Intellectual Impostures
Page 2
2. Attacking our alleged motivations. Some commentators, instead of examining our reasoning, attack the motivations that they attribute to us. For example, Julia Kristeva claims that our book forms part of an American economic and diplomatic campaign against France.20 Isabelle Stengers sees it as a pure ‘commercial operation’.21 Vincent Fleury and Yun Sun Limet accuse us of seeking to redistribute research funds from the social sciences to the natural sciences.22 Again, this form of defence is curious: for even if our motivations were as alleged (and they most certainly are not), how could that affect the validity or invalidity of our arguments?
There is nevertheless something tragicomical in the critiques that portray us as ‘scientistic’ and as irreducibly hostile to philosophy and the social sciences. Quite the contrary, it is our interest in those disciplines – an interest that many of our physicist colleagues consider excessive – that led us to discover and denounce the ‘impostures’. Our goal wasn’t to ‘defend the natural sciences’ – in truth, the vast majority of scientists couldn’t care less (to put it mildly) about the pseudo-mathematical blather of Lacan, Kristeva or Deleuze. These obscurities’ negative effect is felt solely in the humanities and the social sciences. Moreover, when our detractors present our limited and precise criticism of obscure jargon as if it were a generalized attack on the humanities or the social sciences, they prove themselves to be the latter fields’ worst enemies. Indeed, to impose vastly lower standards of clarity and rationality on the humanities and social sciences than the ones demanded in the natural sciences is to show implicit contempt for the former. For example, when John Sturrock says that our critique of the gross abuses exposed in this book amounts to ‘apply[ing] criteria of rigour and univocity fundamental to their own practice [as physicists] which are beside the point once transferred to this alien context’, and illustrates what he means by praising Irigaray’s ‘wild and contentious theses’ concerning the sexism inherent in the equation E = Mc2 (‘privileging what goes the fastest’) against the ‘stultifying rigour so inappropriately demanded by Sokal and Bricmont’, one can only wonder who really looks down on the social sciences.
The fourth type of criticism comes from generally favourable reviewers who complain that our focus is too limited: in their view, we should have included a critique of Foucault or Derrida, of all postmodernism, of all contemporary French philosophy, or even of all the political left. Thus, Andy Martin, writing in the Daily Telegraph, observes rightly that our book ‘is not a thoroughgoing demolition job’ and calls this ‘a wasted opportunity’.23 Anne Applebaum, in the Literary Review, asserts (rather too hastily in our view) that ‘of course it [post-structural theory] is all rubbish. Why do we need a 294-page book to tell us that?’24 But one can’t do everything in one book: we chose to limit this book’s scope both for reasons of competence and because we feel that the broader issues raised by these reviewers are far too complex to be discussed carefully in less than 300 pages. In any case, as the foregoing sample of reactions shows, our modest and irrelevant contribution has created enough debates to keep two mediocre physicists busy for a while.
1
INTRODUCTION
So long as authority inspires awe, confusion and absurdity enhance conservative tendencies in society. Firstly, because clear and logical thinking leads to a cumulation of knowledge (of which the progress of the natural sciences provides the best example) and the advance of knowledge sooner or later undermines the traditional order. Confused thinking, on the other hand, leads nowhere in particular and can be indulged indefinitely without producing any impact upon the world.
(Stanislav Andreski, Social Sciences as Sorcery, 1972, p. 90)
The story of this book begins with a hoax. For some years, we have been surprised and distressed by the intellectual trends in certain parts of American academia. Vast sectors of the humanities and the social sciences seem to have adopted a philosophy that we shall call, for want of a better term, ‘postmodernism’: an intellectual current characterized by the more-or-less explicit rejection of the rationalist tradition of the Enlightenment, by theoretical discourses disconnected from any empirical test, and by a cognitive and cultural relativism that regards science as nothing more than a ‘narration’, a ‘myth’ or a social construction among many others.
To respond to this phenomenon, one of us (Sokal) decided to try an unorthodox (and admittedly uncontrolled) experiment: submit to a fashionable American cultural-studies journal, Social Text, a parody of the type of work that has proliferated in recent years, to see whether they would publish it. The article, entitled ‘Transgressing the boundaries: Toward a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity’,1 is brimming with absurdities and blatant non sequiturs. In addition, it asserts an extreme form of cognitive relativism: after mocking the old-fashioned ‘dogma’ that ‘there exists an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human being and indeed of humanity as a whole’, it proclaims categorically that ‘physical “reality”, no less than social “reality”, is at bottom a social and linguistic construct’. By a series of stunning leaps of logic, it arrives at the conclusion that ‘the π of Euclid and the G of Newton, formerly thought to be constant and universal, are now perceived in their ineluctable historicity’. The rest is in the same vein.
And yet, the article was accepted and published. Worse, it was published in a special issue of Social Text devoted to rebutting the criticisms levelled against postmodernism and social constructivism by several distinguished scientists.2 For the editors of Social Text, it was hard to imagine a more radical way of shooting themselves in the foot.
