BOOK REVIEW SECTION

Book Review Essays

Don't Cut the Pi Yet!ALEXANDER ALLAND

Columbia University

Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse ofScience. Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont. New York: PicadorUSA, 1998.317 pp.

Alan Sokal first came to the attention of professional so-cial scientists and their fellow travelers in cultural studiesand science studies with the publication of his article"Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a TransformativeHermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" in the spring/summer1996 issue of the postmodern journal Social Text. The arti-cle, peppered with lengthy and accurate citations from arange of (mostly French) scholars who, in Sokal's opinion,egregiously abuse scientific facts and theories drawn prin-cipally from physics and mathematics, made absolutely nosense. The question begged, of course, is why such afraudulent piece could possibly have passed muster withthe journal's editors? In Sokal's view it was because the ar-ticle expressed a postmodern epistemological stance pleas-ing to the journal's editors, specifically a strong form of re-lativism in which physical laws are "shown" to behistorically and culturally contingent and, therefore, sub-ject to criticism from, for example, a feminist or ethnic mi-nority point of view.

Shortly afterwards, when the fraud was revealed by Sokalin the magazine Lingua Franca, Bruce Robbins and An-drew Ross, editors of Social Text, responded in their ownjournal with a series of justifications. These included theclaim that Sokal's hoax was unethical and had serious con-sequences for any journal of science, the accusation (notverified) that scientists feel threatened by the work done inscience studies (a branch of postmodern studies), and thestatement (smelling strongly of hindsight) that, from thebeginning, the editors considered the article to be a "bithokey." One of my colleagues, perhaps not realizing the damn-ing nature of the comment, excused the article's appear-ance by suggesting that no one at the journal had read it!

Referring to the danger created by Sokal's hoax, whichthe same editors saw as an attack by a scientist on the free-

dom of nonscientists to criticize science, Robbins and Rossmade the strong claim that science is a civil religion withpolitical authority that has given rise to centuries of racism,sexism, and the scientific domination of nature. For thisreason, they argued, science needs to be combated by non-scientists who should have the right (assumed to be deniedby scientists) to criticize scientific methodology and epis-temology.

Although the main thrust of Sokal's article was a hiddenattack on a particularly American brand of postmodernism,the fact that many of the citations in it were taken fromFrench intellectuals drew an instantaneous, angry responsefrom the Parisian press. The proverbial material did not hitthe fan in a big way, however, until the book under reviewappeared in its original French edition, Impostures Intel-lectuelles, published, no less, by a respected house. Its ap-pearance was in a very Parisian sense "an event." Althoughthere were dissenting voices, a large group of intellectualsresponded to its appearance with a call to circle the wagonsand prepare for combat as if the integrity of their entireFrench intellectual establishment were under attack.

The book, now published in English under the titleFashionable Nonsense, sets out to demonstrate that theauthors it targets, all of whom have had a strong influenceon American postmodernism, grievously misuse conceptsfrom physics and mathematics to give a patina of scientificvalidity to their ideas. The primary purpose of the book lieselsewhere, however. It is to awaken American intellectualsand their students who, the authors feel, have been seducedaway from clear thinking by a group of native postmod-erns. The message to these readers is clear: don't let ob-scurantist prose replete with esoteric citations buffalo youinto accepting a dangerous version of radical relativismthat denies the possibility of any stable reality.

Fashionable Nonsense contains 11 chapters and an epi-logue as well as three appendices, including the originalSokal article, comments on the parody, and an afterword toit. The American edition differs only slightly from the

American Anthropologist 100(4): 1026-1042. Copyright 1999, American Anthropological Association

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French version. It adds new material on relativism in thesocial sciences and leaves out a chapter on Henri Bergson'sconfusions concerning Einstein's theory of relativity whichthe authors felt would not interest American readers.

The authors (French with the exception of one Belgian)chosen for criticism are: Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva,Luce Irigary, Bruno Latour, Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio,and the coauthors, Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Jean-Francois Lyotard and Michel Serres also face criticism butneither are featured in chapters exclusively devoted to theirworks. It is perhaps worth noting that several of theseauthors teach, at least part time, in the United States, and afew have taken up residence here. Readers of this reviewshould also note the absence of critical chapters on suchFrench luminaries as Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Derrida,Michel Foucault, and Levi-Strauss. These authors arespared because they do not commit the abuses criticized bySokal and Bricmont.

