Connected Knowledge: Science, Philosophy, and Education Oxford
University Press (1997) |Abstract||When physicist Alan Sokal
recently submitted an article to the postmodernist journal
Social Text, the periodical's editors were happy to publish it--
for here was a respected scientist offering support for the
journal's view that science is a subjective, socially
constructed discipline. But as Sokal himself soon revealed in
Lingua Franca magazine, the essay was a spectacular hoax--filled
with scientific gibberish anyone with a basic knowledge of
physics should have caught--and the academic world suddenly
awoke to the vast gap that has opened between the scientific
community and their mould-be critics. But the truth is that not
only postmodern critics but Americans in general have a weak
grasp on scientific principles and facts. In Connected
Knowledge, physicist Alan Cromer offers a way to bridge the
chasm, with a lively, lucid account of scientific thinking and a
provocative new agenda for American education. Scie