[Intellectual hoaxes. Various observations on epistemology and the human sciences]

In 1996, a New York physicist, Alan Sokal, published an article entitled "Transgressing the boundaries: towards transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity" in the journal of cultural studies Social Text. He later revealed that it was a hoax; In this paper, I discuss the two main issues raised by the hoax: firstly, the abuse of scientific terminology by famous intellectuals such as Lacan, Kristeva or Irigaray, and other "postmodernist" thinkers; secondly, the epistemic relativism and its impact on the history and sociology of science.