Intellectual Impostures by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Profile Books, £9.99 1998
The late Nineteenth Century witnessed the rise of Irrationalism. Philosophers rebelled against what they saw as the rigidities of positivist determinism and retreated into subjective idealism. Henri Bergson personified this movement; Hans Vaihinger’s book, The Philosophy of As If, reflected its Humpty-Dumpty logic: the world, according to this book, might be anything that one imagines it to be; one scientific hypothesis is just as good as any other. This rebellion against the scientific outlook of the Enlightenment culminated in more than an academic fad. The Fascists and Nazis of the 1930s rejoiced in their contempt for rational explanations. It was a crude contempt: books were burned; scientists who failed to conform to the mythology of the tyrant state were dismissed from their posts; to be an honest scientist became a reason for exile. It is a lesson of this century’s madness that we forget at our extreme cost.
These days the scientific outlook is again being exiled, perhaps more by economic than political pressures. Increasingly, scientists are required to prostitute themselves to the commercial activities of germ warfare, genetically adulterated foods and apologism for ecological vandalism. Theoretical science has been slowly driven from the universities by the new crusaders of Postmodernism. But to call them crusaders is to attribute an energy to a listless and intellectually indolent movement of academics who, far from advocating something, are mainly concerned to deride commitment to anything. At their most risible the “philosophers” of the new Irrationalism are transparently bogus producers of mumbo-jumbo, able to convince only the dumbest of Americans of their wisdom by pronouncing their follies in strong French accents, using made-up words. Derrida’s book on Marx was the epitome of such utter nonsense.
It is high time that the fakes were exposed. Sokal and Bricmont’s Intellectual Impostures is a work of meticulous, relentless destruction of the charlatanism of postmodernist writers who have sought to pepper their ramblings with pseudo-scientific formulae. Sokal and Bricmont are physicists and materialists. With detailed references to the works of writers ranging from Lacan and Kristeva to Latour and Baudrillard they demonstrate the ways in which these theorists have used scientific language—specifically, mathematics—without understanding it. Indeed, in several cases they may not have read the works they cite. This is in keeping with the postmodern outlook, which holds in contempt a relationship between the text and its meaning. Althusser, an earlier prophet of the nouveaux charlatans, wrote a book telling people how to read Marx’s Capital; writing years later, after being certified as a lunatic, he confessed that he had not actually read much of Marx.
Sokal and Bricmont’s impressive volume needs to be read to be appreciated. It is a valuable work of scholarship—for, sometimes the task of scholars is to expose intellectual sloppiness and fraud. There is a particularly stimulating chapter on the relationship between so-called postmodernism (a hopelessly ill-defined term) and chaos theory. There is scope, perhaps, for future writers to produce a book explaining the connection between chaos theory and the economic anarchy of late twentieth-century capitalism.
The best books on postmodernism so far have been David Harvey’s The Condition of Postmodernity and Terry Eagleton’s Postmodernism. This is a welcome addition to the literature in defence of the materialist conception in the face of the anti-humanist philistinism of our age.
Steve Coleman
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