The blurb doesn't give much away, so I'll fill you in on the content as I go along:



Chapter 1 (60-odd pages plus bibliography) is a reproduction of Sokal's 1996 publication in social science journal 'Social Text', which he later revealed to be deliberately composed of ambiguity, misused terms, and quotes of what Sokal considered to poor science or else total nonsense. The reproduction is also accompanied by commentary from Sokal in the form of annotations. That means your attention is divided thr

The blurb doesn't give much away, so I'll fill you in on the content as I go along:



Chapter 1 (60-odd pages plus bibliography) is a reproduction of Sokal's 1996 publication in social science journal 'Social Text', which he later revealed to be deliberately composed of ambiguity, misused terms, and quotes of what Sokal considered to poor science or else total nonsense. The reproduction is also accompanied by commentary from Sokal in the form of annotations. That means your attention is divided three ways: to the article, to the footnotes to the article, and to the annotations. This works pretty well, and I think is probably better than if the article had been reproduced as a stand-alone piece which was then followed by the commentary, but I did get a bit tired at times of having to move my attention around the pages all the time. You don't get the same satisfaction you get from just going at a chunk of text and blasting through it.



In terms of content, this chapter is reasonably interesting (for someone with very very little previous experience of social science or post-modern deconstructivism and what have you), but I did get a bit bored before the end. To be fair, it probably didn't help that I was often unable to discern the nonsense from the partly or entirely sensical until I read the explanatory comment for that particular bit, because this meant that I spent a fair amount of time in a pretty clueless state. But then, if the editors of Social Text were fooled, and they were supposed to be experts, what hope did I have? Most of the comments are quite interesting or funny, but I was quite glad to finally finish the chapter.



The rest of part 1 (which constitutes around one third of the book) is comprised of comment on the hoax and what it did and didn't demonstrate. This and the rest of the book are presented in the more familiar text-and-footnote format, so are less of an effort to read. Plus, they're pretty interesting.



However, it was parts 2 and 3 that I had highest hopes for, once the attraction of reading the hoax had lost its initial shine, and I think these parts are the most interesting overall. Part 2 consists of 2 essays on science and philosophy, and part 3 of 3 essays on science and culture. In truth, the two essays from part 2 and the first from part 3 are pretty similar, and in fact certain paragraphs from the different essays are repeated word-for-word not just once but a couple of times between the different essays. I didn't exactly feel cheated by that, because the meat of the essays IS different, but I did think it was just a teeny bit rich for Sokal to talk in the preface about how much it annoys him when academics release compendiums of essays that have bugger all to do with each other but try to pass the volume off as a coherent whole, only to then go to the opposite extreme and actually repeat content over and over again! But it's a minor gripe.



To wrap it up, the final 2 essays on politics and religion were the most accesible for me, but also the most familiar and least revelatory (but still intereting).



So what did I think of the book? Well, I hadn't realised that it was going to be about the attempts of certain groups to attack science for the very thing that makes it worthwhile - i.e., its objectivity - and if I had realised that it was going to be about that (a topic that would have struck pre-BTH me as being pretty much irrelevant to serious science), then I would probably have been less inclined to buy it. However, in the course of reading the book, I did come around to the idea that these groups, although small, do have quite a bit of influence, so I'm glad that I did decide to take it home. It IS a bit repetitive, and the analysis is never really all that deep, mostly coming in the form of quotes from other works that Sokal then briefly comments on or to which he supplies comment from other sources, but then, Sokal never attempts to hide the fact that with these essays he's sticking his nose into areas in which he's not a specialist, and I felt that, although a little shallow, his analysis was always very fair and often quite insightful. Plus, he comes across as a very likeable guy, and at times his comments or the sources he's selected are actually very funny.



I'm only giving this three stars, but they're a very happily granted three stars. I wouldn't want to give the wrong impression of the book by giving it a higher score, because it is a lot of pages on quite a niche topic, and because the actual input from the author constitutes only so much of the book, and contributes only so much insight, but it's a book that I for the most part really enjoyed reading, and I find myself liking and admiring Sokal himself rather a lot too.



Overall: recommended, but only for those who've read this far and haven't sighed yet or skipped along. Three and a half stars if I could...