Intellectual Impostures (ISBN 1861976313)

For those whose minds have been formed by this material ...:
... it may be too late. Let me start by addressing a misconception you may get from another review. Sokal, in his famous hoax, did not write "a bunch of nonsense and falsely attribute it to prominent French intellectuals". Indeed, much of it was not nonsense - to postmodernists - which is why it was snapped up by 'Social Text'. It appeared to touch all the right bases, with scientific bells on. Physical reality is at bottom a social and linguistic construct. Postmodern science has freed itself from dependence on objective truth. A truly liberatory mathematics is what we need. Etc, etc. The article starred in a special issue on the so-called 'Science Wars', and one editor refused to believe it was a parody even after Sokal said so. In itself that showed not much more than the tenuous intellectual grip of some cultural studies grandees. So Sokal and Bricmont followed up with this book. Their stated intention was far from producing a critique of the entire oeuvre of Lacan, Deleuze, Derrida and a dozen others, all between two covers: "We make no claim to analyse postmodernist thought in general; rather, our aim is to draw attention to the repeated abuse of concepts and terminology coming from mathematics and physics." "We show that famous intellectuals such as Lacan, Kristeva, Irigaray, Baudrillard and Deleuze have repeatedly abused scientific concepts and terminology ... throwing around scientific jargon in front of their non-scientist readers without any regard for its relevance or even its meaning." "There is nothing shameful in being ignorant of calculus or quantum mechanics. What we are criticizing is the pretension of some celebrated intellectuals to offer profound thoughts on complicated subjects which they understand, at best, at the level of popularizations." That's what the authors say they will do in this book, and that's what they do. As for the hoax with its 219 references: "The parody was constructed around quotations from eminent French and American intellectuals ... the passages may be absurd or meaningless, but they are nonetheless authentic." All this is spelt out carefully and at length in the Introduction, which a reviewer above seems to have missed. If you want to know what ruffled so many feathers, read the book. It's well researched and well written. But be warned that despite the authors' light touch, reams of inanity and bafflegab, which can give you a mild high at first, will eventually rot the brain. You never thought that E = Mc^2 was a sexed equation because it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us? You haven't kept up with Irigaray. From Lacan we learn, along with much else, that the torus - a topological figure like a doughnut - is exactly the structure of the neurotic *and this torus really exists* (I know, I know, Lacan wasn't post-anything). Did we teach Einstein anything, asks the sociologist Latour? Er, no. This may be a French intellectual joke, or more likely it reflects a misreading of a popular introduction to relativity. I bet you didn't know that acceleration and deceleration are what physicists call positive and negative velocities. I have a Ph.D. in theoretical physics and I didn't know. But that's what Virilio, the philosopher of speed, tells his readers. And so on, and on. Several hundred errors, from the venial to whoppers, are documented and patiently explained in terms that non-specialists can understand. In addition, there is a long and sensible chapter on epistemic relativism, an extreme form of which fertilized the ground for this, and an interesting epilogue with suggestions on the way forward. The parody is reprinted with commentary in an appendix. Reactions to the book come in a variety of flavors: 1. It's the wrong book. The authors should have written an in-depth appreciation of the philosophy of Deleuze. 2. The errors are illusory. For example, Lacan was an M.D. so he was perfectly capable of mastering topology. If he said that the neurotic torus really exists, then it does. This has been seriously argued, and not just by Woody Allen. 3. The errors are peripheral. They arise mainly in mathematics and physics where, unfairly, words and concepts are used with precise meanings, and rhetoric (usually) carries no weight. In feminist theory, continental philosophy and cultural studies, on the other hand, these thinkers can 'create concepts' with the best. In short, the vessel is leaking but only in parts where it is easy to detect; the rest is watertight. 4. The errors are endemic. For a theory to be worth the name, it is not enough to have a repertoire of theoretical-sounding jargon, perhaps tricked out with mathematical decoration. There is a missing ingredient: reality (whatever you understand by that). If you believe that 'there is nothing outside the text' or that 'truth is determined by social convention', you have a problem. This is painfully apparent when soft practice blunders innocently or otherwise into hard science, but it is also, less obviously, present in all the other fields, with the possible exception of literary theory. Maybe Kuhn was right, at least as regards the humanities and social sciences, and it will take another generation for this paradigm to die out along with its practitioners. Meanwhile, what a waste: not for the practitioners but for students who are paying to have their brains addled. It's instructive to compare this book with Gross & Levitt's 'Higher Superstition', an earlier and more scathing attack on some of the same targets. Quote: "When such solecisms as we find in these writings are confidently put forth as scholarly discoveries, with every assurance that something profound is being uttered, one must wonder about the system - and the ideology - that nurtures and rewards them." You won't find anything like that in Sokal & Bricmont but they caught most of the flak. There wasn't a Gross hoax, you see.

