Intellectual Impostures is a work of Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont published in 1997. This book, considered as a violent criticism with the address of modern philosophy post in particular in connection with the improper use of the scientific vocabulary, in particular at its representatives French (Lacan, Kristeva, Latour, Deleuze, Irigaray), was the subject of a rough political debate during its publication to the editions Odile Jacob, in France.

A new edition, re-examined and increased, left in 1999. The authors comment on there a series of extracts drawn from dedicated works.

The objective of work

The authors thus present the objective of their book: “The goal of this test is to contribute a share, limited but original, with the criticism of postmodern nebula. We do not claim to analyze this one in general but rather to draw the attention to aspects relatively little known, reaching nevertheless the level of the Imposture, namely the reiterated abuse of concepts and terms coming from physicomathematical sciences. More generally, we will analyze certain intellectual confusions, extremely widespread in the postmodern writings, which relate at the same time on the contents of the scientific speech and its philosophy.”

Critic of the postmodernism

the contents of this section represents the point of view of the authors on their book, and is not necessarily impartial.

To be precise, the word “abuse” indicates one or more following characteristics:

• To speak abundantly about scientific theories which one does not have, at best, that a very vague idea. In the majority of the cases, the authors aimed by this work do nothing but use one scientific terminology (or apparently scientist) without worrying too much about the true significance of the words.

• To import concepts of exact sciences in the social sciences without giving the least empirical or conceptual justification to this step. A biologist who would like to use in his field of research of the elementary concepts of topology (such as the Tore), of the Set theory or the differential Géométrie, would be requested to give some explanations. A vague analogy would not be taken very with serious by his/her colleagues. Here, on the other hand, one learns with Lacan that the structure of the neurotic is exactly the torus, with Kristeva that the poetic language raises of the power of continuous and with Baudrillard that the modern wars are held in a not-Euclidean space.

• Exhiber a surface scholarship while throwing without shame of the erudite words to the head of the reader, in a context where they do not have any relevance. The goal is undoubtedly to impress and especially to intimidate the nonscientific reader. Besides certain commentators let themselves there take: Roland Barthes speaks in praise of the exactitude of the work of Kristeva and Le Monde admires the scholarship of Paul Virilio.

• To handle sentences stripped of direction and to devote themselves to word games. It is about a true verbal intoxication, combined with a superb indifference for the significance of the terms used.

These authors speak with an insurance which them competence justifies by no means. Jacques Lacan is praised to use “the most recent development of the Topologie” and Bruno Latour wonders whether he did not learn something with Einstein. They undoubtedly think of being able to use the prestige of the exact sciences to give a varnish of rigor to their speech. Moreover, they seem assured that nobody will notice their improper use of scientific concepts. Nobody will exclaim that the king is naked.

The goal of the authors is precisely to say that the king is naked. They want by no means to attack the Social sciences or the Philosophie in general; on the contrary, they think that these fields are extremely important and want to warn those which work there (especially young people) against manifest examples of charlatanism. In particular they want “déconstruire” the reputation which have these texts to be difficult because deep. In many cases, they can show that if they seem incomprehensible, it is for the good reason that they want nothing to say.

This work was published in English the following year under the title Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals Deceives Science off.

Reactions

The book caused a number of the review Alliage entitled '' scientific Impostures, the misunderstandings of the business Sokal '', Sokal attacker and Bricmont, and defending the targets of Sokal without any concession (for example, the review affirms that Latour did not make any error in its interpretation of the Theory of relativity, nor Lacan in Topologie). Some of the " cibles" of Sokal took part besides in this number. Contrary Jacques Bouveresse, Collège de France, wrote on its side an opuscule, Prodiges and giddinesses of the analogy , where it largely supports Sokal and Bricmont and where it is interested of close with a " imposture" particular: the doubtful use which Debray makes work of Gödel (that Bouveresse for its part assimilated perfectly). He also wrote several articles on the subject.

In a way enough amusing, Bouveresse quickly prophesied that this business would do nothing but reinforce the prestige of the targets of Sokal, seen like the victims of attacks antifrançaises of an American. This interpretation actually was very widespread among the opponents with Sokal. Especially, the book was classified like criticism of right-hand side, which displeased in Sokal which is asserted of left and precisely claimed to protect the left from the charlatans; Sokal had precisely criticized this step of politization while showing in its parodic text Gross and Levitt to have attacked Derrida because it is of left, whereas the criticism of Derrida was purely physical.

Generally, the work of Sokal and Bricmont caused the following reactions in the press (it is especially in France that there were impassioned reactions):

• Dénonciation of a plot antifrançais or antiphilosophic on behalf of the partisans of the targets of the book; .
• Applause and call to the return to serious on behalf of their detractors;
• Acceptance of the critical contents but of the method on behalf of a rather broad part of the speakers: Science and Avenir doubt that the comprehension of hard sciences is sufficient to consider the intellectuals mixing it with the literary disciplines, the Duck connected finds the remarks without interest quite simply (the journalist considers that it was known for a long time that these texts were not built on correctly arranged hard sciences); moreover, certain newspapers point out that it is necessary to believe on word the authors in known fields of few readers;
• Often, the applause is reserved: for example Sokal and Bricmont were criticized to have adopted a too hard tone with the philosophers analyzing relativity, whereas their texts go back to one time when the physicists did not have it yet comparable. Often, one reproaches to the authors their lack of pedagogy: their criticism of Latour does not certainly improve comprehension of relativity (in fact, the authors did not take the trouble at all to explain the importance in physics of the errors that they point)

Random links:

Oradour-on-Glane | Candomblé | Xu Ke | Maurice Motamed | Rei Shinozaki