Library:Fashionable Nonsense
| Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science | |
|---|---|
| Author | Alan Sokal & Jean Bricmont |
| First published | 1998 |
| ISBN | 978-0-312-20407-5 |
| Role | Analysis |
| Domains | Science & Environment Culture, Religion & Society |
| Tactics | Pseudoscience / Junk Science |
Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science is a 1998 book by Alan Sokal & Jean Bricmont.
Summary
Alan Sokal, a physicist at New York University, and Jean Bricmont, a physicist at the University of Louvain in Belgium, published this book first in French in 1997 as Impostures Intellectuelles and in English in 1998. It examines how several celebrated French and other intellectuals used concepts from mathematics and physics in ways the authors argue were meaningless or wrong.
The hoax
The book followed one of the most famous academic hoaxes. In 1996 Sokal submitted an article to the cultural studies journal Social Text arguing, in fashionable academic language, that quantum gravity had progressive political implications. The article was deliberately nonsensical. The journal published it, and Sokal then revealed the hoax, arguing that the editors had accepted it because it flattered their ideological assumptions and sounded impressive.
The critique
The book goes beyond the hoax to examine specific texts. Sokal and Bricmont analyse passages by several prominent thinkers, among them Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Paul Virilio. They argue these writers used terms from topology, set theory, relativity and chaos theory to give their work an air of scientific authority, often without understanding the concepts or showing how they applied.
What they did not argue
The authors are careful to limit their claims. They do not say that the rest of these thinkers' work is worthless, only that the passages they examine misuse science. They also criticize a broader trend toward epistemic relativism: the view that scientific knowledge is merely a social construction with no better claim to truth than other narratives.
The politics
Sokal identifies himself as a man of the left. He argues that relativism damages the left, which has historically relied on evidence and reason to challenge power. A movement that abandons the idea of objective truth, he argues, loses the means to expose lies by the powerful.
Reception
The book provoked fierce debate. Critics accused the authors of misreading texts, ignoring context and caricaturing serious philosophy. Supporters saw it as an overdue defence of clarity and rigour.
Relevance to Bullshitopedia
The book shows how jargon and borrowed authority can substitute for meaning, a pattern Frankfurt would recognize as bullshit. It is relevant to the Pseudoscience / Junk Science tactic, and the hoax itself is a case study in how peer review can fail when content matches expectations.