Reply to Turnbull Krips Dusek and Fuller

For Metascience

Jean Bricmont

Institut de Physique Theorique

Universite Catholique de Louvain

chemin du Cyclotron

B LouvainlaNeuve BELGIUM

Internet BRICMONTFYMAUCLACBE

Telephone

Fax

Alan Sokal

Department of Physics

New York University

Washington Place

New York NY USA

Internet SOKALNYUEDU

Telephone

Fax

February

Biographical Note

Jean Bricmont is professor of theoretical physics at the University of

Louvain Belgium Alan Sokal is professor of physics at New York University

Introduction

1

In the preface to the second edition of Intel lectual Impostures we wrote that the

criticisms of our b o ok

can b e divided roughly into four types A very few reviewers discuss what we

wrote and try to refute it Other commentators raise ob jections often p erfectly

valid ones to ideas that are not in fact ours and that we may have expressly

rejected in the b o ok while attributing them to us implicitly or explicitly

Yet a third group of critics pretend to discuss our b o ok while actually doing

something completely dierent for example attacking our p ersonalities our

alleged motivations for writing the b o ok or the failings of scientists in general

And nally some reviewers agree with us but think that we do not go far

enough I I p xv

The comments by Turnbull and Dusek fall squarely into the second and third cat

egories apart from o ccasional brief excursions into category while Krips and

Fuller oer a mixture of the rst and second categories It would b e a hop eless task

to address al l the issues raised in these essays since in most cases it would simply

amount to explaining over and over again that we do not hold and most certainly

have never written the views attributed to us Instead we shall simply give for

each reviewer a few examples of his misrepresentations or misunderstandings of our

ideas and then do our b est to address the intellectually interesting issues that he

raises

Before pro ceeding further however let us remind the reader that our b o ok com

prises two distinct but related works under one cover I I p x The largest

part of the b o ok is devoted to demonstrating that

famous intellectuals such as Lacan Kristeva Irigaray Baudrillard and Deleuze

have rep eatedly abused scientic concepts and terminology either using sci

entic ideas totally out of context without giving the slightest justication

note that we are not against extrap olating concepts from one eld to another

but only against extrap olations made without argument or throwing around

scientic jargon in front of their nonscientist readers without any regard for

its relevance or even its meaning We make no claim that this invalidates the

rest of their work on which we susp end judgment I I pp ixx

In two vastly more subtle chapters Chapters and we address widespread mis

conceptions ab out p ostmo dern science and

dissect a number of confusions that are rather frequent in p ostmo dernist and

culturalstudies circles for example misappropriating ideas from the philos

ophy of science such as the underdetermination of theory by evidence or the

1

Prole Bo oks London hereafter denoted I I All citations of page numbers refer to this

edition which is identical to the rst British edition except for the addition of a new preface which

do es not alter the subsequent pagination The American edition entitled Fashionable Nonsense

Postmodern Intel lectuals Abuse of Science Picador USA New York is identical to the

rst British edition except for sp elling and o ccasional small dierences of diction but has dierent

pagination

theoryladenness of observation in order to supp ort radical relativism I I

p x

These two parts of our b o ok must b e evaluated separately each reader has the p erfect

right to agree with our arguments on one topic but not the other on b oth or on

neither

David Turnbull

The most striking asp ect of Turnbulls essay is its profusion of derogatory charac

terizations of our b o ok nasty sneering overstates the case fo olishly overin

ated rhetoric and of our alleged p ersonalities totalitarian inquisitors lust for

annihilation unsupp orted by even one concrete example We challenge Turnbull

to supply evidence to back up his purp orted descriptions of our b o ok and we submit

that he will b e unable to do so b ecause our b o ok is in fact a measured and carefully

2

reasoned critique of some texts that are to say the least rather extraordinary

Furthermore Turnbull attributes to us views that are not ours and that are in

many cases the exact opposite of what we have written unambiguously in the b o ok

