[doctorzlo]

It's not that hard to understand, is it? He submitted complete gibberish, including several sentences which made absolutely no semantic sense, and got it published in a respected journal. When confronted, the journal's editors claimed that the text still had merit somehow...due to the PoMo hypothesis that meaning resides in the reader rather than the text itself. Which basically turns all reading and critical examination into a variant on the Rorschach test, but never mind, it's non-hierarchichal and non-exploitative towards alternative paradigms and such and such.

Sokal's also written a whole book filled with ludicrous statements by major scholars with regards to physics. Check out the Richard Dawkins article linked to by the wiki entry. One of them claimed that the square root of negative one is related to "the erectile organ," and one woman asserted that fluid mechanics are less well known than solid physics because men, with their rigid genitals, fear the chaotic fluidity of women's menstrual cycles. PoMo's response to the book: Sokal didn't understand their philosophy adequately. They didn't deny that the mathematical postulate "i" might (in their opinion) arguably be connected to a man's penis in some sort of meaningful way, but in the right light it makes sense? WTF?

I've also encountered plenty of their BS during my time in college. Thankfully I probably won't run into any more during this last semester before I graduate, but they've done absolutely horrible things to Shakespeare.