Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

A dive into the book "Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science" written by physicists Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont where we summarize the main criticisms of specific academics, most of them belonging to the postmodern tradition. We do not go into the chapters where Sokal and Bricmont talk about epistemic relativism or "Postmodern science".

The book does not take aim at philosophy, the social sciences, or the humanities in general rather its stated goal is to warn against "manifest cases of charlatanism" present in these disciplines.
Sokal and Bricmont wanted to point out mistakes and misuses of concepts and terminology coming from physics and mathematics in the philosophical literature.

The authors critiqued are Lacan, Kristeva, Irigaray, Latour, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Deleuze, Guattari and Virilio.

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[j]

"diarrhea of the pen" swear to god, philosophers come up with the best burns

[ESJARB]

I spent so many years in my degree thinking I was just to simple to understand this jargon in these texts, honestly it just sounds like the kind of stuff you spew when you've had one too many brownies

[arekayin]

I've been waiting for this for way too long. Its a book that I share with all my friends and no is willing to spend time reading it. You are a messiah, Mon0.

[pshehan]

There was an earlier book along the same line:

Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science is a 1994 book about the philosophy of science by the biologist Paul R. Gross and the mathematician Norman Levitt.

[veyselbatmaz]

Very enlightening summary. Postmodernists wrongly interpreted the situation of capitalism through the lenses of modernism that they were all against in one sense or another. The most famous one, Foucoult, once said that if he had read the Frankfurt School, he would not have written 90% of his works. I say in my book "Digitalism vs. Capitalism" that if he had read McLuhan, he wouldn't bother to write the remaining 10%. The real basis for their wrongness is that technology determines everything. In fact, what they refer to as social determination is nonsense. because without technological infrastructure, society could not survive. Read Harold Innis. To the questions, "Where is capitalism coming and going? Going to its graveyard?" I have a hopeful answer, which is highlighted in my book: Digitalism is killing capitalism. A novel perspective, a suggestion first in the world! “Digitalism vs. Capitalism: The New Ecumenical World Order: The Dimensions of State in Digitalism” by Veysel Batmaz is available for sale on the Internet.

[MediaFaust]

My immediate business idea is to train a language model AI in only this kind of stuff, then ask it to write erotica. It could get interesting.

[thesakeofitname]

This was really very good. In the age of advertisement through social media, every concept is abused to fool the typical ignorant crowd, so as to gain fame, or earn money (since fame equates money)... Someone has to say the truth, with an authoritative and legislative power to protect humanity against such charlatanism at all levels, from bottom to up.

[davea]

Economics and retail finance also engage in "the repeated abuse of concepts and terminology coming from mathematics and physics." Bird of a feather.

[michaelroberts]

It seems that Oswald Bates, on the TV series "In Living Color" missed his calling. If you listen to his diatribes, he had the potential to be one of the greatest post modern philosophers of our time!

[apiro]

Lacan was a really funny guy dude. He didn’t always or even often make his point straightforward, but he rather hinted at deep ideas that are sometimes hard to put into words. The sqrt(-1) being a penis thing is hilarious.

[AnandKulkarniPlusOne]

Oooh serendipity 😁 Was talking to a friend just yesterday about how Capital as Power footnotes took me to Sokal and this book.

[roberthipolito]

I've tried reading some of these postmodernist and holy shit it's a bunch nonsense jargon.
No kidding, I've found it easier to get through and understand books about physics and calculus than their "diarrhea of the pen"

[Appleblade]

My nephew asked me about Lyotard... I read what he sent... responded that it was written by a Ryotard.

[lewiscoacher]

The Argentine giant Jorge Luis Borges did an analysis of Post Modernism's foundations back
in 1940. He fleshed out his observations by weaving them into a short story called Pierre Menard,
Author of the Quixote, in which the authorship of Cervantes' masterpiece was to be shared across
the centuries by a process of "non-plagiarism", a concept that doesn't obscure the plagiarism at all.

This story is like a tour of European society, with hilarious asides noting the intellectual schemes
of crack-pots. At one point Pierre suggests a change in the rules of Chess: the removal of one of
the Rook pawns before starting the game. Could the "singularities" which "possess a process of
auto-unification" be very far into his future?

[morgengabe]

Anti Structuralism was a set back for scientific progress, imo. Sokal and Chomsky should be participating in the process, not discouraging others from trying, showing them how.

[jefftheriault]

All these people, developing these claims on their laptops. There should be a level of irony that is nearly fatal.

[abyssssbmusic]

I don't get exactly what he means, but with the latour thing i could interpret it as being that ramses II did not die of the bacteria (at the time), because the bacteria for tuberculosis as it is conceptualized did not exist in that way at the time. We can now refer to the cells that were in his body as bacteria that cause tuberculosis, and the combination of symptoms/bodily response/impact from the bacteria as the disease of tuberculosis. So his death was the result of what we could and would now refer to as a bacteria and tb, but because those concepts did not exist at the time, what resulted in his death was not "actually" bacteria and tuberculosis ? (i dont mean a distinction between what we refer to as the bacteria and the disease, and the concepts of the bacteria and disease, separated from the real things/abstracted, but a distinction between what we refer to as the bacteria and the disease, what we refer to as the bacteria and the disease, being referred to as the bacteria and the disease)
(this is with me having no knowledge of ramses ii and assuming that his death was indeed caused by what we refer to as tb) (also with me having not read anything by latour, so if anyone has corrections i would appreciate them.) (also i dont study/know philosophy so any words i use might not be used in ways that they are usually used in philosophy)

[villevanttinen]

It is only " nonsense" if you don' t understand it. At least Chomsky is honest when he says he doesn' t understand it.

[TheSandkastenverbot]

I always thought postmodernism is just another philosophical school of thought that is devoid of value. Decades (even centuries) of being allowed to spew nonsense disguised by hard to grasp language might have led to this

[science]

Very good.
Stephen Hicks are good too.