by Alan Sokal
Popper, Karl 58–65
Post, Emily 51n
‘postmodern science’ 125–36, 246
postmodernism 1, 4, 11–14, 173–4, 180–98, 249–50
left 186–98
postmodernity 173n
poststructuralism 11–12, 37, 173n, 249
power of the continuum 4, 38–41, 43n, 171
pragmatism 55n, 81n
predictability 128–33
Prigogine, Ilya 13n, 146–7n
psychoanalysis 8, 17, 34, 46, 59
Ptolemy 71
Putnam, Hilary 59n, 60n, 61n
quantifier 30–33, 104, 105n, 108–10
existential 108–10
universal 104, 105n, 108–10
quantum gravity 242, 244–5
quantum mechanics 38, 68, 74n, 98–100, 125, 126, 134–5, 143n, 146, 150, 161–2, 242–3, 255
Copenhagen interpretation 12, 13n, 76–7
Quine, Willard van Orman 62–3, 66
realism 50, 51n, 55n, 56n reductionism 178
relativism x, 1–2, 49–95
aesthetic x, 51
epistemic (cognitive) x, 1–2, 49–95, 173, 183–5, 194–5
methodological 82–5, 183–5
moral (ethical) x, 50–51
relativity 65, 68, 115–23, 139, 149n, 150, 159–65, 246
general 55n, 64n, 65n, 67, 76n, 98–9, 138n, 146–7n, 168, 243–4
special 99
reversibility 139–42
Robbins, Bruce 57n
Ross, Andrew 2n, 174n, 186n, 242, 244, 253–5
Ruelle, David 128n, 135n, 141n
Russell, Bertrand 28–9n, 52n, 54, 81n, 188, 193, 196
Russell’s paradox 28–9
Sapir-Whorf thesis 38n, 92n
scepticism, radical 51–4, 58, 66, 82, 179
‘science wars’ 174–5, 186
‘scientificity’ 12, 51n, 182
scientism 172, 178–80
self-organization 125, 135, 181n
self-refutation 72, 78, 80, 246
semiotics 37–44, 115–23
Seneca 125
Serres, Michel xv, 3, 7, 167, 169–70, 244
set theory 4, 8, 37–47, 111, 128n, 171–2, 247
sets: countable (denumerable) 39–43
infinite 22, 37, 39–43, 171–2
social constructivism 1, 252
Social Text ix, 1, 174n, 199n, 241–2, 244, 248
sociology of science 79–90, 115–23, 182, 183n, 193–4
solar neutrinos 86–9, 93
solipsism 51–3
Stengers, Isabelle xviiin, 5n, 13n, 146–7n
Stove, David 59n, 60n, 67
strong programme 79–85, 115, 182, 183n
structuralism 12, 37
Sturrock, John xv, xix
theory-ladenness of observation x, xii, 50, 62–4
topology 4, 17–23, 46, 110–11, 171, 245
Lacanian 4, 17–23, 245
torus 4, 18–19
Toubon, Jacques 247
truth, redefinition of 80–1, 91–2, 184n
underdetermination x, 50, 66–7
velocity 160
Venus, phases of 71
verification 59–61
Virilio, Paul 3, 4, 7, 159–65
weak interactions 139
Weinberg, Steven xvin, 2n, 64n, 65n, 68n, 70n, 99n, 178n, 180n
Whig history 69–70n
Willis, Ellen 2n
Winkin, Yves 91–2
Zeno’s paradox 65n
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1 Éditions Odile Jacob, Paris, October 1997.
2 Henley (1997).
3 Maggiori (1997).
4 Sokal (1996a), reprinted here in Appendix A. The story of the hoax is described in more detail in Chapter 1 below.
5 Let us emphasize that our discussion is limited to epistemic/cognitive relativism; we do not address the more delicate issues of moral or aesthetic relativism.
6 This overlap is, however, not perfect. The French authors analysed in this book are most fashionable, in the English-speaking world, in departments of literature, cultural studies and women’s studies. Epistemic relativism is distributed rather more broadly, and is widespread also in domains of anthropology, education and sociology of science that exhibit little interest in Lacan or Deleuze.
7 The politicians caught in flagrante delicto will also encourage this interpretation of the journalist’s intentions, for different (but obvious) reasons.