Sokal immediately revealed the hoax, provoking a firestorm of reaction in both the popular and academic press.3 Many researchers in the humanities and social sciences wrote to Sokal, sometimes very movingly, to thank him for what he had done and to express their own rejection of the postmodernist and relativist tendencies dominating large parts of their disciplines. One student felt that the money he had earned to finance his studies had been spent on the clothes of an emperor who, as in the fable, was naked. Another wrote that he and his colleagues were thrilled by the parody, but asked that his sentiments be held in confidence because, although he wanted to help change his discipline, he could do so only after securing a permanent job.
But what was all the fuss about? Media hype notwithstanding, the mere fact the parody was published proves little in itself; at most it reveals something about the intellectual standards of one trendy journal. More interesting conclusions can be derived, however, by examining the content of the parody.4 On close inspection, one sees that the parody was constructed around quotations from eminent French and American intellectuals about the alleged philosophical and social implications of mathematics and the natural sciences. The passages may be absurd or meaningless, but they are nonetheless authentic. In fact, Sokal’s only contribution was to provide a ‘glue’ (the ‘logic’ of which is admittedly whimsical) to join these quotations together and praise them. The authors in question form a veritable pantheon of contemporary ‘French theory’: Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Félix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, Jacques Lacan, Bruno Latour, Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Serres and Paul Virilio.5 The citations also include many prominent American academics in Cultural Studies and related fields; but these authors are often, at least in part, disciples of or commentators on the French masters.
Since the quotations included in the parody were rather brief, Sokal subsequently assembled a series of longer texts to illustrate these authors’ handling of the natural sciences, which he circulated among his scientific colleagues. Their reaction was a mixture of hilarity and dismay: they could hardly believe that anyone – much less renowned intellectuals – could write such nonsense. However, when non-scientists read the material, they pointed out the need to explain, in lay terms, exactly why the cited passages are absurd or meaningless. From that moment, the two of us worked together to produce a series of analyses and commentaries on the te
xts, resulting in this book.
What we intend to show
The goal of this book is to make a limited but original contribution to the critique of the admittedly nebulous Zeitgeist that we have called ‘postmodernism’. We make no claim to analyse postmodernist thought in general; rather, our aim is to draw attention to a relatively little-known aspect, namely the repeated abuse of concepts and terminology coming from mathematics and physics. We shall also analyse certain confusions of thought that are frequent in postmodernist writings and that bear on either the content or the philosophy of the natural sciences.
The word ‘abuse’ here denotes one or more of the following characteristics:
1 Holding forth at length on scientific theories about which one has, at best, an exceedingly hazy idea. The most common tactic is to use scientific (or pseudo-scientific) terminology without bothering much about what the words actually mean.
2 Importing concepts from the natural sciences into the humanities or social sciences without giving the slightest conceptual or empirical justification. If a biologist wanted to apply, in her research, elementary notions of mathematical topology, set theory or differential geometry, she would be asked to give some explanation. A vague analogy would not be taken very seriously by her colleagues. Here, by contrast, we learn from Lacan that the structure of the neurotic subject is exactly the torus (it is no less than reality itself, cf. p. 19), from Kristeva that poetic language can be theorized in terms of the cardinality of the continuum (cf. p. 38), and from Baudrillard that modern war takes place in a non-Euclidean space (cf. p. 137) – all without explanation.
3 Displaying a superficial erudition by shamelessly throwing around technical terms in a context where they are completely irrelevant. The goal is, no doubt, to impress and, above all, to intimidate the non-scientist reader. Even some academic and media commentators fall into the trap: Roland Barthes is impressed by the precision of Julia Kristeva’s work (cf. p. 37) and Le Monde admires the erudition of Paul Virilio (cf. p. 159).
4 Manipulating phrases and sentences that are, in fact, meaningless. Some of these authors exhibit a veritable intoxication with words, combined with a superb indifference to their meaning.
These authors speak with a self-assurance that far outstrips their scientific competence: Lacan boasts of using ‘the most recent development in topology’ (cf. p. 21) and Latour asks whether he has taught anything to Einstein (cf. p. 121). They imagine, perhaps, that they can exploit the prestige of the natural sciences in order to give their own discourse a veneer of rigour. And they seem confident that no one will notice their misuse of scientific concepts. No one is going to cry out that the king is naked.
Our goal is precisely to say that the king is naked (and the queen too). But let us be clear. We are not attacking philosophy, the humanities or the social sciences in general; on the contrary, we feel that these fields are of the utmost importance and we want to warn those who work in them (especially students) against some manifest cases of charlatanism.6 In particular, we want to ‘deconstruct’ the reputation that certain texts have of being difficult because the ideas in them are so profound. In many cases we shall demonstrate that if the texts seem incomprehensible, it is for the excellent reason that they mean precisely nothing.
