Customer Reviews

Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Hard work to write, easy to read: instead of vice versa November 2, 2000

This book is not, centrally, an attack on deconstruction, post-modernism, social constructionism and so on. It is instead a tightly focussed attack on some French writers who are often associated with those ideas, Lacan, Deleuze, Kristeva, Baudrillard and others.

Without confronting those writers' central ideas, "Fashionable nonsense" devastates their reputations. It shows them claiming authority in various scientific fields, using scientific "expertise" to enhance their authority and credibility, to bolster arguments on non-scientific propositions by analogy with scientific propositions, and to scare away dissenters. For example Lacan makes claims about topology for both his analogy and his argument on some matter concerning phallic psychology. Most readers, like me, would not know whether Lacan's topology was reasonable or absurd, but Sokal and Bricmont show that Lacan wasn't merely "inaccurate"; he was "meaningless".

It's reasonable to ask if Sokal and Bricmont are right about topology (and the other branches of science cited by the book's targets), while Lacan and the others were wrong. In a symposium in the November 2000 edition of "Meta Science", hostile critics of "Fashionable Nonsense" confronted Sokal and Bricmont. But only one critic even attempted to dispute that the book's targets wrote ignorant nonsense about science. This was Lacanian, who attempted to defend Lacan's topology: and that sole attempted defence was clearly and crushingly rebutted. It seems clear that in its science the book's credibility is unshaken.

So Lacan's grasp of topology was so vague that he must have known that he couldn't make accurate and meaningful statements about it. But he went ahead, knowing that he didn't understand what he was writing. It follows that he was lazily and arrogantly relying on the likelihood that his readers wouldn't understand topology either. Therefore Lacan is guilty of intellectual fraud, or imposture, as in the original French title.

So what? First, if Lacan is prepared to use intellectual fraud to make and support arguments, then some of the intellectual indulgences that academics allow each other, for example too seldom checking references, should not apply. His credibility logically diminishes, to the extent that the only statements by him that should be given credence are those that are backed by specific and checkable references to matters of fact, or based on sound argument from cited evidence.

Second, this highlights the reality that Lacan (like the others skewered in this book) is peculiarly vulnerable to the withdrawal of intellectual indulgence. Once you decide to give credence only to those things in Lacan that are based on reasoning from evidence, as those terms are usually understood, what remains is little more than the residue of soap scum after the bursting of a glistening bubble. If I were to use Lacan's method I would write that soap bubble metaphor in more abstruse terms, stretch it for endless pages of waffle, and pretend that it was an argument or proof rather than merely a figure of speech. Also if I were Lacan, I would not look up the physics concerning soap bubbles and iridescence, but make something up and hope to get away with it.

This is why the narrowness of Sokal and Bricmont's approach is well chosen. Other writers could not be so damaged by the withdrawal of intellectual indulgence. Nietzsche, for example, can be shown to be wrong on matters of fact, and that where he bothers to reason at all his reasoning is faulty, and that his real attitudes (pro-war, anti-compassion, misogynist, antidemocratic, antisemitic, and so on) are not the fashionable doctrines often attributed to him. But he will survive unscathed because unlike these French philosophists, who write like bureaucrats even when making "jokes", Nietzsche was a great writer. People like his wit, energy and poetic fire, and adolescent readers like the way he makes them feel superior to the "herd". In a different way Frege or Hume (say) are also impervious to this sort of demolition. They could be shown to be wrong or even dishonest about some particular point, but this would not hurt the remainder of their work because in general their work does not depend on their reputations but on their reasoning.

But Sokal and Bricmont's targets are ripe for the "Emperor's New Clothes" effect. Scepticism, once thought uncool and a product of stupidity and the failure to understand these deep writers, is suddenly permissible. Instead of being impressed by thickets of words and assuming that something profound must be in there somewhere, we do the hard work of close reading, discarding the phrases that mean nothing, working out precisely what is being claimed and whether those claims are backed by evidence or reasoning. Sokal and Bricmont (and Sokal alone with his splendid if mildly unfair hoax, also documented here), can reasonably claim to have had more to do with that process than any other writers. Apoplectic attacks on deconstruction by conservatives only strengthened the false appearance that here was something radical, interesting, and probably hip.