8 Marc Richelle, in his very interesting and balanced book (1998), expresses the fear that some readers (and especially non-readers) of our book will jump to the conclusion that all the social sciences are nonsense. But he is careful to emphasize that this is not our view.
9 Albert (1996, p. 69). We shall return to these political issues in the Epilogue.
10 Chapter 11 of the French original.
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1 Sturrock (1998, p. 8).
2 Kristeva (1997). When one considers the extreme abstruseness of the mathematical concepts introduced in Séméiotiké (Kristeva 1969), one cannot help being a bit surprised by this remark (which is nevertheless totally correct). See Chapter 3 below.
3 Farouki and Serres (1997, p. 14).
4 Mermin (1997b). See the Postscript to Chapter 6 for our response to Mermin’s criticisms.
5 On Lacan, see Roudinesco (1998), Darmon and Melman (1998), Charraud (1998) and Sauval (1997–98). On Deleuze, see Salanskis (1998, pp. 170–173, 175–176).
6 For example, Amy Dahan Dalmedico and Dominique Pestre (1998) speak several times about what ‘Sokal and his friends’ (pp. 78, 80, 86, 90, 91, 93, 96) or ‘Sokal, Weinberg and others’ (pp. 79, 81, 98) allegedly believe, without quoting anything from Intellectual Impostures to support those assertions and without distinguishing our ideas from those of our ‘friends’. Similarly, Yves Jeanneret (1998) speaks constantly of ‘Sokalism’ and ‘Sokalians’, without defining this purported doctrine. Let us note that, by contrast, we never criticize an author for what his or her disciples or supporters say.
In reality, a careful reader will easily discern nuances between the ideas of Weinberg (1996a,b), Gross and Levitt (1994), and ourselves. After all, it is normal that people who have no ‘line’ to defend should have divergent opinions on various topics.
7 For example, Dahan Dalmedico and Pestre (1998, p. 103) assert that we reject all social studies of science; Patrick Petitjean (1998, p. 120) claims that ‘Sokal fits well within the tradition of a certain left, notably French but also English, for which, since the 1930s, socialism has been based on science and in which any critical analysis of science is rejected as potentially obscurantist and prefascist.’ Petitjean’s article provides an interesting history of the debates over science and technology within the French left, but the position that he legitimately argues against is not ours. In fact, we have always stressed our sympathy for critical analyses of science and its social applications, provided only that these analyses are conducted with at least a minimum of intellectual rigour: see the Epilogue of this book as well as Sokal (1998).
8 See, for example, Maggiori (1997), Dorra (1997), Bruckner (1997) and Simont (1998).
9 For example, Dahan Dalmedico and Pestre (1998, p. 96) accuse us of trying to ‘obliterate’ the debate on the epistemological work of Duhem, while in reality we quote approvingly Duhem’s ideas about the theory-ladenness of observation (see note 73 on p. 62 below). John Krige (1998) disparagingly calls our book a ‘political pamphlet’ and asserts that it is ‘lamentably indifferent to the history and philosophy of science, and to the evolution in the social and historical studies of science itself’ – without a single word on our detailed discussion of the views of Kuhn, Feyerabend, Barnes, Bloor and Latour on precisely these issues. Mara Beller (1998) implies that Weinberg and ourselves are ‘naive realists’, but without providing any precise definition of that doctrine, much less any evidence that we adhere to it. Jim Holt (1998) claims that ‘powerful findings in the area of mathematical
logic known as model theory ... make the authors’ “realist” explanation for the success of science ... seem like empty metaphysics’; but he does not bother even to sketch for the reader how model theory allegedly refutes our philosophical claims (besides, we do not discuss in detail, much less defend, the doctrine in the philosophy of science known as ‘realism’: see notes 56 and 59 in Chapter 4).
10 For example, Didier Nordon (1998) claims to see a contradiction between our description of the scientific method (‘not radically different from the rational attitude in everyday life or in other domains of human knowledge’, p. 54 below) and our remark that the theory of relativity describes phenomena that are very counterintuitive (Chapter 11 of the French edition). But there is no contradiction whatsoever between these two assertions, and the explanation is given a mere three sentences after the one quoted by Nordon: ‘scientific measurements are often much more precise than everyday observations; they allow us to discover hitherto unknown phenomena; and they often conflict with “common sense”. But the conflict is at the level of conclusions, not the basic approach.’ Nordon is by no means the only reviewer to ignore our clearly-stated distinction between the methodology of science and its content: Staune (1998, pp. 31–32) and Jurdant (1998, pp. 15–16) claim to find the same alleged ‘contradiction’.