In which Pooh goes shooting fish in barrel, but the big one gets away:
Before I start, let me nail my colours to the mast: I'm pro-science, I'm pro-evolution, I really like the idea of rational enquiry and I'm a sceptic bordering on the cynical. I'm *not* some lentil-munching, kaftan-wearing, feng-shui-hugging hippie with airbrushed unicorns and a yin-yang sign on the side of my Kombi. Honestly. Now we've got that cleared up, let me say it straight: This book takes on some big arguments, but, other than humorously swatting some flies, loses hands down. All it succeeds in doing is illustrating that there are fakers, losers, charlatans and wankers to be found in the Social Sciences departments of any given University. Anyone who's been to university and didn't know that deserves a clip around the ear and to be sent to the back of the class. Now either Sokal didn't know that ( - ~clip~ -), or he's spent half his book shooting fish in a barrel. That might seem like good sport, but before long it becomes obvious it's a cheap thrill. Having said that, I sincerely doubt that the titillation of seeing dumb French Feminists taken apart is what made this book such a splash: I think it's because of Sokal's purported intent: to undermine the notion of cognitive relativism, especially as it associated with modern philosophy of science, in particular the work of Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend. This is the battle: Sokal aligns with those who say scientists are the exclusive purveyors of a shining light called truth; the Barbarians at the gate are these simpering postmodernists who want to tear the temple down. While the poseurs cited in this book are certainly (for the most part) phoneys or idiots, I think Thomas Kuhn was neither, and while Paul Feyerabend overplayed the court jester hand, he had some important things to say too. So, to the first point: Proving that one writer (or a hundred, or a thousand) who purports to adhere to relativism is a charlatan doesn't establish anything about *the idea* of relativism. All you have established is that you have a found yourself a charlatan. Give yourself a star. But while you're pinning it on, remember that postmodernists do not have a monopoly on illogical, bamboozling, balderdash: Example: Sir Roger Penrose (Emeritus Rouse Ball professor of mathematics at Oxford University, no less) and his dreadful, lumpen-headed, and deliberately bamboozling anti-AI tract "The Emperor's New Mind". The very point of the (no doubt correct but nonetheless entirely irrelevant) science deluged on the reader in that book is to obscure the fact that the real emperor was Roger Penrose and his arguments on AI really blow the kumara. Example: Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker's Linguistic Nativism, which has held sway for a good thirty years in many linguistics departments, and is anything but post-modern: nativism holds that humans have an innate understanding of grammar hard wired into their biology. From my paltry readings in linguistics and the philosophy of language, my impression is that Pinker's and Chomsky's arguments are seriously flawed. (See: Sampson: "The Language Instinct Debate" for a thorough linguistic critique of nativism; see Rorty: "Contingency Irony, and Solidarity" for a philosophical perspective on the contingency of language). Make note of this example, as it becomes relevant later on. Secondly, Sokal and Bricmont (quite deliberately) refuse to engage on certain topics, in particular on cultural or aesthetic relativism, which they say (without providing a reason) "raise very different issues". Take that star away, for this statement betrays a fundamental misunderstanding about relativism. Actually, ethical, aesthetic and cognitive relativisms raise different manifestations of *exactly* the same issue: Cognitive relativism, in that it relates to "epistemic" truth (as opposed to "moral" truth or "aesthetic" truth - both of which seem intuitively more questionable ideas) is simply a cut closer to the quick: indeed, the aesthetic and moral brands of relativism rely for their plausibility on cognitive relativism anyway (i.e. if the truths we understand about the physical universe are contingent on our language, then it follows that ideals of right and