Fashionable Nonsense
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Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science (ISBN 0-312-20407-8; ; published in the UK as Intellectual Impostures, ISBN 1-86197-631-3) is a book by professors Alan Sokal
and Jean Bricmont
. Sokal is best known for the Sokal Affair
, in which he submitted a deliberately absurd article to Social Text
, a critical theory
journal, and was able to get it published.
The book was published in 1997 in French, and in 1998 in English; the English editions were revised for greater relevance to debates in the English-speaking world. As part of the so-called science wars
, the book criticizes postmodernism
in academia for what it claims are misuses of scientific and mathematical
concepts in postmodern writing. According to some reports, the response within the humanities
was "polarized."
Critics of Sokal and Bricmont charge that they lack understanding of the writing they were criticizing. Responses from the scientific community were far more blunt and supportive.
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 are considered by some to be 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 science
s 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." 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" fluid
s in contrast to "masculine" rigid mechanics
. 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".
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." 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."
, which was delighted by Sokal's hoax, within the humanities
the response to the book was bitterly divided, with some delighted and some enraged; in some reading groups, reaction was polarized between impassioned supporters and equally impassioned opponents of Sokal.
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," and agreeing that "there does seem to be something about the Parisian scene that is particularly hospitable to reckless verbosity."
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."
. Bruce Fink (who produced the first complete English translation of Jacques Lacan's Ecrits) 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". 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".
While in the book, Sokal and Bricmont acknowledge that they "do not always understand the rest of these authors' work," Fink goes further and accuses them of having "no idea whatsoever what Lacan is up to," while himself noting that "even those of us who devote a lot of time and energy to deciphering Lacan's work — become infuriated with him for it at one point or another."
This latter point has been disputed by Arkady Plotnitsky (one of the authors mentioned by Sokal in his original hoax
). Plotnitsky says that "some of their claims concerning mathematical objects in question and specifically complex numbers are incorrect," specifically attacking their statement that complex number
s and irrational number
s "have nothing to do with one another". 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." The first of these two senses refers to the fact that the extension of real number
s 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." However, with regard to the second sense, which Plotnisky describes by stating that "all imaginary and complex numbers are, by definition, irrational," mathematicians generally agree with Sokal and Bricmont in not taking complex numbers as irrational
. Indeed, the concept of rational numbers has been extended into the complex domain to include Gaussian integer
s and Gaussian rational
s.
Plotnitsky goes on, however, to agree 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
," and that the latter "is not the erectile organ." Lacan's assignment of new meanings to standard mathematical terms in this way, though supported by Plotnitsky as valid within the context of his work, is of course one of the things which Sokal and Bricmont object to.
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. 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." 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.
Alan Sokal
Alan David Sokal is a professor of mathematics at University College London and professor of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. To the general public he is best known for his criticism of postmodernism, resulting in the Sokal affair in...
and Jean Bricmont
Jean Bricmont
Jean Bricmont is a Belgian theoretical physicist, philosopher of science and a professor at the Université catholique de Louvain. He works on renormalization group and nonlinear differential equations....
. Sokal is best known for the Sokal Affair
Sokal Affair
The Sokal affair, also known as the Sokal hoax, was a publishing hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies...
, in which he submitted a deliberately absurd article to Social Text
Social Text
Social Text is an academic journal published by Duke University Press. Since its inception as an independent editorial collective in 1979, Social Text has addressed a wide range of social and cultural phenomena, covering questions of gender, sexuality, race, and the environment...
, a critical theory
Critical theory
Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...
journal, and was able to get it published.
The book was published in 1997 in French, and in 1998 in English; the English editions were revised for greater relevance to debates in the English-speaking world. As part of the so-called science wars
Science wars
The science wars were a series of intellectual exchanges, between scientific realists and postmodernist critics, about the nature of scientific theory which took place principally in the US in the 1990s...
, the book criticizes postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
in academia for what it claims are misuses of scientific and mathematical
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
concepts in postmodern writing. According to some reports, the response within the humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
was "polarized."