11 Note by contrast that, even if our tone is sometimes ironic, our book contains no personal attacks, slanders or insults. Our sole concern is the texts we quote and what, in our opinion, can be deduced from them.
12 Stengers (1997). Note that the theme of ‘Sokal and Bricmont give poor grades in mathematics to Lacan et al.’ (see also Droit 1997) totally misses the point: at school, students are required to write on certain subjects, but none of the authors criticized here was forced to use very technical notions of mathematics or physics in his or her publications.
13 Lévy-Leblond (1997b). The allusion is evidently to Monsieur Homais, the ‘scientistic’ pharmacist in Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.
14 Kristeva (1997).
15 Roudinesco (1998, p. 27).
16 Ragon (1998).
17 Derrida (1997).
18 Crépu (1997).
19 Houellebecq and Sollers (1998, p. 56).
20 Kristeva (1997).
21 Stengers (1997). This accusation is repeated in Stengers (1998, p. 268).
22 Fleury and Limet (1997). More generally, they accuse us of seeking a scapegoat for the economic, social and cognitive crisis that, in their view, science (and especially physics) is currently experiencing. This accusation is made also by Latour (1997) and Dahan Dalmedico and Pestre (1998, p. 103) in France, by Sturrock (1998) in England, and by Nelkin (1996) and Babich (1996, pp. 46–51) in the United States.
23 Martin (1998).
24 Applebaum (1998), emphasis in the original. Let us note in passing that Applebaum mistook mathematician Hermann Minkowski’s eloquent and scientifically impeccable summary of Einstein’s relativity – ‘henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality’ – for poststructuralist gobbledygook.
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1 We reprint this article in Appendix A, followed by some brief comments in Appendix B.
2 Among these criticisms, see for example Holton (1993), Gross and Levitt (1994), and Gross, Levitt and Lewis (1996). The special issue of Social Text is introduced by Ross (1996). The parody is Sokal (1996a). The motivations for the parody are discussed in more detail in Sokal (1996c), which is reprinted here in Appendix C, and in Sokal (1997a). For earlier criticisms of postmodernism and social constructivism from a somewhat different perspective – which are not, however, addressed in the Social Text issue – see e.g. Albert (1992–3), Chomsky (1992–3) and Ehrenreich (1992–3).
3 The hoax was revealed in Sokal (1996b). The scandal landed (to our utter surprise) on the front page of the New York Times (Scott 1996), the International Herald Tribune (Landsberg 1996), the [London] Observer (Ferguson 1996), Le Monde (Weill 1996) and several other major newspapers. Among the reactions, see in particular the analyses by Frank (1996), Pollitt (1996), Willis (1996), Albert (1996), Weinberg (1996a, 1996b), Boghossian (1996) and Epstein (1997).
4 See Sokal (1998) for a more detailed discussion.
5 In this book we have added Jean Baudrillard and Julia Kristeva to the list. Five of the ten ‘most important’ French philosophers identified by Lamont (1987, note 4) are Baudrillard, Deleuze, Derrida, Lyotard and Serres. Three of the six French philosophers chosen by Mortley (1991) are Derrida, Irigaray and Serres. Five of the eight French philosophers interviewed by Rötzer (1994) are Baudrillard, Derrida, Lyotard, Serres and Virilio. These same authors show up among the 39 Western thinkers interviewed by Le Monde (1984a,b), and one finds Baudrillard, Deleuze, Derrida, Irigaray, Kristeva, Lacan, Lyotard and Serres among the 50 contemporary Western thinkers selected by Lechte (1994). Here, as in the subtitle of this book, the appellation ‘philosopher’ is used in a broad sense; a more precise term would be ‘philosophico-literary intellectual’.
6 If we refrain from giving examples of good work in these fields – as some readers have suggested – it is because making an exhaustive such list would go far beyond our abilities, and a partial list would immediately bog us down in irrelevancies (why do you mention X and not Y?).