wrong and beauty must be similarly contingent on our language). Thirdly, Sokal provides the following account of cognitive relativism: "While scientists ... try to obtain an objective view ... of the world, relativist thinkers tell them that they are wasting their time and that such an enterprise is, in principle, an illusion" Now that, to put it mildly, is a *very* punchy version of relativism, and not one that any credible relativist philosopher I know of (and certainly not Thomas Kuhn, who spent a whole book explaining how and why the process scientific discovery works) subscribes to. That is, in the trade, known as a straw-man argument: You set it up to knock it over. Here goes: P1: Relativists say science is a waste of time P2: Science helps us reliably predict and react coherently to phenomena occurring in the world P3: Things which help to predict and react to such phenomena have genuine utility C1: Therefore, science has genuine utility C2: Ergo, science is not a waste of time Case closed. Is relativism dead? No: the problem is, most relativists I know would completely agree with all of the above argument except for premise 1. The cat is most definitely still out of the bag. (In a nutshell, all reasonably stated relativism says is that you can't know that your theory actually maps onto the actual configuration of the outside world; it may, it may not: logically there will always be some other possible explanation for the same set of data, however implausible or difficult to imagine, and in part that difficulty in imagination may be a function of the historical contingency of our belief in, and description of the world in terms of, the current "paradigm". Relativism simply says the best you can do is to know that, for now, your theory works, not that it is *true*. Though Sokal and Bricmont may disagree, I don't think this is controversial amongst philosophers nor, really, scientists.) Lastly, in criticising an admittedly utterly ludicrous passage bestowed on the world by that splendidly silly feminist philosopher Sylvia Kristeva, Sokal makes the following footnote: "...Kristeva seems to be appealing ... to the 'Sapir-Whorf thesis' in linguistics that is ...that our language radically conditions our view of the world. This thesis nowadays is sharply criticised by some linguists: see, for example Pinker ..." Hold the phone. The implication is that the Sapir-Whorf thesis (as to the contingency of language) has been discredited, but by none other than Steven Pinker in his "The Language Instinct" which, as per the above, is at the very least a controversial piece of writing. This is an extremely important point, since it's utterly central to the credibility of the anti-relativist cause, and if one takes Geoffrey Sampson's book (cited above) at face value the nativist claims themselves are built on very suspect reasoning and scientific research. It seems to me (and to writers like Richard Rorty) that language must radically condition our view of the world, because that's the only basis on which we can even describe it. At the end of the day, properly stated cognitive relativism is no a threat to modern scientific discourse, except that it relegates the scientist from "truth knower" or "person through whom you may have exclusive access to the truth" (sounds a bit like a grand high pooh-bah or - dare I say it - high priest, doesn't it?) to "person whose theory works the best for now" and who may be in competition for that status with other people in the community whether or not they're scientists. If science *does* work better than feng shui or healing crystals (and I, for one, think it does) then this shouldn't be a particularly troubling way of looking at the world for a scientist who is at ease with his views and his value to the community. So it makes the knee-jerk reactions against relativism, from the likes of Sokal and elsewhere Richard Dawkins, all the more mystifying. Olly Buxton

Intellectual Imposters = Fashionable nonsense:
These two books are indeed very good, in fact they are the same book, so it isn't only intellectuals who are imposters! Maybe Amazon could warn their customers, they advertise that people who bought 'Intellectual Impostures' also bought 'Fashionable nonsense', so at least I'm not the only moron....

