Rating: 
Summary: fun reading, not particularly well argued
Review: Fashionable Nonsense is an enjoyable book to read if you like poking fun at nonsense masquerading as deep thought. The authors present a reasonably large number of examples of such nonsense, mostly drawn from works of criticism that mis-use physics and mathematics. They point out some particularly egregious errors, which in a few cases does make it clear that the writers in question have not the slightest familiarity with the concepts they're using. And they devote some space to at least brief discussion of the relevant philosophical issues. Their focus is fairly narrow, and even so they give the impression of having barely scratched the surface of the relevant issues.It's hard to say the book is uniformly well argued. In many cases, they merely present the offending text and follow it up with some empty comment to the effect that the cited text speaks for itself, or is completely incomprehensible. Since I'm personally in agreement with most of what they have to say, I found this presentation fun. But it's a kind of schoolyard ridicule that isn't liable to convince anyone who isn't already sympathetic. Alas, I don't know of any good ways to demonstrate that something has no meaning. So it's possible they've done the best they can in the space of a few hundred pages. There are other nits worth picking. For example, although they did devote a few paragraphs here and there to the idea that not every postmodern writer is equally guilty, overall they leave the impression that postmodernism has contributed little if anything of value to the world, to offset the harm. I don't know if this is really their view, but it seems unduly harsh. It would also have been nice if they could have conveyed more of a sense of how epidemic this problem is, especially since they focus on physics and math. I don't know how much of postmodern criticism really depends on physics and math, and how much depends on a rejection of any form of objective science. Some well-researched text on this subject would have put the book into better context. Overall, I thought the book was enjoyable and easy to read. I don't know if it's particularly effective in terms of advocacy, but anyone who's reasonably sympathetic with their point of view will find something to enjoy in the book.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and incisive
Review: This book brought to mind a saying from my college days: "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull[manure]." After reading this book, it's beyond doubt that all this use of advanced mathematics and formal logic in postmodern thought is the manure. Actually, I knew that BEFORE reading the book, because, like its authors, I have mathematics training. They, however, show a real skill at explaining the holes in the "arguments"-- some of which are little more than stream-of-semiconsciousness. None of the poseurs under investigation use their math vocabulary with the accuracy or understanding of an undergraduate. The overall impression is that they learned a little patter from a genuine mathematician at a faculty cocktail party, with which they then went a long way. The authors' application of the principle of charity, which takes on sarcastic proportions, has cut too short their analysis of how much NONmathematical thought of these postmodernists is just as nonsensical. They point out that these math tidbits are likely included to mystify (terrify!?) colleagues and acolytes whose mathematical knowledge is even sketchier. One wonders though-- and the book makes no attempt to examine this question-- where were the (other) intellectuals during the time this nonsense was coming out? In other words, wasn't there anyone in the audience skeptical enough to pick up the phone and call a physicist, topologist, or logician for an opinion? The book would, I think, have been even better if a sociologist of the Academy could have been recruited as a third co-author. While the authors mention almost in passing how the postmodern academy is an anti-Enlightened place, which of course it must be when its leaders neither understand what they write, nor analyze what they read, the academic-political questions don't get quite the hearing that they should. This is particularly remarkable because the authors' discussion of the baleful implications of postmodernism for the real-world political Left is particularly insightful. A big bonus is the chapter on fairly recent developments in philosophy of science and their connection to the postmodernists. The authors do a good job of showing how Feyerabend came to regret, at the end, the uses to which his epater-les-bourgeois screeds were used. They did not present similar material for Kuhn even though it abounds; Lakatos died early but not before declaiming his own scorn for the Edinburgh "strong programme" which is the precursor of science studies. The examples of the various flavors of relativists lapsing into "naive realist" language not about-- say-- science but rather to assert the apodictic proof of their own pet theories is probably worth the price of the book alone, and receives due elaboration. I do wish they had pointed out that the strong relativist program, far from being new, is just another Fantasy on the Theme of the Liar's Paradox ("All Cretans are liars", said the Cretan), which is well over 2000 years old.