7 Several commentators (Droit 1997, Stengers 1997, Economist 1997) have compared us to schoolteachers giving poor grades in mathematics and physics to Lacan, Kristeva et al. But the analogy is faulty: in school one is obliged to study certain subjects, but no one forced these authors to invoke technical mathematical concepts in their writings.
8 The complete quote can be found in Derrida (1970, pp. 265–268).
9 See, nevertheless, Chapter 11 and pp. 208–209, 244 for some examples of more manifest abuses in Serres’ work.
10 To illustrate more clearly that their claims are taken seriously in at least some parts of the English-speaking academy, we shall cite secondary works that analyse and elaborate, for example, Lacan’s topology and mathematical logic, Irigaray’s fluid mechanics, and Deleuze and Guattari’s pseudo-scientific inventions.
11 The linguist Noam Chomsky illustrates this very well:
In my own professional work I have touched on a variety of different fields. I’ve done work in mathematical linguistics, for example, without any professional credentials in mathematics; in this subject I am completely self-taught, and not very well taught. But I’ve often been invited by universities to speak on mathematical linguistics at mathematics seminars and colloquia. No one has ever asked me whether I have the appropriate credentials to speak on these subjects; the mathematicians couldn’t care less. What they want to know is what I have to say. No one has ever objected to my right to speak, asking whether I have a doctor’s degree in mathematics, or whether I have taken advanced courses in this subject. That would never have entered their minds. They want to know whether I am right or wrong, whether the subject is interesting or not, whether better approaches are possible – the discussion dealt with the subject, not my right to discuss it.
But on the other hand, in discussion or debate concerning social issues or American foreign policy, Vietnam or the Middle East, for example, this issue is constantly raised, often with considerable venom. I’ve repeatedly been challenged on grounds of credentials, or asked, what special training do you have that entitles you to speak of these matters. The assumption is that people like me, who are outsiders from a professional viewpoint, are not entitled to speak on such things.
Compare mathematics and the political sciences – it’s quite striking. In mathematics, in physics, people are concerned with what you say, not with your certification. But in order to speak about social reality, you must have the proper credentials, particularly if you depart from the accepted framework of thinking. Generally speaking, it seems fair to say that the richer the intellectual substance of a field, the l
ess there is a concern for credentials, and the greater is the concern for content. (Chomsky 1979, pp. 6–7)
12 See, for example, Lévy-Leblond (1997) and Fuller (1998).
13 It would be interesting to attempt a similar project on the abuse of biology, computer science or linguistics, but we leave that task to people more qualified than ourselves.
14 Let us mention in passing two examples of the latter type of critique, authored by one of us: a detailed analysis of the popular books of Prigogine and Stengers dealing with chaos, irreversibility and the arrow of time (Bricmont 1995a), and a criticism of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (Bricmont 1995b). In our opinion Prigogine and Stengers give the educated public a distorted view of the topics they treat, but their abuses do not even come close to those analysed in this book. And the deficiencies of the Copenhagen interpretation are vastly subtler.
15 Eribon (1994, p. 70).
16 We shall return to these cultural and political themes in the Epilogue.
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17 A Möbius strip can be constructed taking a rectangular strip of paper, twisting one of the short sides by 180 degrees, and gluing it to the other short side. In this way, one produces a surface with only one face: ‘front’ and ‘back’ are connected by a continuous path.
18 A torus is the surface formed by a hollow tire. A Klein bottle is rather like a Möbius strip, but without an edge; to represent it concretely, one needs a Euclidean space of dimension at least four. The cross-cap (here called ‘cross-cut’, probably due to a transcription error) is yet another type of surface.
19 We have here corrected the translation of the word borné, which in the mathematical context means ‘bounded’.
20 According to the translator’s footnote as well as Roustang (1990, p. 87), the reference to ‘my discourse [from] last year’ is to Lacan (1973). We have therefore reread this article and searched for the promised ‘demonstration’ of ‘the strict equivalence-between topology and structure’. Now, the article contains long (and frankly bizarre) meditations mixing topology, logic, psychoanalysis, Greek philosophy and virtually everything else under the kitchen sink – we shall quote a brief excerpt below, see pp. 29–33 – but concerning the alleged equivalence between topology and ‘structure’, one finds only the following: