The Fashionable Nonsense reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Fashionable Nonsense

Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science (French: Impostures Intellectuelles) is a book authored by Pr Alan Sokal and Pr Jean Bricmont.

It was published in 1999 in France and the United States.

Table of contents

1 The book's thesis 1.1 Incorrect use of scientific concepts 1.2 The strong program of postmodern philosophy 2 Criticism and support 2.3 Political dimension 2.4 Criticism 3 External links

The book's thesis

Fashionable Nonsense broaches two related, but different topics:

• the alleged incompetent and pretentious usage of scientific concepts by philosophers and related intellectuals;
• the dangers of the strong program of postmodern philosophy.

Incorrect use of scientific concepts

The book begins by a long list of extracts of texts by many leading academics working in the fields of philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis or social sciences, where those intellectuals incorrectly used concepts coming from the hard sciences such as physics or mathematics. The extracts are intentionally rather long, so that Sokal and Bricmont could not be accused of taking sentences out of context; in each instance, explanations are given as to why they consider the usage of scientific terminology to be abusive.

The point of Sokal and Bricmont is not to directly criticize the philosophical or sociological analysis of the authors they quote. They restrict themselves to explaining why the usage of specific scientific concepts from specialized domaines of science is meaningless in the quoted texts. Their argument is as follows:

• the authors use some advanced scientific concepts without making sense with respect to the scientific meaning of those concepts; they therefore probably do not understand them;
• the authors did not use those concepts as valid imagery, since these are advanced scientific concepts that few in their readership would understand; imagery is normally used for explanations by illustrating some unfamiliar notion by a more familiar one, not the reverse;
• therefore, Sokal and Bricmont argued, the authors of those texts probably attempted an incompetent show of erudition in an attempt to impress their readers.

The counterargument is that authors genuinely believed that they understood the concept and that there was no easier way of explaining the idea that they were presenting.

Authors cited included: Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Paul Virilio, François Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, Jean Baudrillard Badly used scientific concepts include: topology, Gödel's incompleteness theorem

While they never say so openly, the goal of Sokal and Bricmont is to demonstrate the lack of seriousness of the cited authors: if they act with such dishonesty and incompetence on topics that Sokal and Bricmont can objectively check using their expertise, can we trust them for the rest?

The strong program of postmodern philosophy

Sokal asserts that postmodern philosophy asserts that scientific discourse has, like all discourse, only a relative value, depending on the social context. Sokal argues strong program asserts that the value of scientific discourse (or any discourse) is purely social, that there is no absolute truth. Some have argued that Sokal has misunderstood postmodern philosophy and that postmodern philosophers actually assert that absolute truth is a meaningless concept without social context.

Sokal and Bricmont explain that such a philosophy, denying the difference between science and pseudoscience, is ultimately dangerous. While such views may be fashionable in intellectual discourse, they are dangerous when applied in making actual decisions that may affect the lives of human beings.

Criticism and support

As with the original Sokal Affair, the publication of this book resulted in a heated debate between intellectuals.

Political dimension

Postmodern philosophy has been associated with left-wing academics. In particular, the notion that beliefs are relative naturally undermines traditionalist and conservative positions: if the current values of our society are so "relative", why not consider changing them?

A natural accusation against Sokal and Bricmont was that they had hidden political objectives. That is why they took the pain to point out that their own personal political feelings were rather left-wing too. In fact, they deplore the association of the Left with radical postmodernist thought, which, they argued, undermines the Left's political struggles.

Criticism

The book was criticized by many as a rather gratuitous attack of the "hard sciences" on the "soft sciences". Many of Sokal and Bricmont's critics have argued that they have not made a good faith effort to understand postmodern philosophy and that their use of postmodern concepts has as many inaccuracies as postmodern philosophers use of scientific concepts. They further decry the fact that rather than attempt to build dialogue between the sciences and humanities, Sokal and Bricmont seem committed to making postmodernists look foolish and meaningless.

Nobody disputes that the usage that the cited authors made of scientific concepts was incorrect from a scientific point of view. Critics of Sokal and Bricmont argue, though, that

• such usage was rather peripheral and nonessential in the quoted books, therefore pinpointing it for criticism is rather pointless;
• concepts used as metaphors need not adapt perfectly to the context.

Some go as far as to say that modern philosophy is, in nature, a poetical discourse, which does not have to fit within the traditional bounds of rational speech.

External links

• Review by Matthew Benacquista

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