Rating:
Summary: Well researched and written
Review: Sokal and Bricmont have done an impressive job in making Lacon, Irigaray, and others look dumb when it comes to science and physics. Though the book was throroughly interesting and well worth while, it seemed like the authors were criticizing postmodernism not only for factual errors, but also for the general atmosphere and laid-back intellecutualism, elitism, and emphasis of fluidity and triviality. As far as I can see, Sokal and Bricmont just aren't the right temperament for the postmodern text. As much as we agree with Sokal and Bricmont that people should know what they are talking about, if they are going to act proffesionally when doing so, I think that the creative associations that are drawn by postmodernists are, many times, quite insightful and edifying. Just because there is no strict logical connection between the under-development of fluid mechanics and masculinism doesn't mean that we can make similar edifying associations. But, over all, I think it was a good read. And, we should be careful and respectful when using scientific jargon, and not just use it for the sake of looking knowledgable and important.
Rating: 
Summary: Houses divided against themselves
Review: Having never gotten past the 1790's, the dread decade, in philosophy and arriving on the scene of postmodernism like Rip Van Winkle quite untutored in this new jargon, I found this introduction to the culture wars entirely apt and convincing, to start, and applauded from the bleachers the very crisply fought innings of the apparent rout of this new form of non-sense. Especially telling were the various appropriations of scientific terminology and concepts, from Godel to Chaos theory. On that level this book is a must-read, and I think the first wave of postmoderns out of the foxholes of deconstruction is fairly well zapped. But a certain disquiet arose from the general argument turning this elegant book into my first 'postmodern reader', curious as to further enquiries in this direction, as I began to suspect a certain overconfidence in the bravura skirmishes. Who, for example, is not tired of glib Popperian epistemology, fine. Yet to attack it opens a hornet's nest of issues, that cannot be easily salved by fancy answers to Hume's considerations of induction. I found myself, in consideration of this and other instances, somewhat leary of a beast that bites, what to complain it be wild. In general the defense of foundationalism works well enough if one be so foolish as to deconstruct physics, yet the difficulties mount if general exemption is granted to the flagwaving of science in fields from evolution to the social sciences. The postmoderns lost the thread of their argument in the incantations of jargon that seem to anesthetize the reality of confused epistemologies, to which the answer is not finger-in-the ... empiricism, nor false-mustache disguises for Hume, with his crippling doubts, addressed in Kantian de-deconstruction.
Finally, it seems the postmoderns were unable to stake their position, for the main instance of the complaint, the social construction of a scientific endeavor, is plainly visible in the crown jewels of modernist secularist, Darwin's theory of evolution. It is a bit odd this theory has been spared by both parties. No, I think this book is a fair introduction to what it protests. And we are back in the `1790's, whence the root ideas spring, to stalk the groves of academe, and gnaw at the foundations of knowledge. One must hope this triumph over fashionable nonsense is not a Pyrrhic victory. Cf. Antifoundationalism, Old and New, Tom Rockmore and Beth Singer
Rating:
Summary: Bull's-Eye
Review: This is a book that accomplishes what it claims. The authors' target is clear, and their aim is true. Don't let the negative reviews below put you off. Philosophical posturers were so effectively skewered by this book, that their supporters have only been able to answer with personal attacks. For example, one reviewer below claims that Sokal and Bricmont don't know who C.P. Snow is; this is unlikely, since S&B quote Snow in the Epilogue. The founder of Social Text had no words left, so he just called Sokal "half-educated". The editors of ST refused to publish Sokal's explanation of the hoax, on the ground that it did not meet their intellectual standards, even though the silly hoax itself did. These scholars seem to be unwilling to salvage their reputations, and intend to kick more holes in their leaking ship, without regard for the collateral damage to political liberals. The Village Voice Literary Supplement reviewer takes for granted that Sokal's skewees are full of it, and that _everyone_ knows this, in spite of the prestige and influence that figures like Deleuze have commanded. The Voice reviewer is talking to his own clan, with a provincial distrust of all outsiders. Some reviewers (even the NYT review) claim implicitly or explicitly, that Sokal & Bricmont are naive. I believe it would have been a mistake to cover the controversies, like the Bell Curve, or the fact that women in bio sciences still make a third less money than men, or that scientific models of unseen phenomena are fictions, or that 19th-century science claimed to prove that while males were physically and mentally "superior". These issues need focussed coverage and activism apart from the narrow target of FN. The extreme form of cognitive relativism (which _is_ targeted by FN) is so naive, that balanced refutation is not the rhetorically correct response. This is a book that needed to be written, and needs to be widely read.