Why attribute failings of individuals sic arguments to all of some supp osedly

homogeneous group b e they constructivists so ciologists of science p ostmo dernists

or whatever In fact we write

Let us emphasize that these authors dier enormously in their attitude toward

science and the imp ortance they give it They should not b e lump ed together

in a single category and we want to warn the reader against the temptation to

do so I I p

And again

The intellectual abuses criticized in this b o ok are not homogeneous they can

b e classied very roughly into two distinct categories corresp onding roughly

to two distinct phases in French intellectual life The rst phase is that of

extreme structuralism The second phase is that of p oststructuralism

Our arguments must b e judged for each author indep endently of his or her

link b e it conceptually justied or merely so ciological with the broader

p ostmo dernist current I I pp

Problematising progress is one of the currents of p ostmo dernism that Sokal

and Bricmont nd so ob jectionable In fact we stress that

2

A more accurate description of our b o ok was given by the American philosopher Thomas Nagel

in his review for The New Republic

Nearly half the b o ok consists of extensive quotations of scientic gibb erish from name

brand French intellectuals together with eerily patient explanations of why it is gib

b erish This is amusing at rst but b ecomes gradually sickening We are oered

reams of this stu from Jacques Lacan Julia Kristeva Bruno Latour JeanFrancois

Lyotard Jean Baudrillard Gilles Deleuze Regis Debray and others together with

comments so patient as to b e involuntarily comic Nagel p

many p ostmo dern ideas expressed in a mo derate form provide a needed

correction to naive mo dernism b elief in indenite and continuous progress

scientism cultural Euro centrism etc What we are criticizing is the radical

version of p ostmo dernism as well as a number of mental confusions that are

found in the more mo derate versions of p ostmo dernism and that are in some

sense inherited from the radical one I I p

They Sokal and Bricmont are seeking to dismiss the p ossibility of the critical

examination of science In fact we explicitly encourage such examination we ob ject

only to sloppy ways of doing it of which we provide myriad examples We b egin by

noting that

it is crucial to distinguish at least four dierent senses of the word science

an intellectual endeavour aimed at a rational understanding of the world a

collection of accepted theoretical and exp erimental ideas a so cial community

with particular mores institutions and links to the larger so ciety and nally

applied science and technology with which science is often confused All to o

frequently valid critiques of science understo o d in one of these senses are

taken to b e arguments against science in a dierent sense I I p

We then go on to state

Thus it is undeniable that science as a so cial institution is linked to p olitical

economic and military p ower and that the so cial role played by scientists is

often p ernicious It is also true that technology has mixed results sometimes

disastrous ones and that it rarely yields the miracle solutions that its most

fervent advocates regularly promise Finally science considered as a b o dy of

knowledge is always fallible and scientists errors are sometimes due to all

sorts of so cial p olitical philosophical or religious prejudices We are in favour

of reasonable criticisms of science understo o d in all these senses I I pp

Sokals House Built on Sand essay cited in I I p fo otnote provides further

details

The following prop ositions are I hop e noncontroversial

Science is a human endeavor and like any other human endeavor it

merits b eing sub jected to rigorous so cial analysis Which research problems

count as imp ortant how research funds are distributed who gets prestige and

p ower what role scientic exp ertise plays in publicp oli cy debates in what form

scientic knowledge b ecomes embo died in technology and for whose b enet

all these issues are strongly aected by p olitical economic and to some extent

ideological considerations as well as by the internal logic of scientic inquiry

They are thus fruitful sub jects for empirical study by historians so ciologists

p olitical scientists and economists

At a more subtle level even the content of scientic debate what types

of theories can b e conceived and entertained what criteria are to b e used for

deciding b etween comp eting theories is constrained in part by the prevailing

attitudes of mind which in turn arise in part from deepseated historical factors

It is the task of historians and so ciologists of science to sort out in each sp ecic

instance the roles played by external and internal factors in determining

the course of scientic development

There is nothing wrong with research informed by a p olitical commit

ment as long as that commitment do es not blind the researcher to inconvenient

facts Thus there is a long and honorable tradition of so ciop olitical critique

of science including antiracist critiques of anthropological pseudoscience and

eugenics and feminist critiques of psychology and parts of medicine and bi

ology Empirical studies of this kind if conducted with due intellectual

rigor could shed useful light on the so cial conditions under which go o d science

dened normatively as the search for truths or at least approximate truths

3

ab out the world is fostered or hindered

Note nally that Sokal stresses p his agreement with Philip Kitcher on nearly

every issue under debate Turnbulls failure to mention this at the same time as he

praises Kitcher by way of contrast with us b orders on dishonesty

Sokal and Bricmonts other general claim is that those authors they name

have committed some scientic error or used sciences name in vain and must there

fore stand condemned as heretics The heavyhanded allusion to the Inquisition is

Turnbulls own embellishment dare we call it fo olishly overinated rhetoric un

supp orted by any honest reading of our b o ok Regarding errors we explain in the