Intellectual Impostures of Intellectual Impostures:
Unfortunately, the truths of the postmodern movement, as obscured by the common trash as they are, have equally been lost on Mr. Sokal and Mr. Bricmont. In a word..."hermeneutics." What the authors fail to realize is that philosophy is indeed not science, and should not be read as such...even when it uses the ideas and words of science in new contexts for which they, the scientists, are wholly unfamiliar, and unqualified to judge. The meaning of any text is a function of the interface between reader and writer; i.e. hermeneutics. The authors don't UNDERSTAND the text and they fail to understand the limitations of their own personal, and in this case, failed, reading. Certainly it is not true that all readings are created equal, as the extreme post-modernists would have us believe, but by this token it is by no means clear in these cases that a failure to make sense of a text is the correct reading either. Is a failure to interpret, an interpretation of failure? I have read Mr. Sokal and Bricmont's previous book "Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science" and found it enlightening. They found some of the most brilliant post-modernist prose out there, but in most cases they entirely missed the point of the "nonsense" which they attempted to criticize. This new book seems more of the same. A case in point. They cite Deleuze and Guattari, clearly unable to understand the prose, and then leave it to their common reader to follow suit, naturally adopting the easy and comfortable collective belief that a failure to interpret is an interpretation of failure. The authors have adopted, and indeed adapted the words of science for their own specialized use. To interpret those same words in the original scientific meaning is indeed to throw a wrench into the gears, to disrupt the "multi-dimensional machinic catalysis" of the non-linear meaning. This is the root of the failure of Mr. Sokal and Bricmont to understand not only the texts they criticize, but the distinction between science and philosophy itself. Philosophy is not science and it should not be addressed as such. Philosophy is a meta-science and indeed, at the edges of empirical knowledge, every bit as much, and necessarily so, an art; a function critically of intuition as much as erudition, logic and knowledge. Philosophy attempts to synthesize and analyze all forms of knowledge together and apart, and is not limited to the resources of any one of them, such as the limits of their own specialized vocabularies. Science has a fertile ground of concepts for philosophy to adapt, and often radically, for its own meta-scientific and creative uses. Any scientist attempting to make sense of this adaptation---especially in the case of the fertile imaginations (and this in the good way stated by Einstein, "imagination is more important than knowledge") of Deleuze and Guatarri---will fall flat when he takes those words, which in his scientific context are all-to-familiar, at face value in this radically new context. The authors have stripped these passages from their "multireferential, multi-dimensional" context and then naturally failed to make sense of the adapted meanings of their own words and concepts. They then impose this failed hermeneutic as if it were pregiven and absolute, expecting their unwitting, and equally unqualified readers, to follow suit. They have failed to learn from their enemy the value of context and hermeneutics. This is not to excuse the occasional errors that will occur in all human endeavors, philosophy not being an exception, but merely to expose the limitations of a "scientific" reading of philosophy. Scientists should know, especially if they have any knowledge of the philosophy of their discipline, that one must follow the injunctions of the "paradigm" if one is to find its meaning. In this case, one must understand the context and adapted meanings of the words in use before one can first understand, and then pass judgment on the text. Essentially the judgment being cast-when the failure to interpret is taken at face value-is that the postmodernist authors have simply played with the meaning in a radically new context for which the scientists are no longer truly competent to judge. Not having followed the injunctions of the "paradigm" (scare-quotes indicate a loose adaptation of the term) to learn from the context the new, adapted meanings of their beloved vocabulary, the "experiments in hermeneutics" by these scientists venturing into this new terrain of philosophy, have naturally failed. Philosophy is not science, and is neither inferior nor derived from, or reducible to it. Scientists would be wise to learn this and to suspend judgment over what they are often not qualified to understand. If, on the other hand, a philosopher attempts to describe a scientific theory, and bungles it in the context of the science itself, that is another issue entirely. The philosophers, in this new case, have wandered into the scientist's domain and in this case the scientists are doing us a favor by pointing out the flaws. This is not the case here, however, with these quotes, stripped of their context and meaning, or "disrobed" as the authors so poetically put it. In these cases, the post-modernists have taken the science into their own world to be trans-adapted for new meanings, a typical evolutionary strategy, as good scientists should be aware. And in this case of meta-criticism the scientists have wandered into a new and unfamiliar space, that of post-modernist philosophy, in which they are incompetent to judge. They are attempting to reclaim the old meanings of their terms, but this is as futile and meaningless as attempting to reclaim the pre-mammalian jaw-bones that have been functionally adapted into the delicate sensorial operations of the mammalian ear. To reclaim those words, concepts and ideas for science-as if science had an ownership and hold on the evolution of even its own language-is analogous to ripping out the angular, articular and the prearticular bones so critical to mammalian hearing. It is equally as mal-directed and violent, and equally a step back down the "ladder" of evolution, at least in a particular domain.