In addition to chapters on the targeted individuals, thebook contains two "intermezzos" structured to guide thereader through the thicket of postmodern thought, particu-larly concerning science. These intermezzos carry the fol-lowing titles: "Epistemic relativism in the philosophy ofscience" and "Chaos theory and postmodern science."Analyses and criticisms of the philosophers of science PaulFeyerabend, Thomas Kuhn, and Karl Popper are offered inthe first of these. Finally, in the same key as the intermez-zos, there is a chapter entitled "Godel's theorem and settheory: Some examples of abuse," which offers a criticallook at some further abuses of mathematical theory.

In their preface to the English edition, the authors at-tempt to clear up some misconceptions, both approvingand disapproving, stimulated by the original French ver-sion. On the approving side, they deny Jon Henley's per-ception expressed in the English newspaper The Guardianthat the book sets out to prove that "Modern French phi-losophy is a load of old tosh." The book, they emphasize,has a much more limited focus. They also deny RobertMaggiori's disapproving comment in the French newspa-per Liberation that they are "humorless scientistic pedantswho correct grammatical errors in love letters."

For this reviewer, the case against the French is open andshut. To show this I offer two relatively short citations fol-lowed by the comments they draw from Sokal andBricmont. I assure the reader that my examples are typicalof the genre under attack in the book.

From Luce Irigaray:If the identity of the human subject is defined in the work ofFreud by a Spaltung, this is also the work for nuclear fission.Nietzche also perceived his ego as an atomic nucleus threat-ened with explosion. As for Einstein, the main issue he raisesin my mind, is that, given his interests in accelerations with-out electromagnetic reequilibrations, he leaves us with onlyone hope, his God. It is true that Einstein played the violin:music helped him preserve his personal equilibrium. But

what does the mighty theory of general relativity do for us ex-cept establish nuclear power plants and question our bodilyinertia, the necessary condition of life....

Quantum mechanics is interested in the disappearance of theworld. Scientists today are working on smaller and smallerparticles, which cannot be perceived but only defined thanks tosophisticated technical instruments. [Irigaray 1993.204-205]

Sokal and Bricmont respond to this quote as follows:About the Spaltung, Irigaray's logic is truly bizarre: Does shereally think that this linguistic coincidence constitutes an ar-gument: And if so, what does it show?Concerning Nietzche: the atomic nucleus was discovered in1911, and nuclear fission in 1938; the possibility of nuclearchain reaction, leading to an explosion was studied theoreti-cally during the late 1930s and sadly realized experimentallyduring the 1940s. It is thus highly improbable that Nietzsche(1844-1900) could have perceived his ego "as an atomic nu-cleus threatened with explosion." . . .

The expression "acceleration without electromagnetic reequili-brations" has no meaning in physics. . . . It goes without say-ing that Einstein could not have been interested in this nonex-istent subject.General relativity bears no relation to nuclear power plants.Irigaray has probably confused it with special relativity,which does apply to nuclear power plants as well as to manyother things (elementary particles, atoms, stars . . .). The con-cept of inertia certainly appears in relativity theory, as it doesin Newtonian mechanics; but it has nothing to do with humanbeings' "bodily inertia", whatever that is intended to mean.[Sokal and Bricmont 1998:108-109]From Jean-Francois Lyotard:The conclusion we can draw from this research . . . is that thecontinuous differential function is losing its preeminence as aparadigm of knowledge and prediction. Postmodern sci-enceby concerning itself with such things as undecidables,the limits of precise control, conflicts characterized by incom-plete information, "fractcT catastrophes, and pragmatic para-doxesis theorizing its own evolution as discontinuous,catastrophic, nonrectifiable, and paradoxical. It is changingthe meaning of the word knowledge, while expressing howsuch a change can take place. It is producing not the known,but the unknown. And it suggests a model of legitimation thathas nothing to do with maximized performance, but has as itsbasis difference understood as paralogy. [Lyotard 1984:60]Of this quote Sokal and Bricmont say the following:Since this paragraph is frequently quoted, let us examine itclosely. Lyotard has here thrown together at least six distinctbranches of mathematics and physics, which are conceptuallyquite different from one another. Moreover, he has confusedthe introduction of nondifferentiable (or even discontinuous)functions in scientific models with a so-called "discontinu-ous" or "paradoxical" evolution of science itself. The theoriescited by Lyotard of course produce new knowledge, but theydo so without changing the meaning of the word. A fortiori,

1028 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST VOL. 100, No. 4 DECEMBER 1998

what they produce is known, not unknown (except in the triv-ial sense that new discoveries open up new problems). Fi-nally, the "model of legitimation" remains the comparison oftheories with observations and experiments, not "differenceunderstood as paralogy" (whatever this may mean). [Sokaland Bricmont 1988:138-139]Since Sokal and Bricmont limit themselves to what they

consider to be the misuse of "scientific" theory and con-cepts, I beg the reader's indulgence to add my own favoritecitation from Lyotard, drawn not from science but fromphilosophy. While what follows is not devoid of meaning,what meaning it has is trivial once one has taken the painsto unscramble it.