Introduction that

it could b e argued that we are splitting hairs criticizing authors who admittedly

have no scientic training and who have p erhaps made a mistake in venturing

onto unfamiliar terrain but whose contribution to philosophy andor the so cial

sciences is nevertheless imp ortant and is in no way invalidated by the small

errors we have uncovered We would resp ond rst of all that these texts

contain much more than mere errors they display a profound indierence if

not a disdain for facts and logic Our goal is not therefore to p oke fun at

literary critics who make mistakes when citing relativity or Godels theorem

but to defend the canons of rationality and intellectual honesty that are or

should b e common to all scholarly discipline s I I p

Furthermore

it should b e remembered that our criticism do es not deal primarily with errors

but with the manifest irrelevance of the scientic terminology to the sub ject

supp osedly under investigation In all the reviews debates and private corre

sp ondence that have followed the publication of our b o ok in France no one

has given even the slightest argument explaining how that relevance could b e

established I I p italics in the original

Let us now discuss the three serious intellectual issues that Turnbull raises whether

any writer in science studies thinks that science is an illusion or a waste of time

the meaning of Latours Third Rule of Metho d and the discovery of Neptune

3

Sokal p

For the rst p oint consider the following assertions by prominent gures in science

studies

The validity of theoretical prop ositions in the sciences is in no way aected

4

by factual evidence

The natural world has a small or nonexistent role in the construction of scien

5

tic knowledge

For the relativist such as ourselves there is no sense attached to the idea that

some standards or b eliefs are really rational as distinct from merely lo cally

6

accepted as such

Science legitimates itself by linking its discoveries with p ower a connection

which determines not merely inuences what counts as reliable knowledge

7

Let us explain why we think that these statements eectively assert that science

is an illusion The goal of all scientists is to nd out some asp ects of how the world

really is if for example a biologist says that the proximate cause of a certain disease

is a virus she means to assert that as an ob jective fact ab out the world She may

8

of course b e wrong but that do es not change the fact that her goal is to accurately

describ e the world If you tell her that her connection to p ower determines not

merely inuences what she regards as reliable knowledge or that her b eliefs can

never b e really rational but only lo cally accepted as such then you are telling

her in eect that her goal is imp ossible to reach or even to approach ie that science

as she conceives it is an illusion

Statements as clearcut as those just cited are however rare in the sciencestudies

literature More often one nds assertions that are ambiguous but can b e interpreted

and quite often are interpreted as meaning that science viewed as an attempt

4

Gergen p

5

Collins p Two qualications need to b e made First this statement is oered as

part of Collins introduction to a set of studies edited by him employing the relativist approach

and constitutes his summary of that approach he do es not explicitly endorse this view though an

endorsement seems implied by the context Second while Collins app ears to intend this assertion as

an empirical claim ab out the history of science it is p ossible that he intends it neither as an empirical

claim nor as a normative principle of epistemology but rather as a metho dological injunction to

so ciologists of science namely to act as if the natural world had a small or nonexistent role in

the construction of scientic knowledge or in other words to ignore bracket whatever role the

natural world may in fact play in the construction of scientic knowledge In our contribution to a

forthcoming volume of essays coedited by Collins and Jay Labinger we argue that this approach is

seriously decient as methodology for so ciologists of science

6

Barnes and Blo or p clarication added by us

7

Aronowitz p emphasis in the original

8

Moreover since standard philosophical arguments show that a consistent radical sceptic cannot

b e refuted one can never b e absolutely sure that she is right no matter how much evidence she may

oer to supp ort her theory But this observation although correct is basically irrelevant b ecause

of its generality it applies to all our statements including those made in everyday life and it

hardly need b e added those made by so ciologists and historians

to obtain an ob jective alb eit approximate and incomplete understanding of some

asp ects of the world is an illusion

Indeed Turnbull himself provides examples of such assertions in his essay He

admits that science is the b est problem solving pro cess yet built but fails to

make clear for solving what problem For discovering ob jectively valid approximate

