Prof Alan Sokal, the man whose spoof paper arguing that gravity is a social construct made it into a respectable journal of postmodern cultural studies in 1996, gave this year's Sense About Science annual lecture. The lecture is introduced by the science writer Matt Ridley and you can hear it as a Guardian exclusive podcast here.
The hoax paper, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" is well worth a read.
Here's a taster:
It has thus become increasingly apparent that physical "reality'', no less than social "reality'', is at bottom a social and linguistic construct; that scientific "knowledge", far from being objective, reflects and encodes the dominant ideologies and power relations of the culture that produced it; that the truth claims of science are inherently theory-laden and self-referential; and consequently, that the discourse of the scientific community, for all its undeniable value, cannot assert a privileged epistemological status with respect to counter-hegemonic narratives emanating from dissident or marginalized communities.
Regular blog readers and podcast listeners will know that Prof Sokal has featured heavily in the last couple of weeks. Here he is on Science Weekly and in an extended interview with Alok Jha. Prof Sokal has also written a comment piece asking why British taxpayers are funding faith schools and homeopathy.
Prof Sokal also has a book out called Beyond the Hoax.
