On Tue, 26 Aug 2003 18:12:55 -0400 Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
writes:
> From: "Michael Simkin" <simkin_michael at hotmail.com>
> To: "CULTSTUD-L: A listserv devoted to Cultural Studies"
> <cultstud-l at lists.acomp.usf.edu>
> Subject: [cultstud-l] Sokal & Bricmont or Lenin?
> Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 18:45:04 -0700
> X-URL: <http://www.cas.usf.edu/communication/rodman/cultstud/>
>
> Dear Collegues,
>
> some of you are probably familiar with the book "Fashionable
> Nonsense" by
> Sokal & Bricmont (the book grew out of the celebrated Sokal hoax).
> I read this book recently and was stricken by the similarity of this
> writing
> to one of those books that I was forced to read in Soviet Union.
> Namely
> "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism" by Lenin. I read Lenin's book
> again
> (this time not under the gun of a Communist) and wrote the following
> quiz:
>
> http://www.ee.ucla.edu/~simkin/sokalenin.html
>
> A dozen of quotations from either "Fashionable Nonsense" or
> "Materialism and
> Empirio-Criticism" are given. The subject is asked to decide which
> book it
> is from. Afterwards the quiz is graded automatically.
I got a 75% score. Since both Lenin and Sokal & Bricmont defend varieties of physical realism, the similarities in statements drawn from their writings is not very surprising. The British philosopher, Antony Flew, for instance who is politically very much a rightwinger, has praised Lenin for having defended a physical realism in his *Materialism and Empirio-Criticism*.
Jim F.
>
>
> Mikhail Simkin
> ___________________________________
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>
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