Rating:
Summary: That so-called scientist.
Review: Want to know what postmodernism is up to? Try this academic montage on for size. What battles are being fought in the ivory towers? (Or do you really care?) Is there really no meaning in a text? Alan Sokal thinks so. The article which he wrote that started this whole mess had a meaning: deconstructionism is a joke! Whether you agree or not this book engages the issue.
Rating: 
Summary: Much Ado About Not Much
Review: This is really too delicious. Physicist after physicist writes a book of popular cosmology, ... concepts from and in fact the entire enterprise of philosophy, and philosophers take it with good grace and applaud the effort to at least broaden perspectives. What this book does, with an almost complete absence of subtlety, is show just how little the grace can be reciprocated. The number of straw-men ... ... for ridicule here beggars the imagination, and while certainly some 'post-modernist' thinkers (some authors attacked in the book are so far removed from that enterprise it is almost laughable) could legitimately be accused of doing with science what Sokal et al are now doing with philosophy, others such as Latour and Deleuze are serious philosophers, creating CONCEPTS about science rather than borrowing from them in an attempt to gain legitimacy. Latour mentioned during this debate that he had 'scientific training', not (as Sokal astonishingly believed) to paint himself as a scientist, but merely as a philosopher who has made the trouble to acquaint himself as throughly as possible with the material he is discussing. These writers don't claim to be doing science, or even a more scientific philosophy, a truly horrifying thought. They merely say that philosophy provides a metaphysic for science (or also a sociology, in Latour's case) which must try to come to terms with the details of what scientists DO, to be not only respectful but also accurate. I see nothing from Sokal or Bricmont to suggest they are even vaguely familiar with anything but anaemic stereotypes of what goes on at the other side of campus - no mutual attempt to at least find some common ground, while retaining what is specific to each enterprise. One of the basic arguments the authors of this book make is that concepts about science perpetrated by such authors pay no heed to empirical evidence or the basic truthfulness of scientific theories. Again, a straw man. The serious thinkers here under attack say, on the contrary, that such truthfulness is a lot more than a philosphically ridiculous matching of statements with states of affairs. Truth is *relational*, that is all, you get different aspects of it depending on the set-up you use and the problem you posit - to use a simple analogy, if you see all scientists as white-coated nerds, then all your research and instruments will be geared towards investigating that assumption, and you will get at least some confirmation. Different assumptions and instruments will get you a bigger chunk of 'truth' though about science, which is exactly what many fine thinkers here maligned do with their time. As outdated as C.P. Snow's 'two cultures' perhaps is in today's world, you'd have to wonder if Sokal and Bricmont even know who Snow IS.
Rating: 
Summary: Proves intended point
Review: I guess no one needs a 48th review, but having read the other reviews maybe mine will add some perspective. First, it seems there are several versions of this book floating around, or else some people are simply poor readers. The version I bought, paperback, in London new in July 2000, can be characterized in this way: Far from trying to make blanket statements about philosophy, postmodernism, the social sciences, etc. or from advocating their own agendas, the authors are clear in defining their goal. They intend to expose what they see as misuse of mathematical and scientific (mainly physics) jargon and theories by some very well known (not necessarily highly regarded) postmodern writers, and some not-so-well-known ones as well. If we assume that this kind of thing might be more pervasive than is demonstrated in the book, we might not be wrong, but the authors don't seem to imply that this is a wild trend or that all postmodernists are guilty by any means. Having read the book and these reviews, I would suggest would-be readers to find a chair and read the book a bit before buying it to get a better idea. The authors succeed in proving that at least some of these well-known writers don't understand the scientific jargon they used, or that they understood it but misused it anyway. Okay. The point that some of these writers may have legitimately used the terminology, at least as metaphor, and that Sokal/Bricmont