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Intellectual Impostures Paperback – April 3, 2003

by Alan Sokal (Author), Jean Bricmont (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars 13 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Economist Books (April 3, 2003)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1861976313
  • ISBN-13: 978-1861976314
  • Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.8 x 7.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,869,416 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsRaises some interesting questions about academic honesty
By Jill Malter on December 4, 2004
Format: Paperback
Have you ever been tempted to write pure nonsense? Maybe on some rainy first day of April? I once felt like writing:

"I sure made a mistake when I told the Goddess Minerva that She couldn't square the circle. In response, She drew a circle next to me, a truly beautiful and perfect circle. And right in front of my panicky brown eyes, She turned pi into four! Not just the circumference divided by the diameter, but the series expansion as an inverse tangent as well. What would She do next, make me unwell by dropping the first letter from my first name? i tried to apologize, but it was too late."

I was not the only one to dream of mangling pi. In "Contact: A Novel," Carl Sagan went me one better when he had aliens send messages to each other at infinite speed by hiding them in a numerical representation of pi and then, you guessed it, changing pi everywhere!

Still, Alan Sokal went beyond even this, getting the following published in the journal "Social Text:"

"In this way the infinite-dimensional invariance group erodes the distinction between the observer and the observed; the pi of Euclid and the G of Newton, formerly thought to be constant and universal, are now perceived in their ineluctable historicity; and the putative observer becomes fatally decentered, disconnected from any epistemic link to a spacetime point that can no longer be defined by geometry alone."

Sokal put this and many more whoppers into his hoax, which defended an equally absurd thesis: that "physical 'reality,' no less than social 'reality,' is at bottom a social and linguistic construct.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsFor those whose minds have been formed by this material ...
By Suet on August 22, 2005
Format: Paperback
... 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.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsThe merde hits the fan
By Peter Uys HALL OF FAME on September 12, 2004
Format: Paperback
This book grew out of the famous hoax in which Alan Sokal published a parody article in the American postmod journal Social Text. The article was filled with non sequiturs and nonsensical quotations about maths and physics by prominent French and American intellectuals, yet it was published unaltered. Sokal then revealed that it was a deliberate parody, to the great consternation of the editors.

Intellectual Impostures broadens the investigation to demonstrate how intellectuals such as Lacan, Kristeva, Irigaray, Baudrillard, Deleuze and Guattari have repeatedly abused scientific concepts and terminology. They have either used these ideas completely out of context without justification or they have thrown scientific jargon around with no regard for its meaning or relevance, obviously to try to impress their readers.

In the preface to the first edition, Sokal and Bricmont provide the background to the controversy whilst in the preface to the second edition they discuss the four types of criticisms of their book. These are: critics who tried to refute them, critics who attributed to them ideas that the authors themselves had rejected, name-calling and ad hominem attacks, and finally those who agreed but thought that the authors did not go far enough.

Here one is tempted to partly agree with Anne Applebaum who, in her review of the book, claimed that of course post-structuralist theory is rubbish and that we don't need a book to tell us that. I disagree with the second statement, because Intellectual Impostures is mostly an amusing read that will have you rolling on the floor and because it is vitally important that intellectual frauds be exposed.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Thank you!

Published 1 month ago by gemini_6934
5.0 out of 5 starsExtremely relevant

I find the book extremely interesting and well written, and the subject is very relevant. It was surprising to learn how renowned philosophers wrote sentences completely... Read more

Published on July 20, 2012 by giancapace
5.0 out of 5 starsDecoding the Mystery of Pseudo Science

The many hours I spent reading French philosophy in school while trying to glean something comprehensible were far too many. Read more

Published on June 15, 2010 by Waveland112
4.0 out of 5 starsPulverises intellectual and scientific nonsense with admirable panache

Anyone who has had the misfortune to purchase a book that is an offense to reason, or to have to listen to a talk full of pretense and pseudo-scientific subterfuge; anyone who is... Read more

Published on February 4, 2010 by Ashvajit
1.0 out of 5 starsIts Fashionable to To Praise Non-Thought!

It could only have come in a context such as the 1990's neo-liberal America that non-thinking could be praised and even become fashionable. Derrida too tough to read? Read more

Published on May 5, 2009 by Rod
5.0 out of 5 starsA 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... Read more

Published on August 28, 2008 by Robespierre
2.0 out of 5 starsIntellectual 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. Read more

Published on November 26, 2006 by Joel D. Morrison
2.0 out of 5 starsIn 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. Read more

Published on September 22, 2006 by Olly Buxton
1.0 out of 5 starsPostures and Impostures: one too many Sokals

Sokal was just another unknown and unremarkable computational physicist until he had the bright idea to "punk" the editors of Social Text, a professed postmodernist journal, with... Read more

Published on September 2, 2004 by Joao Leao
5.0 out of 5 starsConceptual Deliriums

This is a most necessary book, which shows with overpowering force that the apostles of postmodernism are naked emperors. Read more

Published on July 18, 2004 by Luc REYNAERT

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