There are many different degrees of abuse. At one end, one finds extrapolations of scientific concepts, beyond their domain of validity, that are erroneous but for subtle reasons. At the other end, one finds numerous texts that are full of scientific words but entirely devoid of meaning. And there is, of course, a continuum of discourses that can be situated somewhere between these two extremes. Although we shall concentrate in this book on the most manifest abuses, we shall also briefly address some less obvious confusions concerning chaos theory (see Chapter 7).
Let us stress that there is nothing shameful in being ignorant of calculus or quantum mechanics. What we are criticizing is the pretension of some celebrated intellectuals to offer profound thoughts on complicated subjects that they understand, at best, at the level of popularizations.7
At this point, the reader may naturally wonder: Do these abuses arise from conscious fraud, self-deception, or perhaps a combination of the two? We are unable to offer any categorical answer to this question, due to the lack of (publicly available) evidence. But, more importantly, we must confess that we do not find this question of great interest. Our aim here is to stimulate a critical attitude, not merely towards certain individuals, but towards a part of the intelligentsia (both in the United States and in Europe) that has tolerated and even encouraged this type of discourse.
Yes, but...
Before proceeding any further, let us answer some of the objections that will no doubt occur to the reader.
1. The quotations’ marginality
It could be argued that we are splitting hairs, criticizing authors who admittedly have no scientific training and who have perhaps made a mistake in venturing onto unfamiliar terrain, but whose contribution to philosophy and/or the social sciences is nevertheless important and is in no way invalidated by the ‘small errors’ we have uncovered. We would respond, first of all, that these texts contain much more than mere ‘errors’: they display a profound indifference, if not a disdain, for facts and logic. Our goal is not, therefore, to poke fun at literary critics who make mistakes when citing relativity or Gödel’s theorem, but to defend the canons of rationality and intellectual honesty that are (or should be) common to all scholarly disciplines.
It goes without saying that we are not competent to judge the nonscientific aspects of these authors’ work. We understand perfectly well that their ‘interventions’ in the natural sciences do not constitute the central themes of their œuvre. But when intellectual dishonesty (or gross incompetence) is discovered in one part – even a marginal part – of someone’s writings, it is natural to want to examine more critically the rest of his or her work. We do not want to prejudge the results of such an analysis, but simply to remove the aura of profundity that has sometimes intimidated students (and professors) from undertaking it.
When ideas are accepted on the basis of fashion or dogma, they are especially sensitive to the exposure even of marginal aspects. For example, geological discoveries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries showed that the earth is vastly older than the 5,000-or-so years recounted in the Bible; and although these findings directly contradicted only a small part of the Bible, they had the indirect effect of undermining its overall credibility as a factual account of history, so that nowadays few people (except in the United States) believe in the Bible in the literal way that most Europeans did only a few centuries ago. Consider, by contrast, Isaac Newton’s work: it is estimated that 90 per cent of his writings deal with alchemy or mysticism. But, so what? The rest survives because it is based on solid empirical and rational arguments. Similarly, most of Descartes’ physics is false, but some of the philosophical questions he raised are still pertinent today. If the same can be said for the work of our authors, then our findings have only marginal relevance. But if these writers have become international stars primarily for sociological rather than intellectual reasons, and in part because they are masters of language and can impress their audience with a clever abuse of sophisticated terminology – non-scientific as well as scientific – then the revelations contained in this essay may indeed have significant repercussions.
Let us emphasize that these authors differ enormously in their attitude toward science and the importance they give it. They should not be lumped together in a single category, and we want to warn the reader against the temptation to do so. For example, although the quotation from Derrida contained in Sokal’s parody is rather amusing,8 it is a one-shot abuse; since there is no systematic misuse of (or indeed attention to) science in Derrida’s work, there is no chapter on Derrida in this book. By contrast, the work of Serres is replete with more-or-less poetic allusions to science and its history; but his assertions, though extremely vague, are in general
neither completely meaningless nor completely false, and so we have not discussed them here in detail.9 Kristeva’s early writings relied strongly (and abusively) on mathematics, but she abandoned this approach more than twenty years ago; we criticize them here because we consider them symptomatic of a certain intellectual style. The other authors, by contrast, have all invoked science extensively in their work. Latour’s writings provide considerable grist for the mill of contemporary relativism and are based on an allegedly rigourous analysis of scientific practice. The works of Baudrillard, Deleuze, Guattari and Virilio are filled with seemingly erudite references to relativity, quantum mechanics, chaos theory, etc. So we are by no means splitting hairs in establishing that their scientific erudition is exceedingly superficial. Moreover, for several authors, we shall supply references to additional texts where the reader can find numerous further abuses.
2. You don’t understand the context
Defenders of Lacan, Deleuze et al. might argue that their invocations of scientific concepts are valid and even profound, and that our criticisms miss the point because we fail to understand the context. After all, we readily admit that we do not always understand the rest of these authors’ work. Mightn’t we be arrogant and narrow-minded scientists, missing something subtle and deep?