Fashionable Nonsense

Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

Cover of the first edition
Authors Alan Sokal, Jean Bricmont
Original title Impostures Intellectuelles
Country France
Language French
Subject Postmodernism, Philosophy of science
Published
  • 1997 (Editions Odile Jacob, in French)
  • 1999 (Picador USA, in English)
Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages xiv, 300
ISBN 0-312-20407-8
OCLC 770940534

Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science (French: Impostures Intellectuelles), published in the UK as Intellectual Impostures, is a book by physicists Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont. Sokal is best known for the Sokal Affair, in which he submitted a deliberately absurd article[1] to Social Text, a critical theory journal, and was able to get it published.

The book was published in French in 1997, and in English in 1998; the English editions were revised for greater relevance to debates in the English-speaking world.[2] As part of the so-called science wars, Sokal and Bricmont criticized postmodernism in academia for what they considered misuses of scientific and mathematical concepts in postmodern writing. According to some reports, the response within the humanities was "polarized."[3] Critics of Sokal and Bricmont charged that they lacked understanding of the writing they were criticizing. Responses from the scientific community were more supportive.

Summary

Fashionable Nonsense examines two related topics:

Incorrect use of scientific concepts versus scientific metaphors

The stated goal of the book is not to attack "philosophy, the humanities or the social sciences in general ... [but] to warn those who work in them (especially students) against some manifest cases of charlatanism."[5] In particular to "deconstruct" the notion that some books and writers are difficult because they deal with profound and difficult ideas. "If the texts seem incomprehensible, it is for the excellent reason that they mean precisely nothing."[6]

The book includes long extracts from the works of Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Paul Virilio, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, and Jean Baudrillard who, in terms of the quantity of published works, invited presentations, and citations received, are some of the leading academics of Continental philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis or social sciences. Sokal and Bricmont set out to show how those intellectuals have used concepts from the physical sciences and mathematics incorrectly. The extracts are intentionally rather long to avoid accusations of taking sentences out of context.

Sokal and Bricmont claim that they do not intend to analyze postmodernist thought in general. Rather, they aim to draw attention to the abuse of concepts from mathematics and physics, subjects they've devoted their careers to studying and teaching. Sokal and Bricmont define abuse of mathematics and physics as:

The book gives a chapter to each of the above-mentioned authors, "the tip of the iceberg" of a group of intellectual practices that can be described as "mystification, deliberately obscure language, confused thinking and the misuse of scientific concepts."[7] For example, Luce Irigaray is criticised for asserting that E=mc2 is a "sexed equation" because "it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us"; and for asserting that fluid mechanics is unfairly neglected because it deals with "feminine" fluids in contrast to "masculine" rigid mechanics.[8] Similarly, Lacan is criticized for drawing an analogy between topology and mental illness that, in Sokal and Bricmont's view, is unsupported by any argument and is "not just false: it is gibberish".[9]

The postmodernist conception of science

Sokal and Bricmont highlight the rising tide of what they call cognitive relativism, the belief that there are no objective truths but only local beliefs. They argue that this view is held by a number of people, including people who the authors label "postmodernists" and the Strong Programme in the sociology of science, and that it is illogical, impractical, and dangerous. Their aim is "not to criticize the left, but to help defend it from a trendy segment of itself."[10] Quoting Michael Albert, "there is nothing truthful, wise, humane, or strategic about confusing hostility to injustice and oppression, which is leftist, with hostility to science and rationality, which is nonsense."[10]

Reception

According to New York Review of Books editor Barbara Epstein, who was delighted by Sokal's hoax, within the humanities the response to the book was bitterly divided, with some delighted and some enraged;[3] in some reading groups, reaction was polarized between impassioned supporters and equally impassioned opponents of Sokal.[3]

Support

The philosopher Thomas Nagel has supported Sokal and Bricmont, describing their book as consisting largely of "extensive quotations of scientific gibberish from name-brand French intellectuals, together with eerily patient explanations of why it is gibberish,"[11] and agreeing that "there does seem to be something about the Parisian scene that is particularly hospitable to reckless verbosity."[12]