But when Sokal and Bricmont's French wankers and their American acolytes return to an obscurity as deep as the obscurity of their texts, some of the ideas they espoused will remain. Post-structuralism and social constructionism pose respectable challenges to scientific positivism, that can be expressed clearly, that do not assume that the world is "only text", but that argue that much of our understanding is socially constructed. Sokal and Bricmont did not attack those ideas. They cleared away some writing that is unhelpful to the discussion of social constructionist and related ideas, demonstrating that some Big Names who were until recently considered central to the discussion were in fact merely passengers, and irrelevant to it.

Finally, why five stars? It's a narrower book than is sometimes claimed, but the tight focus was well chosen. It is solid and much needed work. It must have been difficult to research and write, but it is easy to read. The exact opposite of the texts they skewer.

Cheers!

Laon

In 1994, physicist Alan Sokal from NYU, became fed up. A certain postmodernist influence within the academic community was challenging standards of logic, truth and intellectual inquiry. Could he possibly write a sham article bad enough to be obvious nonsense to any undergraduate physics student, yet good enough to get published in a leading pomo periodical? Unfortunately for the members of the screening committee for "Social Text," the answer was "yes."

The article itself is presented in the back of "Fashionable Nonsense," complete with explanations about the misrepresented physics and the embedded jokes. It caters to agendas of pomo authorities rather than relying on logic, drips with unreadable prose and has outrageous claims about scientific theories. It includes an illogical train of thought, but apple-polishes the gurus it parodies. Sokal says, "The fundamental silliness in my article lies in the dubiousness of its central thesis and in the 'reasoning' adduced to support it. Basically, I claim that quantum gravity had profound political and social implications."

When Sokal saw that his article was actually going to be published, he began writing his expose of the hoax. They were published in different magazines on the same day. Sokal achieved instant infamy and the fallout lasted for years.

In preparing to write his article, Sokal researched writings from many offending authors, but could only use a small part of the data. This book taps the files of his research and attempts to document more completely the repeated abuse of concepts from math and physics by postmodernist authors.

This excerpt is from Lacan, a psychoanalyst who compared neurosis with mathematical topology - the study of geometric shapes that become distorted without being torn - a twisted doughnut: "This diagram [the Mobius strip] can be considered the basis of a sort of essential inscription at the origin, in the knot which constitutes the subject. This goes much further than you may think at first, because you can search for the sort of surface able to receive such inscriptions. You can perhaps see that the sphere, that old symbol for totality, is unsuitable. A torus, a Klein bottle, a cross-cut surface, are able to receive such a cut. And this diversity is very important as it explains many things about the structure of mental disease. If one can symbolize the subject by this fundamental cut, in the same way one can show that a cut on a torus corresponds to the neurotic subject, and on a cross-cut surface to another sort of mental disease.

I can't follow that, nor any of the other excerpts from Lacan - not if I reread it several times. In dealing with Lacan and other authors, Sokal dissects the math, showing that the authors:

1. Hold forth at length on scientific theories about which they have, at best, an exceedingly hazy idea.
2. Import concepts from the natural sciences into the humanities or social sciences without giving the slightest conceptual or empirical justification.
3. Shamelessly throw around technical terms in a context where they are completely irrelevent.
4. Manipulate phrases and sentences that are, in fact, meaningless.

Some of the authors, when subjected to Sokal's analysis, are just plain silly and quite entertaining. Others can get tedious. Sokal makes his points in each case, making these authors look ridiculous, to the point of charlatanism.

After an analysis that includes consideration of the philosophies of Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend, Sokal tackles a prevalent belief in humanities departments of universities in the United States - that truths are "relative"...that no opinion is "privileged" over another as being more valid than another...that all "facts" claiming objective existence are simply intellectual constructs...that there is no clear difference between fact and fiction. Bertrand Russell had many years previously answered that question in this diplomatic way: "Science is at no moment quite right, but it is seldom quite wrong, and has, as a rule, a better chance of being right than the theories of the unscientific. It is, therefore, rational to accept it hypothetically."

Interesting that individuals who would trash science reap the benefits of hard science in their daily routines, without giving due credit to the resultant technologies that make their lives so much easier. A well-deserved 5 stars for the outstanding and restrained expose in this book.

Sokal and Bricmont, two professors of physics, show that fashionable French intellectuals in the fields of social and cultural studies - Jacques Lacan, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Julia Kristeva, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Luce Irigaray - habitually misuse scientific concepts and terms. Unable to produce genuine science in their own fields, Lacan et al import concepts from the physical sciences - typically, chaos theory, fuzzy logic and the uncertainty principle - to try to impress. They regard science, evidence, reason and knowledge as oppressive. Kristeva characteristically responded to criticism by calling Sokal and Bricmont Francophobes!