simply didn't realize this because they didn't examine the ideas of the writers they attack closely enough is a good one but needs more analysis to yield a firmer opinion. This brings me to the next point: some have mentioned here that the authors don't fully understand the writers they attack. Probably right, but doesn't necessarily mean at all that their central point is mistaken. A central complaint of many reviewers is that the value of the authors' work, because it is in such a narrow focus, is questionable even if they are right. I think it is best not to go overboard here. In the realm of science, nitpicking can mean an experiment works or it doesn't. Scientists then are used to being careful. If one claims that philosophers or social scientists don't need to be so careful, one either must admit that the scientific jargon used here is not used as it must be in a scientific context (ie. as metaphor), or that philosophers and social scientists can afford to be sloppy. Few philosophers or social scientists would be happy with the idea that their fields allow such fuzzy practice, I'm afraid. In my experience in (AngloSaxon) philosophy, even outside the obvious case of symbolic logic, "nitpicking" of one's terminology and definitions is the rule and not the exception. If the writers in question have intended their jargon here to be used only as metaphor, they need to have made that clear in their writing. It seems they have not. A few reviewers fall victim to the tu quoque fallacy and point out that scientists have also been known to be less than honest, or to ignore evidence, etc. This might be an effective argument for consistency on the part of Sokal/Bricmont if they had claimed that scientists in fact never commit these erros, but they do not make any such claim. Finally, many complain that the authors did not take on the postmodernists in more depth. This seems an empty complaint. It was not their goal to do so, and if they had done that, as physicists and not philsophers, psychologists, etc. they may have been seriously overstepping their realistic qualifications. Perhaps those reviewers should take comfort that Sokal/Bricmont at least offered their expertise where it could be put to best use on this subject. In any case, one must ask how much this "exposure" adds to the landscape of philosophy and the social sciences. Ultimately I think it makes a small contribution for the (largely AngloSaxon?) plea for academic clarity. Was it worth the effort? Those who seriously ask this question are obviously coming from outside these disciplines (especially the sciences) where a lot of sweat often results in "only" a very small step forward.
Rating:
Summary: ready, aim, fire at the postmodernists
Review: First, if you have never heard of postmodernism or read any postmodernists, then the issues in this book may be completely besides the point. And if you are expecting a textbook in the sciences, or a single train of thought about philosophy, this is not the book you are looking for. I preface the rest of my review with the information that I am a grad student in the social sciences, and that I freely admit that the social sciences are a poor second best to the hard sciences. I would gladly rather study physics or math, or even computer science or engineering, if I had the background and the brains. From this point of view, then, let me say that I perceive many of the postmodern philosophers as people who apparently aren't smart enough to understand science, and therefore they wish to denigrate science in order to raise their own esteem. These types feel that if they can't do science, then the problem should be that science isn't what it thinks it is, rather than that they aren't as smart as they think they are. Sokal and Bricmont manage to point out the depths of these philosophers' misunderstandings of, or complete ignorance of, the sciences they write about, in fairly clear language. At some points, the explanations of the physics and math involved may be a little more complex than the average reader will understand; it is nonetheless reassuring that those explanations are provided. That is, that there is a reality to those subjects, which can be explained, in contrast to the ambiguous and inexplicable hash that social theorists make of it. Some of the abuses discussed: does the field of fluid mechanics have gender implications? Can psychology be completely explained in terms of the mathematics of topology? If these questions make perfect sense to you, then you will be annoyed by this book. If, one the other hand, these questions make you say "HUH?!?!?" and think of trying to mix apples and oranges, or camelopards and wombats, then you will enjoy the book.
