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Norman Jay Levitt (August 27, 1943 – October 24, 2009) was an American mathematician at Rutgers University.

Education

Levitt was born in The Bronx and received a bachelor's degree from Harvard College in 1963. He received a PhD from Princeton University in 1967.

Work

Levitt was best known for his criticism of "the academic Left"—the social constructivists, deconstructionists, and postmodernists—for their anti-science stance which "lump science in with other cultural traditions as 'just another way of knowing' that is no better than any other tradition, and thereby reduce the scientific enterprise to little more than culturally-determined guess work at best and hegemonic power mongering at worst". His books (see Bibliography below) and review articles, such as "Why Professors Believe Weird Things: Sex, Race, and the Trials of the New Left" (Levitt emphasized that his own view was left-wing, but such ideas dismayed him), expose the "academic silliness" and analyze the symptoms and roots of the academic Left's belief that "solemn incantation can overturn the order of the social universe, if only the jargon be appropriately obscure and exotic, and intoned with sufficient fervor". His book Higher Superstition is cited as having inspired the Sokal affair.

Bibliography

• 1989 Grassmannians and the Gauss Maps in Piecewise-Linear Topology
• 1994 Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science (with Paul R. Gross)
• 1997 The Flight from Science and Reason
• 1999 Prometheus Bedeviled: Science and the Contradictions of Contemporary Culture

References

1. Norman Levitt dies, National Center for Science Education, October 29, 2009, retrieved October 31, 2009
2. ^ Shermer, Michael (2009-10-26). "Farewell to Norman Jay Levitt (1943–2009)". eSkeptic. The Skeptics Society. Retrieved 2009-10-27.
3. Pasachoff, Jay M. (January–February 2010), "Norm Levitt: An Obituary", Skeptical Inquirer, vol. 34, no. 1, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, retrieved November 23, 2009
4. Levitt, Norman (1998). "Why Professors Believe Weird Things: Sex, Race, and the Trials of the New Left". Skeptic. 6 (3). The Skeptics Society.
5. Derbyshire, Stuart (October 2009), Farewell, Norman Levitt, The Spiked Review of Books, archived from the original on November 6, 2009, retrieved October 31, 2009

Further reading

• Dawkins, Richard (2009-10-26). "Norman Levitt (1943–2009)". RichardDawkins.net. Archived from the original on 2013-12-03.

External links

• Bibliography of Norman Levitt
• Obituary of Norman Levitt

• 1943 births
• 2009 deaths
• 20th-century American mathematicians
• 20th-century American Jews
• Critics of postmodernism
• Harvard College alumni
• Princeton University alumni
• Rutgers University faculty
• The Bronx High School of Science alumni
• People from the Bronx
• 21st-century American mathematicians
• Academics from New York (state)
• 21st-century American Jews