truths ab out the world p erchance Turnbull scrupulously avoids saying anything

of the sort and his slipp eriness on this crucial issue what is the goal of science

is typical of many so cial constructivists Later he asserts that what counts as

fact exp eriment pro of evidence and testing are historical pro ducts and hence

similarly conventional and contingent Of course standards of exp erimentation and

analysis of evidence have evolved over time so they are in some sense historical

pro ducts but that do es not mean that they are conventional in anything like

9

the ordinary sense of the word convention unless one thinks that science makes

no progress for otherwise our historical pro ducts could simply b e viewed as

b eing b etter and b etter approximations to an ideal state of knowledge that would

b e far from b eing a convention If you tell a scientist oering you evidence that the

proximate cause of a certain disease is a virus that her evidence is conventional

and contingent and that this will b e true no matter how much evidence she may

gather then you are indeed telling her that what she do es is a waste of time and an

illusion

Concerning Latours Third Rule of Metho d Since the settlement of a controversy

is the cause of Natures representation not the consequence we can never use the

10

outcome Nature to explain how and why a controversy has b een settled

Turnbull writes

If we add the required clarication ie Since the settlement of a controversy

is the cause of Natures representation not the consequence we can never use

the outcome what Nature is now taken to b e to explain how and why a

controversy has b een settled Latours p oint is clear but the stylistic impact is

lost

But that is exactly the rst of the ve interpretations that we give of Latours am

biguous formulation I I p It is as we note true but trivial Why turn such a

banal statement into a Rule of Metho d Even a Whiggish historian of science would

11

not dispute this rule so interpreted

Concerning the discovery of Neptune our main p oint was not the historically

valid observation that this discovery reinforced psychologically p eoples b elief in

9

Eg that Australians drive on the left side of the road and Americans eat with the fork in the

right hand

10

Latour pp italics in the original

11

Actually Turnbulls reference to Whiggish history suggests that p erhaps he has another in

terpretation in mind namely that we can never use Nature to explain how and why a controversy

has b een settled This interpretation is also discussed in our b o ok I I pp and is either

again banal if it means that Nature alone cannot explain those settlements or obviously false if it

means that Nature plays no role in explaining them Note by the way that we explicitly criticize

Whiggish history of science I I pp fo otnote

the validity of Newtonian mechanics but that it is hard to b elieve that such a

simple theory could predict so precisely entirely new phenomena if it were not at least

approximately true I I p The validity of this latter observation is indep endent

of whether Adams and Le Verrier correctly computed the Newtonian prediction for

the p osition of Neptune or found it partly by accident The key fact is that if one

do es make the correct calculations based on Newtons theory then one indeed nds

the actually observed p osition of Neptune the same remark applies of course to

thousands of other scientic predictions This p oint is conceded by Turnbull when

he writes Sokal and Bricmont are right it do es show Newtons mechanics are

approximately true

Henry Krips

Krips should b e commended b ecause he b elongs to that small minority of our

critics who actually try to refute our arguments in the imp ostures part of the b o ok

as opp osed to attacking our alleged motivations or our p ersonalities He attempts

to show that we are unfair to Lacan and that Lacans metaphoric extensions of

mathematical top ology do play a intellectual useful role contrary to what we claim

However as we shall show Krips attempt fails miserably and actually provides

more supp ort for our thesis First of all his exp osition of basic mathematical concepts

such as closed b ounded and compact sets contains quite a few glaring errors Here

are some examples

Contrary to Krips assertion the family of op en sets is not closed under the

op erations of union and intersection even when the union or intersection of

subspaces is extended to innity While it is true that arbitrary unions of op en

sets are op en in general only intersections of nitely many op en sets give rise to op en

sets

Pace Krips a closed set is not one that is not op en but rather one whose

complement is op en In most top ological spaces there are many sets that are neither