My third clarification pertains to the words 'can we' in thequestion 'Can we continue to organize events on the basis ofthe Idea of a universal history of humanity?' As Aristotle andlinguists know, when it is applied to a notion (in the presentcase the notion of the pursuit of a universal history), the mo-dality of can simultaneously entails the affirmation and nega-tion of that notion. That the pursuit is possible implies neitherthat it will take place nor that it will not take place, but it cer-tainly implies that the fact of its taking place or not take placewill take place. [Lyotard 1989:317]In addition to the charge that Sokal and Bricmont were

insensitive to the use of metaphor and analogy in the workof the scholars criticized, the French reaction to the bookwas in general rather superficial, based more on pique thanon reason. For example, Julia Kristeva's misuse of mathe-matics was excused because it occurred only in her earlywork, long since abandoned. Left out is the fact that at thetime of publication in the late 1960s this work received al-most unanimous accolades from the critics. No one tookthe trouble to check the validity of Kristeva's excursionsinto mathematics. Another line of defense concerns Jac-ques Lacan. He was defended with the claim that since allhis published works were taken from transcripts copiedduring lectures, one cannot be sure that any of the quotescited by Sokal and Bricmont are accurate representationsof his thought. Other attacks on the book were simply adhomonym. For example, Jean Bricmont's (a Belgian) par-ticipation in the writing of the book was attributed by onereviewer to the fact that he is anti-French. Roger-Pol Droit,writing in Le Monde, reviewed two books and a special is-sue of Les Temps Modernes, all answers to Impostures In-tellectuelles. In his review Droit suggests that Alan Sokalis the Kenneth Starr of American Science and that in Sokaland Starr one finds two faces of the same rigorous puritan-ism, two ways of using hatred of one's enemies to make apoint. Further, he accuses Sokal of claiming that the exactsciences are the only true sciences. This is the exact oppo-site of what the authors of Fashionable Nonsense, in bothits French and American editions, really do claim. In theirepilogue, for example, they explicitly state: "Don't ape thenatural sciences. The social sciences have their own meth-

ods; they are not obliged to follow each 'paradigm shift'(be it real or imaginary) in physics or biology" (Sokal andBricmont 1998:192). After reading Droit's words one isforced to wonder if he has actually read Impostures Intel-lectuelles or even if he understands French.

So much for the French. Let me turn now to Sokal andBricmont's criticism of American postmodern epistemo-logical relativism. Most of the material covering this subjectwill be found in the intermezzo chapters and in the epilogue.

To avoid misunderstanding, the authors hasten to makeclear they are aware that postmodern scholarship has hadpositive as well as negative effects on contemporary schol-arship. On the positive side, they say, it has provided aneeded correction to naive modernism, particularly beliefsin continuous progress, scientism, and Eurocentrism. Theyalso say that what they criticize is found primarily in a radi-cal form of postmodernism and, only rarely, in some of themore moderate postmodern writings.

Postmodernism in America has developed primarilyamong scholars on the left of the political spectrum. In thedebate concerning the validity of its theories and methods,its lumps have come almost exclusively from the politicalright. In their epilogue, Sokal and Bricmont, whose extra-academic credentials are clearly on the Left, take pains toexplain why their critique is both necessary and appropri-ate. Sokal and Bricmont argue that the recent link betweenpostmodernism's antiscientific stance and its position onthe Left constitutes a serious paradox. They point out thatfor most of the recent past the Left has been identified withscience and against obscurantism. It is only with the adventof postmodernism that science has been reduced to a para-digm among many of "equal" value. They trace this link tothe development of new social movements searching forrecognition and ideological justification, a general discour-agement and disorientation on the Left linked to the rise ofconservatism, a rampant free market ideology, and the fallof radical ideologies around the world.

Sokal and Bricmont deny that postmodernism poses areal threat to the natural sciences. Rather, it is the socialsciences that suffer from the proliferation of "nonsense"and "word games." In their view, postmodernism in the so-cial sciences is guilty of three sins. It wastes time, it prof-fers a kind of cultural confusion that favors obscurantism,and it has a perverse negative effect on the political Left.Furthermore, the extreme form of relativism displayed inthe worst of postmodernism has severely damaged thequality of both teaching and culture in the United States. Ithas created a kind of anything-goes attitude that renders se-rious critical inquiry difficult, if not impossible. The ex-treme relativist position in which one "narration" of thesame event is as good as another, each having equal truthvalue, leads directly to the dangerous position that sexist orracist prejudices and the most reactionary socioeconomictheories are equally valid as descriptions of the real world.

