Zeilberger - is that the squid character in Futurama?
----- Original Message -----From: ken hanlySent: 2/5/2006 4:52:20 AMSubject: Re: [PEN-L] Sokal's Prank and PomoZeilberger just writes stuff that is so transparently wrong and ignorant that one wonders why anyone would consider it worth posting. He says for example that the intersection of sets of great mathematicians or scientists with philosophers is a rapidly decreasing function of time. Two of the more prominent 20th century philosophers were also great mathematicians Russell and Whitehead the authors of the Principia Mathematica. Even Wittgenstein wrote significant work in the foundations of mathematics. The whole piece is undisguised vitriol.
Sokal's spoof was not meaningless. The point was not to be humurous by making fun of post modernist language. After all postmodernist readers did not even take it as poking fun at them. To use PM language Sokal's text deconstructed postmodernism by showing that those who use it do not even understand it since they could not distinguish a spoof from a serious discourse. This may be funny but it also makes a serious point and there is nothing low about it. Surely people who promote a language should understand it.
ravi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:clip