Rating:
Summary: Work went into research and writing; not hard work to read
Review: Hard work to write, easy to read: instead of vice versa November 2, 2000 This book is not, centrally, an attack on deconstruction, post-modernism, social constructionism and so on. It is instead a tightly focussed attack on some French writers who are often associated with those ideas, Lacan, Deleuze, Kristeva, Baudrillard and others. Without confronting those writers' central ideas, "Fashionable nonsense" devastates their reputations. It shows them claiming authority in various scientific fields, using scientific "expertise" to enhance their authority and credibility, to bolster arguments on non-scientific propositions by analogy with scientific propositions, and to scare away dissenters. For example Lacan makes claims about topology for both his analogy and his argument on some matter concerning phallic psychology. Most readers, like me, would not know whether Lacan's topology was reasonable or absurd, but Sokal and Bricmont show that Lacan wasn't merely "inaccurate"; he was "meaningless". It's reasonable to ask if Sokal and Bricmont are right about topology (and the other branches of science cited by the book's targets), while Lacan and the others were wrong. In a symposium in the November 2000 edition of "Meta Science", hostile critics of "Fashionable Nonsense" confronted Sokal and Bricmont. But only one critic even attempted to dispute that the book's targets wrote ignorant nonsense about science. This was Lacanian, who attempted to defend Lacan's topology: and that sole attempted defence was clearly and crushingly rebutted. It seems clear that in its science the book's credibility is unshaken. So Lacan's grasp of topology was so vague that he must have known that he couldn't make accurate and meaningful statements about it. But he went ahead, knowing that he didn't understand what he was writing. It follows that he was lazily and arrogantly relying on the likelihood that his readers wouldn't understand topology either. Therefore Lacan is guilty of intellectual fraud, or imposture, as in the original French title. So what? First, if Lacan is prepared to use intellectual fraud to make and support arguments, then some of the intellectual indulgences that academics allow each other, for example too seldom checking references, should not apply. His credibility logically diminishes, to the extent that the only statements by him that should be given credence are those that are backed by specific and checkable references to matters of fact, or based on sound argument from cited evidence. Second, this highlights the reality that Lacan (like the others skewered in this book) is peculiarly vulnerable to the withdrawal of intellectual indulgence. Once you decide to give credence only to those things in Lacan that are based on reasoning from evidence, as those terms are usually understood, what remains is little more than the residue of soap scum after the bursting of a glistening bubble. If I were to use Lacan's method I would write that soap bubble metaphor in more abstruse terms, stretch it for endless pages of waffle, and pretend that it was an argument or proof rather than merely a figure of speech. Also if I were Lacan, I would not look up the physics concerning soap bubbles and iridescence, but make something up and hope to get away with it. This is why the narrowness of Sokal and Bricmont's approach is well chosen. Other writers could not be so damaged by the withdrawal of intellectual indulgence. Nietzsche, for example, can be shown to be wrong on matters of fact, and that where he bothers to reason at all his reasoning is faulty, and that his real attitudes (pro-war, anti-compassion, misogynist, antidemocratic, antisemitic, and so on) are not the fashionable doctrines often attributed to him. But he will survive unscathed because unlike these French philosophists, who write like bureaucrats even when making "jokes", Nietzsche was a great writer. People like his wit, energy and poetic fire, and adolescent readers like the way he makes them feel superior to the "herd". In a different way Frege or Hume (say) are also impervious to this sort of demolition. They could be shown to be wrong or even dishonest about some particular point, but this would not hurt the remainder of their work because in general their work does not depend on their reputations but on their reasoning. But Sokal and Bricmont's targets are ripe for the "Emperor's New Clothes" effect. Scepticism, once thought uncool and a product of stupidity and the failure to understand these deep writers, is suddenly permissible. Instead of being impressed by thickets of words and assuming that something profound must be in there somewhere, we do the hard work of close reading, discarding the phrases that mean nothing, working out precisely what is being claimed and whether those claims are backed by evidence or reasoning. Sokal and Bricmont (and Sokal alone with his splendid if mildly unfair hoax, also documented here), can reasonably claim to have had more to do with that process than any other writers. Apoplectic attacks on deconstruction by conservatives only strengthened the false appearance that here was something radical, interesting, and probably hip. But when Sokal and Bricmont's French wankers and their American acolytes return to an obscurity as deep as the obscurity of their texts, some of the ideas they espoused will remain. Post-structuralism and social constructionism pose respectable challenges to scientific positivism, that can be expressed clearly, that do not assume that the world is "only text", but that argue that much of our understanding is socially constructed. Sokal and Bricmont did not attack those ideas. They cleared away some writing that is unhelpful to the discussion of social constructionist and related ideas, demonstrating that some Big Names who were until recently considered central to the discussion were in fact merely passengers, and irrelevant to it. Finally, why five stars? It's a narrower book than is sometimes claimed, but the tight focus was well chosen. It is solid and much needed work. It must have been difficult to research and write, but it is easy to read. The exact opposite of the texts they skewer. Cheers! Laon
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