Critics of Sokal and Bricmont charge that they lack understanding of the writing they were criticizing. Responses from the scientific community were far more blunt and supportive.
The book's thesis
Fashionable Nonsense examines two related topics:- the allegedly incompetent and pretentious usage of scientific concepts by a small group of influential philosophers and intellectuals;
- the problems of cognitive relativism, the idea that "modern science is nothing more than a 'myth', a 'narration' or a 'social construction' among many others" as seen in the Strong ProgrammeStrong programmeThe strong programme or Strong Sociology is a variety of the sociology of scientific knowledge particularly associated with David Bloor, Barry Barnes, Harry Collins, Donald A. MacKenzie, and John Henry. The strong programme's influence on Science and Technology Studies is credited as being...
in the sociology of science.
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." 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."The book includes long extracts from the works of Jacques Lacan
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
, Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, sociologist, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She is now a Professor at the University Paris Diderot...
, Paul Virilio
Paul Virilio
Paul Virilio is a cultural theorist and urbanist. He is best known for his writings about technology as it has developed in relation to speed and power, with diverse references to architecture, the arts, the city and the military....
, Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
, Félix Guattari
Félix Guattari
Pierre-Félix Guattari was a French militant, an institutional psychotherapist, philosopher, and semiotician; he founded both schizoanalysis and ecosophy...
, Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray is a Belgian feminist, philosopher, linguist, psychoanalyst, sociologist and cultural theorist. She is best known for her works Speculum of the Other Woman and This Sex Which Is Not One .-Biography:...
, Bruno Latour
Bruno Latour
Bruno Latour is a French sociologist of science and anthropologist and an influential theorist in the field of Science and Technology Studies...
, and Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism.-Life:...
who are considered by some to be leading academics of Continental philosophy
Continental philosophy
Continental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and...
, critical theory
Critical theory
Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...
, psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
or social sciences. Sokal and Bricmont set out to show how those intellectuals have used concepts from the physical science
Physical science
Physical science is an encompassing term for the branches of natural science and science that study non-living systems, in contrast to the life sciences...
s and mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
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:
- Using scientific or pseudoscientific terminology without bothering much about what these words mean.
- Importing concepts from the natural sciences into the humanitiesHumanitiesThe humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
without the slightest justification, and without providing any rationale for their use. - Displaying superficial eruditionEruditionThe word erudition came into Middle English from Latin. A scholar is erudite when instruction and reading followed by digestion and contemplation have effaced all rudeness , that is to say smoothed away all raw, untrained incivility...
by shamelessly throwing around technical terms where they are irrelevant, presumably to impress and intimidate the non-specialist reader. - Manipulating words and phrases that are, in fact, meaningless.
- Self-assurance on topics far beyond the competenceSkillA skill is the learned capacity to carry out pre-determined results often with the minimum outlay of time, energy, or both. Skills can often be divided into domain-general and domain-specific skills...
of the author and exploiting the prestige of science to give discourseDiscourseDiscourse generally refers to "written or spoken communication". The following are three more specific definitions:...
s a veneer of rigor.
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." For example, Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray is a Belgian feminist, philosopher, linguist, psychoanalyst, sociologist and cultural theorist. She is best known for her works Speculum of the Other Woman and This Sex Which Is Not One .-Biography:...
is criticised for asserting that E=mc2
Mass-energy equivalence
In physics, mass–energy equivalence is the concept that the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content. In this concept, mass is a property of all energy, and energy is a property of all mass, and the two properties are connected by a constant...
is a "sexed equation" because "it privileges the speed of light
Speed of light
The speed of light in vacuum, usually denoted by c, is a physical constant important in many areas of physics. Its value is 299,792,458 metres per second, a figure that is exact since the length of the metre is defined from this constant and the international standard for time...
over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us"; and for asserting that fluid mechanics
Fluid mechanics
Fluid mechanics is the study of fluids and the forces on them. Fluid mechanics can be divided into fluid statics, the study of fluids at rest; fluid kinematics, the study of fluids in motion; and fluid dynamics, the study of the effect of forces on fluid motion...
is unfairly neglected because it deals with "feminine" fluid
Fluid
In physics, a fluid is a substance that continually deforms under an applied shear stress. Fluids are a subset of the phases of matter and include liquids, gases, plasmas and, to some extent, plastic solids....
s in contrast to "masculine" rigid mechanics
Solid mechanics
Solid mechanics is the branch of mechanics, physics, and mathematics that concerns the behavior of solid matter under external actions . It is part of a broader study known as continuum mechanics. One of the most common practical applications of solid mechanics is the Euler-Bernoulli beam equation...
