Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Fashionable Nonsense grew out of the famous hoax in which Alan Sokal published a parody article in the American post-modern journal Social Text. The article was filled with non-sequiturs and nonsensical quotations about maths and physics by prominent French and American intellectuals, yet it was published unaltered. Sokal then revealed that it was a deliberate parody, to the great consternation of the editors of Social Text.
This book extends the investigation to show how intellectuals such as Lacan, Kristeva, Irigaray, Baudrillard, Deleuze and Guattari have repeatedly abused scientific concepts and terminology. They have either used these ideas completely out of context without justification or they have thrown scientific jargon around with no regard for its meaning or relevance, obviously to try to impress their readers.

The introduction provides the history of the Sokal Hoax and the response to it. The major part of the book consists of an analysis of various texts by Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and Paul Virilio. Brief explanations of the relevant scientific concepts plus references to popular and explanatory texts are provided. Sokal and Bricmont also investigate certain philosophical and scientific confusions behind much of postmodernist thinking, like cognitive relativism, certain misunderstandings concerning chaos theory plus so-called postmodern science.

Appendix A provides the full text of the famous hoax article: Trangressing The Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity. Appendix B consists of comments on the parody and Appendix C serves as an afterword on the hilarious incident. This amusing and illuminating book concludes with a 14-page bibliography and an index. Intellectual Impostures is an amusing read that will have you rolling on the floor at times. I also highly recommend The Illusions Of Postmodernism by Terry Eagleton, The Anti Chomsky reader by David Horowitz and Peter Collier, and Intellectual Morons : How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas by Daniel J. Flynn.

Alan Sokal endeared himself to rationalists everwhere when in 1996 he published an article entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries" in the journal Social Text, a leading American publication of work in the social sciences that falls under a catch-all term of "postmodernist" thought. Unfortunately for the editors of this journal, however, Sokal was anything but a serious postmodernist scholar; his article was a hoax in which he intentionally misrepresented concepts from science and mathematics to make entirely specious arguments relating to the social sciences. The point was more than clear: that the intellectuals producing similar garbage for publication, when using science or mathematics as support for their superficially erudite but fundamentally meaningless discussions, simply do not know what they are talking about.

"Fashionable Nonsense," which includes both "Transgressing the Boundaries" and its follow-up article as appendices, is an extension of this message, and the devastating critiques of the use of science and mathematics in the "work" of "postmodernist" theorists is one of the book's major strengths. One cannot come away from this book and fail to wonder how such intellectually fraudulent work could have gained such currency in the social sciences; Sokal and Bricmont's discussion of just this issue is also well reasoned. Another strength of the book is found in the additional critiques brought to bear on the currently popular ideas of Thomas Kuhn, relating to the progress of science, and the work of Karl Popper, relating to "falsifiability" as a fundamental property of scientific theories.

If there are weaknesses in the text, they are mostly of omission. In some cases the authors choose to let the postmodernists' words speak for themselves with relatively little comment other than a well-worded version of name-calling, for example in the section on Deleuze and Guattari. Still, even here the basic message--that if a passage seems impenetrable, it is probably so for a reason, namely the obfuscation of intellectually vacant discourse--is unavoidable.

It is distinctly refreshing to read a critique such as this without the politically right-wing baggage that so often accompanies it (i.e. Dinesh D'Souza et. al.) Sokal and Bricmont are admitted leftists, and their critique is intended to strengthen the political left in academia by encouraging a return to rational thought. Thus, while the postmodernist screeds they critique are arguably of little real importance outside of academia, "Fashionable Nonsense" is of genuine importance. Even if you have never encountered the work dealt with here, this book is worth reading.

Das Buch "Fashionable Nonsense" enstand aus der sog. Sokal-Affäre und dem darauffolgenden Streit. Im Jahr 1996 veröffentlichte der US-Physiker Alan Sokal einen Text in der amerikanischen Fachzeitschrift Social Text, der im Duktus postmodernistischer Denker verfaßt ist und ein Parodie darstellt. In dem Artikel, der bewußt zahlreiche Fehlschlüsse enthält, wurde ein Vielzahl Unsinnszitate bekannter amerikanischer und französischer Intellektueller verarbeitet. Für seine Recherchen zu den in seinem Artikel verwendeten Zitaten ist Sokal auf eine Fülle von mißbräuchlicher Analogiebildung, Pseudowissenschaft und sprachlichem Blendwerk gestoßen, das in diesem Buch verarbeitet wird.

Die Einleitung rekapituliert die Sokal-Affäre inklusive Antworten auf seinen Zeitschriftenbeitrag und seine Auswirkungen.

Im Hauptteil des Buches untersuchen Sokal und Bricmont verschiedene ausgewählte Texte u.a. von Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Bruno Latour und Luce Irigaray. Dabei werden die mißbrauchten wissenschaftlichen Konzepte in ihren Grundzügen erläutert, zudem verweisen die Autoren auf weiterführende wissenschaftliche Literatur. In Zwischenkapiteln gehen die Autoren auf bestimmte wissenschaftliche und philosophische Konzepte des Postmodernismus ein und werfen Licht ein einige Mißverständnisse, die im Umgang mit wissenschaftliche Konzepten, die zu Schlagwörter geworden sind, existieren.

Obwohl die Autoren die Grundzüge der mißbrauchten (natur-)wissenschaftliche oder mathematischen wie oben angemerkt Konzepte erläutern, ist ein tieferes Verständnis dieser Konzepte, die teilweise weit über den Schulstoff hinausgehend, durchaus hilfreich. Dieser Teil des Buches ist für die flüssige Nebenbei-Lektüre wenig geeignet, ein Durchackern und sei es einzelner Kapitel ist jedoch in jedem Fall lohnenswert.

Im Anhang befindet sich u.a. der vollständige Text des Artikels ("Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"), den Sokal 1996 in der Zeitschrift Social Text veröffentlicht hat sowie eine vollständige Bibliographie.

Das Buch sollte Pflichtlektüre für jeden sein, der sich auch nur entfernt mit Wissenschaftstheorie auseinandersetzt, also eigentlich jeden Studenten.