Several scientists have expressed similar sentiments. Richard Dawkins, in a review of this book, said regarding the discussion of Lacan: "We do not need the mathematical expertise of Sokal and Bricmont to assure us that the author of this stuff is a fake. Perhaps he is genuine when he speaks of non-scientific subjects? But a philosopher who is caught equating the erectile organ to the square root of minus one has, for my money, blown his credentials when it comes to things that I don't know anything about."[8] Noam Chomsky called the book "very important" and said that "a lot of the so-called 'left' criticism [of science] seems to be pure nonsense".[13]

Criticism

The book has been criticized by post-modern philosophers and by scholars with some interest in continental philosophy. Bruce Fink offers a critique in his book Lacan to the Letter, where he accuses Sokal and Bricmont of demanding that "serious writing" do nothing other than "convey clear meanings".[14] Fink asserts that some concepts which Sokal and Bricmont consider arbitrary or meaningless do have roots in the history of linguistics, and that Lacan is explicitly using mathematical concepts in a metaphoric way, not claiming that his concepts are mathematically founded. He takes Sokal and Bricmont to task for elevating a disagreement with Lacan's choice of writing styles to an attack on his thought, which, in Fink's assessment, they fail to understand. Fink says that "Lacan could easily assume that his faithful seminar public ... would go to the library or the bookstore and 'bone up' on at least some of his passing allusions".[14]

Lacan and complex numbers

This latter point has been disputed by Arkady Plotnitsky (one of the authors mentioned by Sokal in his original hoax).[15] Plotnitsky says that "some of their claims concerning mathematical objects in question and specifically complex numbers are incorrect,"[16] specifically attacking their statement that complex numbers and irrational numbers "have nothing to do with one another".[17] Plotnisky here defends Lacan's view "of imaginary numbers as an extension of the idea of rational numbers—both in the general conceptual sense, extending to its ancient mathematical and philosophical origins ... and in the sense of modern algebra."[18] The first of these two senses refers to the fact that the extension of real numbers to complex numbers mirrors the extension of rationals to reals, as Plotnitsky points out with a quote from Leibniz: "From the irrationals are born the impossible or imaginary quantities whose nature is very strange but whose usefulness is not to be despised."[19]

Plotnitsky nevertheless agrees with Sokal and Bricmont that the "square root of −1" which Lacan discusses (and for which Plotnitsky introduces the symbol ) is not, in spite of its identical name, "identical, directly linked, or even metaphorized via the mathematical square root of −1,"[20] and that the latter "is not the erectile organ."[20]

However, with regard to the second sense, which Plotnisky describes by stating that "all imaginary and complex numbers are, by definition, irrational,"[21] mathematicians agree with Sokal and Bricmont in not taking complex numbers as irrational.[22][23][24] Indeed, the concept of rational numbers has been extended into the complex domain to include Gaussian integers and Gaussian rationals.

Other criticism

While Fink and Plotnitsky question Sokal and Bricmont's right to say what definitions of scientific terms are correct, cultural theorists and literary critics Andrew Milner and Jeff Browitt acknowledge that right, seeing it as "defend[ing] their disciplines against what they saw as a misappropriation of key terms and concepts" by writers such as Lacan and Irigaray.[25] However, they point out that Luce Irigaray might still be correct in asserting that E=mc2 is a "masculinist" equation, since "the social genealogy of a proposition has no logical bearing on its truth value."[25] In other words, gender factors may influence which of many possible scientific truths are discovered. They also suggest that, in criticising Irigaray, Sokal and Bricmont sometimes go beyond their area of expertise in the sciences and simply express a differing position on gender politics.[25]