The two physicists attack relativism, the idea that a statement's truth or falsity is relative to an individual or social group. (Some US colleges run courses like `queer studies', whose very subject is defined in relation to the interests of a social group, not by its field of study.) Relativists imply that modern science is just a `myth', a `narration' or a `social construction'. This allows in the notion that, for instance, creationism is just as valid as the theory of evolution.

The editors of `Social Text' accepted Sokal's famous spoof article, `Transgressing the boundaries: towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity', in which he wrote: "Physical `reality', no less than social `reality', is at bottom a social and linguistic construct." The editors of `Science and Culture' accepted the Madsens' supposedly serious article, `Structuring postmodern science', in which they wrote "A simple criterion for science to qualify as postmodern is that it be free from any dependence on the concept of objective truth." Says it all really!

This book tears apart these postmodernist theorists. Sokal and Bricmont uphold the scientific approach, that knowledge is based on respect for the clarity and logical coherence of theories and on the confrontation of theories with empirical evidence. Knowledge in both natural and social science is cumulative; our understanding of the world grows as we constantly check our ideas against the reality.

While the sections on the French theorists are amusing and/or depressing, the chapter on positivism, empiricism, and induction is the most worthwhile. It gets to the heart of what it means to be a scientist, and also how recent ideas establishing truth (Popper's falsification, Kuhn's paradigm, Mill's induction method, etc.) seem to never quite work out. While this discussion is inserted more for the purpose of educating a non-scientific readership, it very nicely complements some other writings (Windshuttle, et.al.) on the challenge to objectivity that the post-modernists (Focault, Derrida,...) have made. The authors' style is straighforward, and a bit earnest, but well worth adding to your library if these issues concern you.

Sokal and Bricmont's project was long overdue: exposing the fraudulent use of scientific jargon by a number of our most prominent contemporary theorists. Of course, even without references to science, the language of post-modernism would still be a hopelessly turgid mish-mash of pretentious jargon, but you have to start somewhere, so I welcomed the appearance of this book.

Having just finished it, I think Fashionable Nonsense is well worth reading, but it's not quite the triumph I had pictured. The chapters vary greatly in quality and in general Sokal and Bricmont should have spent less time quoting and more time explaining and analyzing. The sections on specific intellectuals are more sucessful when they follow this approach. I thought the demolitions of Bruno Latour and Luce Irigay were quite convincing. However, as a couple of readers have already pointed out, the chapter on Deleuze & Guattari is a decided letdown: interminable quotations followed by almost no substantive commentary. I know Sokal and Bricmont aren't professional writers, but it doesn't appear that they had much editorial help, either.

In a way, the more general chapters are the most impressive ones here: the first "Intermezzo" has a useful analysis of the shortcomings of Karl Popper's work and the overreaction it produced (by Feyerabend and others). The "Epilogue" is in many ways the strongest and most convincing statement Sokal has yet made about the damage and mistrust created by the aggressive mindlessness of postmodernism. After all, Sokal and Bricmont are really doing two different things in this book: exposing those who appropriate scientific ideas without knowing what they are discussing (i.e., Lacan, Kristeva, et al), and arguing against those advocating the "strong program" in the Sociology of Science (i.e., Latour). It's in the "Epilogue" where I think they make a plausible case that these things are not only related but harmful intellectual practices.

In sum, then, Fashionable Nonsense is enjoyable enough, but should have been more smoothly developed. Sokal and Bricmont are in a position of great strength, but didn't take full advantage of it.

At first, I have to admit I enjoyed this book because of some personal reasons: as History graduate I was concerned and disappointed by the effects of posmodern theories in the social sciences. As Sokal and Bricmont say, natural sciences have nothing to fear from all that, but History! Sokal and Bricmont have commented the main and most important works of the posmodern doctrine, but maybe they haven't read the kind of stupidities and nonsenses arranged by the average posmodern followers, not to talk about the surrealistic discussions you can have with some of them. All that is on its way to destroy humanities and transform them into some kind of incomprehensible mystifications.

Maybe worst are the consequences in pedagogy: I've read that students errors shoulnd't be corrected by teachers, they simply express the "internal dynamic" of the student. An that in an official regulation for secondary teachers! Everyone can imagine what kind of education will outcome from that. Seeems like someone want us to be as stupid as possible.

