Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science… by Alan Sokal
Co-Author Alan Sokal, a physics professor, is famous for a hoax he perpetrated in 1996. He wrote a deliberately meaningless article, consisting of pseudo-scientific quotes, from prominent "postmodernists," connected by strings of gibberish. With the appealing title of "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," the article was published in prestigious postmodern journal. Afterward, Sokal published a disavowal, identifying his piece as a parody. (It is re-printed as an Epilogue to this book.)

This book takes up where Sokal's hoax left off. Postmodernism, Sokal and Bricmont state, has "atomized mankind into cultures and groups having their own conceptual universes." Fashionable Nonsense reveals, and repels, the postmodernist war on the exemplar of objectivity in our culture: science.

In some cases, the authors' scientific knowledge allows them to uncover the postmodernists' falsehoods and distortions. Most of the quotes selected, however, are so self-evidently bizarre that one needs no specialized knowledge to judge them.

Einstein's theory of relativity, for example, is - according to one critic - actually a theory of power, representing "a struggle for the control of privileges, for the disciplining of docile bodies." Physics is said to be "sexist," because it explains the behavior of solids better than that of liquids. ("Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids.")

The most philosophically interesting part of the book, and the most philosophically mixed, is a 55-page "intermezzo," criticizing philosophical relativism - the notion that there are no objective truths, only "relative" truths. Although Sokal and Bricmont stand on shaky ground (claiming, for example, that the existence of an external world can be demonstrated only on the pragmatic grounds that science seems to "work"), they subtly analyze the verbal trickery employed by relativists such as Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend.

More than just a lengthy "horror file" on postmodernism, *Fashionable Nonsense* is a powerful weapon in the battle to save science from intellectual assailants. ( )

This is a necessary book that exposes the gibberish of many prominent postmodern philosophers. Its case is clear, and I am glad Sokal and Bricmont went through the trouble of wading through their literature to build such a solid argument. Their arguments on epistemologists (Kuhn and Feyerabend) are far weaker, though. ( )

Alan Sokal (PhD in Physics) achieved his goal by poking fun at so-called intellectuals misusing science when he published a paper “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” with on purpose many pseudo-scientific statements in their journal. They were first delighted with all their deconstruction and the like.

After getting his article with all the gibberish and nonsense published, he angered those pseudo-intellectuals by exposing all the mistakes he on purpose wrote in the article.

Giving a flair or perfume of science does not make a text anything reliable.

In fact, he showed that what they were writing is sheer nonsense or even worse fraud.

Priceless by trashing all postmodern nonsense and pseudo-science. ( )

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. ( )

Science > Philosophy