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In the third appendix ("Further Comments on theHoax") the authors state:

But such epistemological agnosticism won't suffice, at leastfor people who aspire to make social change. Deny that non-context-dependent assertions can be true, and you don't justthrow out quantum mechanics and molecular biology: youalso throw out the Nazi gas chambers, the American enslave-ment of Africans, and the fact that today in New York it israining. Hobsbawm is right: facts do matter, and some facts(like the first two cited here) matter a great deal. [Sokal andBricmont 1998:285]

A set of commonsense suggestions are made for thosewho wish to avoid traps set by the radical postmoderns. Inthis reviewer's opinion the advice is worth taking:

1. It is a good idea to know what one is talking about.2. Not all that is obscure is necessarily profound.3. Science is not a text.4. Don't ape the natural sciences.5. Be wary of argument from authority.6. Specific skepticism should not be confused with radi-

cal skepticism.7. Ambiguity is often used as subterfuge.

In place of postmodern discourse, the authors hope forthe development of an intellectual culture that will stick tothe rules of rationalism but avoid dogmatism, be scientifi-cally rigorous but capable of avoiding scientism, be open-minded but not frivolous, and be politically progressivewithout committing the sins of sectarianism.

The worst sinners among the postmoderns will not ap-preciate this book because it is written in luminously clearprose and presents a coherent argument supported by animpressive set of examples.

This reviewer can only add a bravo and a thank you foran important work in this age of confusion.

Notes1. Not all comments in France were negative. Many scien-

tists came to the defense of Sokal and Bricmont. This was lessthe case among nonscientists, but even from this camp one canfind positive commentary. For example, the French monthly LeMonde deL'Education for January 1998 published an interviewwith three students in philosophy at the elite Ecole Normale Su-perieure, which prepares the next generation of university pro-fessors. All three of those interviewed take the book seriouslyand recognize its positive importance:

After reading Impostures Intellectuelles we felt relieved find-ing that an author put his finger on the same problems that wehave posed. This debate has been latent, due perhaps to the

kind of training we received in preparation for this school, [p. 9]Of course, one can say that there are, here or there, metaphors

that the author uses to serve a pedagogical function. But theproblem is that instead of clarifying, recourse to scientific con-cepts often obscures things, sometimes to the point that the useof science is used as an argument for authority, [p. 10]

In the press it is scientists who come to the defense of Sokaland Bricmont, but without aggression towards philosophy. Onecannot say the same for philosophers. When they attack the bookthey defend a perfectly ridiculous form of corporatism, [p. 10, alltranslations mine]2. I offer the following anecdote concerning Julia Kristeva to

illustrate the attitude certain French scholars hold of Americanintellectual life, as well as their readiness to substitute self-de-fense for rational argument.

In the late summer of 1997, Woody Allen appeared on thepopular French television program, Buillon de Culture, tolaunch his film, Deconstructing Harry, in France. Among theguests were Julia Kristeva and her husband, Philippe Sollers.Unco wed by the presence of the author and director, Kristevaand Sollers proceeded to offer their own very French andrather abstract interpretation of the film. Woody Allen lis-tened politely with a rather bemused expression. During thediscussion, Julia Kristeva noted that psychoanalysis was sowell portrayed in the film because Allen himself benefitedfrom many years of intense therapy. The program's puckishmoderator, Bernard Pivot, immediately turned to Allen andasked if it were true that he had really benefited from analysis.The reply was vintage Allen. He hemmed and hawed for sev-eral seconds and then said that while his analysis had un-doubtedly provided some benefits, he was generally under-whelmed by the experience. Julia Kristeva, herself apracticing analyst, clearly ruffled by Allen's response, of-fered the riposte that his "problem" stemmed from his havingbeen analyzed by an American. She added that Americananalysts are interested in only one thing: the sexual life oftheir patients!

References CitedDroit, R-P.

1998 Nous sommes tous des imposteurs! Le Monde, Oct. 2:VI.

Irigaray, Luce1993 Is the Subject of Science Sexed. Hypatia 2:65-87.

Le Monde de L'Education1998 Les normaliens jugent l'affaire Sokal. Jan 10:9-10.

Lyotard, Jean-Francois1984 The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.

Mineapolis: University of Minnesota Press.1989 The Lyotard Reader. Andrew Benjamin, ed. Oxford:

Basil Blackwell.