A Nonpartisan Physicist's Debunking of Shoddy Thought:
"Whether my targets are the postmodernists of the left, the fundamentalists of the right, or the muddle-headed of all political and apolitical stripes, the bottom line is that clear thinking, combined with a respect for evidence, are of the utmost importance to the survival of the human race in the twenty-first century." -- Alan Sokal In the international community and in academia, *leftist* has always referred to Marxism in its various derivations. The term references Marx's idea for a system of government and economics so radical that it has never been attempted anywhere in its purest form. This makes his untested system the perfect springboard for pseudo-rigorous theory. Unfortunately, in recent years, *leftist* has become one of the most abused words in America: Various partisans have misused the term as a synonym for *liberal democrat*. It's a mistake that Alan Sokal never makes once in this book. There is nothing wrong with being opposed to the positions of liberal democrats. There is, however, everything wrong with calling them leftists. To do so involves changing the entire shape of world politics to fit a partisan view of a localized American spectrum. If an American politician who believes in fund-sourcing social programs within a capitalist economy is a "hard leftist" (in the words of a New York Post columnist), then how are we to classify political leaders in China -- as "the hardest of harder hard leftists"? To place postmodernist critics on the left and fundamentalists on the right, as Sokal has done, is entirely correct. Most known postmodern thinkers are elaborating on Marxist systems and are therefore leftists. Fundamentalists advocate sweeping religion-derived social restrictions -- which get bundled with the advocacy of zero economic constraints due to common interests shared with allies -- and this places them on the far right. The point is not to agree or disagree with either side ideologically, but to identify them accurately so as to understand what's being said. When Sokal addresses various shortcomings of *leftist* pomo thought, he isn't talking about democrats or liberals, he's using the term correctly: in this case, to refer to Marxist and post-structuralist critics who try to use pseudo-Marxist *terminology*. He isn't resorting to ad hominem to make this claim, he's dissecting the writers' logic. Sokal's purpose is to promote clear thought and discourage pseudo-science, not vilify or malign any particular political side. In pedantic hands, Marx's stringent economic formulae have become an excuse for inexact jargon and inapplicable equations. One gets the feeling certain literary academics envy the hermetic exclusivity of scientists but lack the discipline to achieve it. They have sought to get around this by appropriating scientific/mathematical/economic language without understanding it. This is the problem that Sokal seeks to address. Sokal's premise is that theory should be lucid and logical no matter where it falls in the political spectrum. In the words of Wittgenstein, "Anything that can be stated can be stated clearly." In *Intellectual Impostures*, Sokal goes after inflated pseudo-jargon that happens to be employed by leftist academics. He does so admirably, in part because he is specific. Whether outraged or amused, he never taints his argument by resorting to hyperbole or bluster. His attacks hit their target because his gaze never strays from its mark.