12

closed nor op en

Krips gives at rst a correct statement of the HeineBorel theorem but while

attempting to transfer it metaphorically to psychoanalysis he makes an utter hash

of it saying it means that even though the space as a whole is closed there exists

a nite op en cover Later he even sp eaks of the prop erty of having a countable

13

cover But in any top ological space any set has an op en cover consisting of just

one element namely the space itself which is always op en by denition of op en

12

Indeed in most top ological spaces and in particular in Euclidean spaces there exist sets of

al l four logically p ossible types op en but not closed closed but not op en neither closed nor op en

b oth closed and op en The construction of such sets is a standard exercise for students in the rst

week of an undergraduate top ology course

13

Krips and Lacan notwithstanding countable in mathematics is not a synonym for nite

rather it means a set that is either nite or else is innite and can b e put into onetoone corre

sp ondence with the set f; ;:::g of the p ositive integers See I I p fo otnote for a slightly

more detailed explanation

The p oint of the HeineBorel theorem is not to establish the trivial existence of

nite op en covers but rather to establish the existence of nite op en subcoverings of

14

any given op en cover

Now Krips could very well reply to these criticisms by saying something like

Here they go again splitting hairs ab out irrelevant details I am interested in psy

choanalysis not in pure mathematics Sure those details are irrelevant to psycho

analysis but that is exactly our p oint If Krips or Lacan were trying to make useful

structural analogies b etween psychoanalytical concepts and mathematical ones then

details would matter After all the main characteristic and value of mathematical

statements is that they can b e precisely formulated and when they are theorems

rigorously proven This is why mathematics oers such a p owerful to ol for making

precise deductive reasoning in the natural sciences and to some extent also in the

so cial sciences But when mathematical concepts are imprecisely or inaccurately

stated it is not clear what they can b e go o d for

In fact Krips wants to have his cake and eat it to o he wants to claim that he

limits himself to a metaphorical use of mathematics and at the same time to use

mathematics for deductive purp oses eg when he writes that if we transfer this

Borels theorem metaphorically to the space of sexual relations then we are licensed

to infer the following conclusion No Vague metaphors with illstated mathematical

theorems do not license any inference whatso ever

Note also that Krips like Lacan sp eaks rep eatedly of the space of sexual relations

also referred to as the space of jouissance but he fails to come to grips with our

central ob jection to Lacans use of top ology namely that

Even if the concept of jouissance had a clear and precise meaning Lacan

provides no reason whatso ever to think that jouissance can b e considered a

space in the technical sense of this word in top ology I I p

How precisely is the space of sexual relations dened What are its p oints and

what are its op en sets Unless Krips can answer these questions any transfer of

the HeineBorel theorem is b eside the p oint

Supp ose nally that instead of using mathematics for deductive purp oses we

15

use it solely in order to suggest fruitful analogies Krips argues that such a use of

top ology in psychoanalysis would b e analogous to physicists sp eaking of classical

waves and particles in order to help them understand quantum ob jects but exactly

the opp osite is the case Physicists sp eak of waves and particles in order to relate a

new and hardtounderstand quantum ob ject to simpler and more familiar classical

14

Krips also asserts that we failed to sp ot Lacans references to Borels theorem Quite the

contrary we were p erfectly aware that the Lacan passages quoted in I I pp contain garbled

allusions to the mathematical theory of compactness including the HeineBorel theorem that is

why we supplied the reader with a brief but ungarbled explanation of this theory I I p fo otnote

The upshot is that although Lacan uses quite a few key words from the mathematical theory

of compactness he mixes them up arbitrarily and without the slightest regard for their meaning

His denition of compactness is not just false it is gibb erish I I p

15

Please note that any such analogies would have heuristic value but no demonstrative value Any

assertions suggested by such analogies would have to b e supp orted by evidence in the target eld

ob jects But connecting sexual relations to the HeineBorel theorem relates moreor

less intuitive human notions to abstract mathematical concepts that Krips himself

16

like Lacan manifestly do es not understand

Val Dusek

Duseks review of Intel lectual Impostures the most erudite of the bunch

contains some interesting ideas but few of them have much to do with anything we

wrote His essay is rather a scattershot attempt to cast asp ersions on our b o ok

without actually addressing its arguments In some cases Dusek ris at length on

themes that are at b est p eripherally related to the topics we address while neverthe

less implying that his ideas somehow constitute a refutation of ours in other cases