But if that wasn't all, I am, as a progressist, even more worried about epistemological relativity. I couldn't and still cannot see what's progressive in the statement that there's no absolute truth and that every social or cultural group has his own relative truth. I simply haven't heard any better argument to justify ideas like negation of holocaust or white suprematism or any other absurds and evident falsehoods in the same or similar way. If neonazis defend and are convinced by those "theories", are they in the same level of truth than the victims of the holocaust? To be crude: is the holocaust a social discourse, only referable to their victims? To answer fast and clear: NO, there is a real and verifiable truth. Rationality is good, everything else is bad and dangerous, lets say it without any kind of irony.

That's why I would recommend this book to any social concerned person, it helps in the needed task of "deconstructing" the posmodern nonsense. It demonstrates, as some guessed before, that the posmodern discourse is full (and based on) falsehoods, misinterpretations, non-sequiturs, empty pomposities and is, in clear words, a big intellectual dishonesty. I can only wonder what results would outcome from a complete syntactical (not grammatical) analysis from Derrida's, Irigaray's, not to mention Lacan's works. They seem full of completely meaningless but impressive assertions which no one could explain what they are trying to say, supposing they try to say something.

The only thing I can blame on this book is not being destructive enough and not going as far as it could have gone. Maybe in a next book, for which I propose a new and better title to Sokal and Bricmont (maybe with the help of a good linguist): The Great Posmodern Swindle.

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 Julia 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

When Alan Sokal revealed his hoax on the postmodernists he was subjected to a great deal of hostile criticism, including claims that he disparaged the social sciences at large and that he was a stooge for the rightwing cultural establishment. In the introduction to this book the authors carefully defuse many of these criticisms. They explain that their criticisms of the social sciences and social scientists are confined to carefully designated examples (Kristeva, Lacan and others), with lengthy quotes from primary sources. Derrida, for example, is not in the dock because he has not indulged in the abuse of scientific theories and terminology which is their prime target. Against the charge of rightwing political bias, Sokal has a strong track record as a Marxist, hardly a recommendation in my view but a handy rejoinder to leftwing critics.

Given their carefully limited aim, their critiques are devastating and their book deserves to be read with close and critical attention by all students who are concerned about the standards of scholarship in the humanities and the social sciences. In general they do not stray into the philosophy of postmodernism, that is not an area where they have the qualifications or the motivation, to engage with the likes of Derrida.

The area of philosophy where they do chance their arm is the philosophy of science and, ironically, this is the Achilles heel of the book, though it is not likely to be targeted by their major critics. They wrote:

"At a time when superstitions, obscurantism, and nationalist and religious fanaticism are spreading in many parts of the world--including the 'developed' West--it is irresponsible, to say the least, to treat with such casualness what has historically been the principal defense against these follies, namely a rational vision of the world. It is doubtless not the intention of postmodern authors to favor obscurantism, but it is an inevitable consequence of their approach." (p.208)

The rational view of the world that they favour is of course the worldview of modern science. This is supposed to derive its authority from the so-called inductive methods championed by the logical positivists and logical empiricists. They consider that the rationality of science is not only under attack from the postmodernists (the barbarians at the gate) but from other misguide folk, especially T S Kuhn and Karl Popper, who have subverted the rationality of science from the inside.

That may be the case with Kuhn but it is not a valid criticism of Popper. His theory of conjectural objective knowledge provides a defensible rejoinder to relativism and nihilism in a way that the logical empiricists and other forms of positivism do not. The stakes are high in this contest and the authors are well aware of this. For more, do a google search on Rathouse+Popper. It is a cultural disaster of the first magnitude that Popper's ideas have been so thoroughly angled,misunderstood and generally sidelined in the mainstream of philosophy, the social sciences and the humanities.

Many thinkers have 'transgressed the boundaries'. Chomsky took what he needed from mathematics, while philosophers from Popper to David Albert pondered quantum physics and relativity. But, ignorant or contemptuous of the postmodern dispensation, they labored under a grave disadvantage. What they wrote took the form of rational propositions, and readers could test whether or not they agreed with them. The thinkers cited in this book are more advanced. Strictly speaking, they are impossible to refute. What they have to say is so deep that, where it impinges on one's small area of competence, naturally it has the appearance of nonsense, or at least lacks enough mundane sense to take issue with.

