Abstract
During the late 20th century certain trends in French postructuralism and postmodernism were deemed anti-intellectual for criticizing scientific methodology and characterizing science as a social construction. But, if these intellectual groups espoused social constructionism, it was not an attempt to devalue the scientific enterprise or to deny science as the best means of understanding reality. This paper critiques the polemics of physicists Sokal and Briemont against the intellectual malaise of postmodernists, science and technology studies, and cultural studies. Through wrongful generalizations and lackluster argumentation, their polemics overlooked crucial terms used by postmoderns. This oversight shows the mistakes stemming from overgeneralizing postmodernism, science and technology studies, and cultural studies—and from treating them as a single homogenous ideological group.
How to Cite
Schmidtke, D., (2017) “A Critique of Sokal and Bricmont’s Fashionable Nonsense: postmodern intellectual’s abuse of science”, Capstone, The UNC Asheville Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship 31(1).
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