Fashionable Nonsense Totally Explained

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Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science (ISBN 0-312-20407-8; French: Impostures Intellectuelles; published in the UK as Intellectual Impostures, ISBN 1-86197-631-3) is a book by professors Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont. Sokal is best known for the Sokal Affair, in which he submitted an article full of "nonsense" to Social Text, a critical theory journal, and was able to get it published. Fashionable Nonsense was published in 1997 in France, and in 1998 in the United States. As part of the so-called science wars, the book criticizes postmodernism in academia for what it claims are misuses of scientific and mathematical concepts in postmodern writing. Within the humanities, the response to the book was bitterly divided. Some were delighted, some enraged; reaction was polarized between impassioned supporters and equally impassioned opponents of Sokal. Critics of Sokal and Bricmont charge that they lack understanding of the writing they were criticizing. Responses from the scientific community were far more blunt and supportive.

The book's thesis

Fashionable Nonsense examines two related topics:

the allegedly incompetent and pretentious usage of scientific concepts by a small group of influential philosophers and intellectuals;
the problems of cognitive relativism, the idea that "modern science is nothing more than a 'myth', a 'narration' or a 'social construction' among many others" as seen in the Strong Programme in the sociology of science.

Incorrect use of scientific concepts

The stated goal of the book isn't to attack "philosophy, the humanities or the social sciences in general...[but] to warn those who work in them (especially students) against some manifest cases of charlatanism." In particular to "deconstruct" the notion that some books and writers are difficult because they deal with profound and difficult ideas. "If the texts seem incomprehensible, it's for the excellent reason that they mean precisely nothing."
The book includes long extracts from the works of Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Paul Virilio, Gilles Deleuze, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, and Jean Baudrillard who are considered by some to be leading academics of Continental philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis or social sciences. Sokal and Bricmont set out to show how those intellectuals have used concepts from the physical sciences and mathematics incorrectly. The extracts are intentionally rather long to avoid accusations of taking sentences out of context.
Sokal and Bricmont claim that they don't intend to analyze postmodernist thought in general. They aim to draw attention to the abuse of concepts from mathematics and physics, where abuse means:

Using scientific or pseudoscientific terminology without bothering much about what these words mean.

Importing concepts from the natural sciences into the humanities without the slightest justification, and without providing any rationale for their use.

Displaying superficial erudition by shamelessly throwing around technical terms where they're irrelevant, presumably to impress and intimidate the non-specialist reader.

Manipulating words and phrases that are, in fact, meaningless. Self-assurance on topics far beyond the competence of the author and exploiting the prestige of science to give discourses a veneer of rigor. The book gives a chapter to each of the above mentioned authors, "the tip of iceberg" of a group of intellectual practices that can be described as "mystification, deliberately obscure language, confused thinking and the misuse of scientific concepts." For example, Luce Irigaray is criticised for asserting that E=mc² is a "sexed equation" because "it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us"; and for asserting that fluid mechanics is unfairly neglected because it deals with "feminine" fluids in contrast to "masculine" rigid mechanics.

Criticism of Sokal and Bricmont's arguments

Unsurprisingly, the book has been subject to heavy criticism by post-modern philosophers. Bruce Fink (who did the first complete English translation of Jacques Lacan's Ecrits) offers one a critique in his book Lacan to the Letter, where he accuses Sokal and Bricmont of demanding that "serious writing" do nothing other than "convey clear meanings". Fink asserts that some concepts which Sokal and Bricmont consider arbitrary or meaningless do have roots in the history of linguistics, and that Lacan is explicitly using mathematical concepts in a metaphoric way, not claiming that his concepts are mathematically founded. He takes Sokal and Bricmont to task for elevating a disagreement with Lacan's choice of writing styles to an attack on his thought, which, in Fink's assessment, they fail to understand. Fink says that "Lacan could easily assume that his faithful seminar public... would go to the library or the bookstore and 'bone up' on at least some of his passing allusions". Sokal and Bricmont tacitly admit as much, saying that they "readily admit that we don't always understand the rest of these authors' work". Their position is that they're merely critiquing the misuse of scientific and mathematical concepts, which, as scientists, they do understand.
This latter point, however, is disputed by critics such as Arkady Plotnitsky, who holds graduate degrees in both mathematics and literature. He suggests four central problems with Sokal and Bricmont. First, they lack familiarity with the subject matter and context of the works that they criticize. Second, they ignore the historical contexts of the use of mathematics and science. Third, they generally show a lack of aptitude for philosophy. Fourth, they don't show an understanding of the history or philosophy of mathematics and science, and indeed display less understanding of the mathematics than Lacan does in some areas. Plotnitsky particularly notes that "some of their claims concerning mathematical objects in question and specifically complex numbers are incorrect," making their attack on Lacan for similar errors particularly egregious.

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