. Similarly, Lacan is criticized for drawing an analogy between topology
Topology
Topology is a major area of mathematics concerned with properties that are preserved under continuous deformations of objects, such as deformations that involve stretching, but no tearing or gluing...
and mental illness that, in Sokal and Bricmont's view, is unsupported by any argument
Argument
In philosophy and logic, an argument is an attempt to persuade someone of something, or give evidence or reasons for accepting a particular conclusion.Argument may also refer to:-Mathematics and computer science:...
and is "not just false: it is gibberish".
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 ProgrammeStrong programme
The strong programme or Strong Sociology is a variety of the sociology of scientific knowledge particularly associated with David Bloor, Barry Barnes, Harry Collins, Donald A. MacKenzie, and John Henry. The strong programme's influence on Science and Technology Studies is credited as being...
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." Quoting Michael Albert
Michael Albert
Michael Albert is an American activist, economist, speaker, and writer. He is co-editor of ZNet, and co-editor and co-founder of Z Magazine. He also co-founded South End Press and has written numerous books and articles...
, "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."
Response
According to New York Review of Books editor Barbara EpsteinBarbara Epstein
Barbara Epstein was a literary editor and a founding co-editor of the New York Review of Books.Epstein, née Zimmerman, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, to a Jewish-American family, and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1949.Ms...
, which was delighted by Sokal's hoax, within the humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
the response to the book was bitterly divided, with some delighted and some enraged; in some reading groups, reaction was polarized between impassioned supporters and equally impassioned opponents of Sokal.
Support for Sokal and Bricmont
Philosopher Thomas NagelThomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel is an American philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, where he has taught since 1980. His main areas of philosophical interest are philosophy of mind, political philosophy and ethics...
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," and agreeing that "there does seem to be something about the Parisian scene that is particularly hospitable to reckless verbosity."
Several scientists have expressed similar sentiments. Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
, in a review of this book, said regarding the discussion of Lacan
Lacan
Lacan is surname of:* Jacques Lacan , French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist** The Seminars of Jacques Lacan** From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power, a book on political philosophy by Saul Newman** Lacan at the Scene* Judith Miller, née 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."
Criticism of Sokal and Bricmont's arguments
The book has been subject to heavy criticism by post-modern philosophers and by scholars with some interest in continental philosophyContinental philosophy
Continental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and...
. Bruce Fink (who produced the first complete English translation of Jacques Lacan's Ecrits) 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". 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".
While in the book, Sokal and Bricmont acknowledge that they "do not always understand the rest of these authors' work," Fink goes further and accuses them of having "no idea whatsoever what Lacan is up to," while himself noting that "even those of us who devote a lot of time and energy to deciphering Lacan's work — become infuriated with him for it at one point or another."
This latter point has been disputed by Arkady Plotnitsky (one of the authors mentioned by Sokal in his original hoax
Sokal Affair
The Sokal affair, also known as the Sokal hoax, was a publishing hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies...