Sokal and Bricmont's area of competence is physics and math, and they stick to it. They disentangle gross errors and more subtle confusions arising from a kind of cargo-cult approach to science practiced among the left-bank tribes. They detect an uncritical scientism that would have embarrassed Wells. ('It is not an analogy ... this torus really exists and it is exactly the structure of the neurotic' - Jacques Lacan.) They catch Deleuze and Guattari indulging in a prolix grope at the foundations of calculus, muddying the waters with mystifications that were out of date two centuries ago. But of course readers of philosophico-literary theory aren't expected to know that, and at a pinch the masters may be up to something completely different. And so it goes on, in the old, old style.

The book is not a collection of finger-pointing schoolyard jibes. It's meticulously researched and a model of clear exposition. It raises serious points, which some speed-readers are determined to miss, about the current fault-lines of intellectual communication. It asks how we got here and what can be done, even essaying some answers. It's amazingly restrained (compare Gross & Levitt's 'Higher Superstition'), and all the stronger for that. The tone is drily humorous and there are downright funny bits: don't miss Irigaray quarreling with E=Mc^2 (it's sexist), or the sociologist Latour lecturing Einstein on elementary relativity. These people, we are told, are 'creating concepts'. They may be beyond parody but here's a good try: Sokal's Hoax, that concoction of pseudo-scholarship and pomo-babble, reprinted with commentary in an appendix. No, I don't believe the authors did it for the megabucks; it's the hegemony, stoopid.

Does any of this matter? Are Sokal and Bricmont wasting trees? The best the critics can say is: they wish they'd shut up. One school of apologetics argues that this is all nit-picking and irrelevant to real pomo (they always knew these particular luminaries were full of merde). Another school insists that these, or some of them, or one of them (opinions differ) are great, maligned thinkers. They can't both be right; indeed they may both be wrong. By all means read Lacan, Latour, Deleuze and their Anglophone wannabes. Also read this book and some Popper, ideally 'The Open Society and its Enemies'. See which you think treats your intelligence with seriousness and respect.

'But for those whose minds have been formed by this material, it may be too late' - Thomas Nagel.

Readers should look carefully at the book's Introduction, where S&B state their intentions. I want to quote one passage from that section which, I believe, encompasses both the book's major strength and a key weakness, (The numbering is mine).

(1) "We make no claim to analyze postmodernism in general; (2) rather our aim is to draw attention to...the repeated abuse of concepts and terminology coming from mathematics and physics. (3)We shall also analyze certain confusions of thought that are frequent in postmodernist writings and that bear on either the content or the philosophy of the natural sciences." (p.4)

As it stands, the passage is both a clear and a consistent declaration of intent. Moreover, the authors are devastatingly successful in carrying out (2) much to the embarassment of pomo's reputation which was already strongly suspect in many quarters. The problem lies in carrying out (3) in such a way that the integrity of (1) is not fatally compromised in the process. And here I believe that despite the authors' good intentions, they subvert their own preset limits by dismissing pomo in ways that at least imply a critical denial of (1). Consider the following key passage from the Epilogue, where the authors summarize a major effect of pomo's, namely its impact on not only science but on contemporary culture as a whole.

"At a time when superstitions, obscurantism, and nationalist and religious fanaticism are spreading in many parts of the world--including the `developed' West--it is irresponsible, to say the least, to treat with such casualness what has historically been the principal defense against these follies, namely a rational vision of the world. It is doubtless not the intention of postmodern authors to favor obscurantism, but it is an inevitable consequence of their approach." (p.208)

Now "an inevitable consequence of their approach" certainly appears to be a functional denial of (1). Yet to reach such a sweeping condemnation as expressed in the above would require a far lengthier, more philosophically sophisticated book than Fashionable Nonsense with its straw-man characterization of relativism. After all, in the US the ground for pomo was prepared not only by philosophers of science such as Kuhn and Lakatos, but by thinkers concerned with problems surrounding realist theories of reference, people like Rorty, Quine, and the later Wittgenstein. Of course, I wouldn't hold that any of the three are full-blown relativists, though Rorty comes close. Nonetheless, threads of their reasoning aid the case for what might loosely be labeled relativism. Moreover, approaches such as theirs cannot be refuted either directly or indirectly on the cheap, and certainly not by facile, albeit entertaining, comparisons with criminal investigation procedures.

In sum, had they remained within the bounds of their original intent, the authors would have delivered a withering, though not fatal, blow to aspects of pomo and more than a few of its pompously deserving exponents. However, by exceeding those bounds, the book pretends to a scope for which it does not furnish sufficient grounds--demonstrating, I suppose, that, despite the work's considerable merits, overreach is not an exclusive property of the French.