant was a particularly troubling spectacle because as an object of inquiry it blurred the modern boundaries separating nature, society, and religion. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay presents a historical epistemology of the nineteenth‐century controversy concerning a scientific hoax, the Cardiff giant. My focus is on the shifting meanings given to the giant, which were based on epistemologies derived from scientific authority, religious belief, and market relations. In 1869 a farmer in Cardiff, New York, claimed to have discovered the fossilized remains of a prehistoric, perhaps biblical, giant on his property. While some scientists stressed the need to cooperate with commercial showmen, enthusiasm for the (...) giant incited the ire of others, who sought to debunk it and the culture that sustained it. Drawing on local newspaper reports, memoirs, nineteenth‐century exposés, and publicity materials associated with the giant’s display, I link the episode to the history of popular and scientific observation. The giant was a particularly troubling spectacle because as an object of inquiry it blurred the modern boundaries separating nature, society, and religion. (shrink)

Imagine the following situation: an act of violent assault has been committed. And there are only two possible suspects, of which one is a small and weak man and the other a big and strong man. The weak man will plead that he is not strong enough and therefore not likely to have committed the crime, which seems reasonable straight away. But there will also be a loophole for the strong man, as Aristotle tells us, who reports exactly that story (...) in book 2, chapter 24, of his Rhetoric. And he also has a name to assign to the inventor of that kind of argument (1402a17–20):The Art of Corax is composed of this topic. For if a man is not likely to be guilty of what he is accused of, for instance if, being weak, he is .. (shrink)