). Plotnitsky says that "some of their claims concerning mathematical objects in question and specifically complex numbers are incorrect," specifically attacking their statement that complex number
Complex number
A complex number is a number consisting of a real part and an imaginary part. Complex numbers extend the idea of the one-dimensional number line to the two-dimensional complex plane by using the number line for the real part and adding a vertical axis to plot the imaginary part...
s and irrational number
Irrational number
In mathematics, an irrational number is any real number that cannot be expressed as a ratio a/b, where a and b are integers, with b non-zero, and is therefore not a rational number....
s "have nothing to do with one another". 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." The first of these two senses refers to the fact that the extension of real number
Real number
In mathematics, a real number is a value that represents a quantity along a continuum, such as -5 , 4/3 , 8.6 , √2 and π...
s to complex numbers mirrors the extension of rationals
Rational number
In mathematics, a rational number is any number that can be expressed as the quotient or fraction a/b of two integers, with the denominator b not equal to zero. Since b may be equal to 1, every integer is a rational number...
to reals, as Plotnitsky points out with a quote from Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German philosopher and mathematician. He wrote in different languages, primarily in Latin , French and German ....
: "From the irrationals are born the impossible or imaginary quantities whose nature is very strange but whose usefulness is not to be despised." However, with regard to the second sense, which Plotnisky describes by stating that "all imaginary and complex numbers are, by definition, irrational," mathematicians generally agree with Sokal and Bricmont in not taking complex numbers as irrational
Irrational number
In mathematics, an irrational number is any real number that cannot be expressed as a ratio a/b, where a and b are integers, with b non-zero, and is therefore not a rational number....
. Indeed, the concept of rational numbers has been extended into the complex domain to include Gaussian integer
Gaussian integer
In number theory, a Gaussian integer is a complex number whose real and imaginary part are both integers. The Gaussian integers, with ordinary addition and multiplication of complex numbers, form an integral domain, usually written as Z[i]. The Gaussian integers are a special case of the quadratic...
s and Gaussian rational
Gaussian rational
In mathematics, a Gaussian rational number is a complex number of the form p + qi, where p and q are both rational numbers....
s.
Plotnitsky goes on, however, to agree 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 –1Imaginary unit
In mathematics, the imaginary unit allows the real number system ℝ to be extended to the complex number system ℂ, which in turn provides at least one root for every polynomial . The imaginary unit is denoted by , , or the Greek...
," and that the latter "is not the erectile organ." Lacan's assignment of new meanings to standard mathematical terms in this way, though supported by Plotnitsky as valid within the context of his work, is of course one of the things which Sokal and Bricmont object to.
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
Andrew Milner
Andrew Milner , Australian cultural theorist and literary critic, is Professor of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Monash University....
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. However, they point out that Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray is a Belgian feminist, philosopher, linguist, psychoanalyst, sociologist and cultural theorist. She is best known for her works Speculum of the Other Woman and This Sex Which Is Not One .-Biography:...
might still be correct in asserting that E=mc2
Mass-energy equivalence
In physics, mass–energy equivalence is the concept that the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content. In this concept, mass is a property of all energy, and energy is a property of all mass, and the two properties are connected by a constant...
is a "masculinist" equation, since "the social genealogy of a proposition has no logical bearing on its truth value." 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.
See also
- Sokal affairSokal AffairThe Sokal affair, also known as the Sokal hoax, was a publishing hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies...
- Science warsScience warsThe science wars were a series of intellectual exchanges, between scientific realists and postmodernist critics, about the nature of scientific theory which took place principally in the US in the 1990s...
- PseudosciencePseudosciencePseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...
- Beyond the HoaxBeyond the HoaxBeyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy, and Culture is a book by Alan Sokal detailing the history of the Sokal affair in which he submitted an article full of "nonsense" to Social Text, a critical theory journal, and was able to get it published....
- Cargo cult scienceCargo cult scienceCargo cult science refers to practices that have the semblance of being scientific, but are missing "a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty". The term was first used by the physicist Richard Feynman during his commencement...
- List of scientific metaphors
External links
- Review by Matthew Benacquista
- "I know what you mean!", review by Michael Harris
- Alan Sokal Articles on the "Social Text" Affair, including the original article
- Review of Intellectual Impostures in Nature, 1998 by Richard DawkinsRichard DawkinsClinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
- Post Modern Generator: an online computer simulation of PoMo writing described in “On the Simulation of Postmodernism and Mental Debility Using Recursive Transition Networks”. An on-line copy is available from Monash University.