In Jacques Derrida's response, "Sokal and Bricmont Aren't Serious," first published in Le Monde, Derrida writes that the Sokal hoax is rather "sad," not only because Alan Sokal's name is now linked primarily to a hoax, not to science, but also because the chance to reflect seriously on this issue has been ruined for a broad public forum that deserves better.[26] Derrida reminds his readers that science and philosophy have long debated their likenesses and differences in the discipline of epistemology, but certainly not with such an emphasis on the nationality of the philosophers or scientists. He calls it ridiculous and weird that there are intensities of treatment by the scientists, in particular, that he was "much less badly treated," when in fact he was the main target of the US press.[26] Derrida then proceeds to question the validity of their attacks against a few words he made in an off-the-cuff response during a conference that took place thirty years prior to their publication. He suggests there are plenty of scientists who have pointed out the difficulty of attacking his response.[27] He also writes that there is no "relativism" or a critique of Reason and the Enlightenment in his works. He then writes of his hope that in the future this work is pursued more seriously and with dignity at the level of the issues involved.[28]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Sokal, Alan (May 1996). "A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies". Lingua Franca. Retrieved March 5, 2008.
  2. ↑ Sokal, Alan; Jean Bricmont (1998). Intellectual Impostures. London: Profile Books. p. xii. ISBN 1-86197-631-3.
  3. 1 2 3 Epstein, Barbara (Winter 1997). "Postmodernism and the Left". New Politics. Archived from the original on May 12, 2008. Retrieved March 5, 2008. quote:
    Probably no one concerned with postmodernism has remained unaware of it. People have been bitterly divided. Some are delighted, some are enraged. One friend of mine told me that Sokal's article came up in a meeting of a left reading group that he belongs to. The discussion became polarized between impassioned supporters and equally impassioned opponents of Sokal [...] Some of us who were delighted by Sokal's hoax, at one time had a more positive view of postmodernism.
  4. ↑ Sokal, Alan; Jean Bricmont (1998). Fashionable Nonsense. New York: Picador. ISBN 0-312-19545-1.
  5. ↑ Sokal and Bricmont, p 5.
  6. ↑ Sokal and Bricmont, p 6.
  7. ↑ Sokal and Bricmont, p xi.
  8. 1 2 Dawkins, Richard (9 July 1998). "Postmodernism Disrobed". Nature. 394: 141–143. doi:10.1038/28089. Retrieved 15 April 2016.
  9. ↑ Sokal and Bricmont, p 23.
  10. 1 2 Sokal and Bricmont, p. xii
  11. ↑ Nagel, Thomas (2002). Concealment and Exposure & Other Essays. Oxford University Press. p. 164. ISBN 0-19-515293-X.
  12. ↑ Nagel, p. 165.
  13. ↑ Chomsky on Science and Postmodernism. Event occurs at 3:00. Retrieved 25 June 2014.
  14. 1 2 Fink, Bruce (2004). Lacan to the Letter. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. p. 130. ISBN 0-8166-4320-2.
  15. ↑ Sokal and Bricmont, Appendix A.
  16. ↑ Plotnitsky, Arkady (2002). The Knowable and the Unknowable. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. pp. 112–113. ISBN 0-472-09797-0.
  17. ↑ Sokal and Bricmont, p. 25.
  18. ↑ Plotnitsky, 2002, p. 146
  19. ↑ Plotnitsky, 2002, p. 145 (in Leibniz's original Latin, the quote reads "Ex irrationalibus oriuntur quantitates impossibiles seu imaginariae, quarum mira est natura, et tamen non contemnenda utilitas").
  20. 1 2 Plotnitsky, 2002, p. 147
  21. ↑ Plotnitsky, 2002, p. 120
  22. ↑ Blakey, Joseph; Hutton, Maurice (1960). Engineering Mathematics. Philosophical Library. p. 40.
  23. ↑ Yan, Song Y.; Hellman, Martin E. (2002). Number Theory for Computing (2nd ed.). Springer. p. 15. ISBN 3-540-43072-5.
  24. ↑ Phillips, George McArtney (2000). Two Millennia of Mathematics: From Archimedes to Gauss. Springer. p. 47. ISBN 0-387-95022-2.
  25. 1 2 3 Milner, Andrew; Browitt, Jeff (2002). Contemporary Cultural Theory (3rd ed.). Allen & Unwin. pp. 191–192. ISBN 1-86508-808-0.
  26. 1 2 Derrida, Jacques (2005) [1994]. Paper Machine. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 70. ISBN 0-8047-4619-2.
  27. ↑ Derrida, Jacques (2005) [1994]. Paper Machine. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 71. ISBN 0-8047-4619-2.
  28. ↑ Derrida, Jacques (2005) [1994]. Paper Machine. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 72. ISBN 0-8047-4619-2.

Further reading

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