Dusek explicitly misrepresents our p ositions Here are a few examples

Dusek defends at length Bergsons philosophical ideas but we do not discuss

those ideas at all in our b o ok much less dismiss Bergson as a fo ol we limit ourselves

to analyzing Bergsons misunderstandings of relativity see b elow It go es without

saying that we never accuse Bergsons philosophy of b eing protoNazi

Dusek asserts that we take errors of particular applications of philosophical

ideas to science as refutations of the whole general framework utilized but in fact

we explicitly warn the reader against any such inference I I pp ixx

Dusek claims that we reassure nonscientists that chaos theory and quantum

mechanics have not radically changed the nature of the universe presented by sci

16

Along the way Krips also conco cts a novel to our knowledge misunderstanding of our ideas

when he asserts that SB require that metaphoric extensions of concepts b e tested em

pirically whatever that might mean In fact he is running together two quite distinct discussions

in our b o ok On the one hand we criticize Lacan and others for

imp orting concepts from the natural sciences into the humanities or so cial sciences

without giving the slightest conceptual or empirical justication If a biologist wanted

to apply in her research elementary notions of mathematical top ology set theory or

dierential geometry she would b e asked to give some explanation A vague analogy

would not b e taken very seriously by her colleagues Here by contrast we learn from

Lacan that the structure of the neurotic sub ject is exactly the torus it is no less than

reality itself cf p from Kristeva that p o etic language can b e theorized in terms

of the cardinality of the continuum cf p and from Baudrillard that mo dern war

takes place in a nonEuclidean space cf p all without explanation I I

p

On the other hand we observe several pages later that

Many authors including some of those discussed here try to argue by analogy We

are by no means opp osed to the eort to establish analogies b etween diverse domains

of human thought indeed the observation of a valid analogy b etween two existing

theories can often b e very useful for the subsequent development of b oth Here how

ever we think that the analogies are b etween wellestablished theories in the natural

sciences and theories to o vague to b e tested empirically for example Lacanian psy

choanalysis One cannot help but susp ect that the function of these analogies is to

hide the weaknesses of the vaguer theory I I p

ence and that we debunk claims that twentieth century science has undermined

determinism or the indep endence of the observer from the observed but in fact we

nowhere discuss quantum mechanics or the status of determinism and observation in

17

twentiethcentury physics much less do we debunk claims ab out them Finally

our discussion of chaos theory has the mo dest goal of giving nonscientists a succinct

introduction to the basic ideas of that theory and of warning them against certain

misuses and hasty philosophical conclusions I I pp We never assert that

18

chaos theory has no philosophical implications

Dusek discusses Feynmans wellknown antipathy to philosophy but what do es

that have to do with our b o ok As should b e clear from our long philosophical

chapter I I pp our own attitude is quite the opp osite of Feynmans and

rather closer to Einsteins And what on earth do es our b o ok have to do with Allan

Blo om and the Oxford ordinarylanguage philosophers who are nowhere mentioned

or even alluded to

Dusek engaging in a bit of extrasensory p erception asserts that evidently

AngloAmerican analytic philosophers convinced Sokal and Bricmont to ignore Berg

son in the English edition In fact we decided on our own to omit the Bergson

chapter simply b ecause Bergson is much less well known in the Englishsp eaking

world than in France And anyway we were weary of translating and glad for any

excuse to reduce our workload

Dusek terms Bourdieu our ally on the alleged grounds that we thank him

in the preface For what its worth we thank a lot of p eople who made remarks or

suggestions concerning our b o ok including some p eople who were violently hostile to

it eg Vincent Fleury

Finally Dusek insinuates that our criticism of p ostmo dernist writers is moti

vated by jealousy and in Bricmonts case by resentment This type of facile

psychologizing is a p erfect example of attacking our alleged motivations rather than

19

our reasoning Even if our motivations were as ascrib ed and they most certainly

are not how would that aect the validity or invalidity of our arguments

Let us now reply briey to Duseks remarks concerning Bergson and Deleuze

Bergson As noted ab ove we do not dismiss Bergson as a fo ol nor do we

20

suggest that his philosophy of time is nonsense We explicitly say that we leave

17

For what its worth quantum mechanics does radically change the fundamental conceptual

structures of physics but the exact nature of that change eg whether it involves indeterminism

nonlo cality etc is far from clear to day and is in fact hotly debated by physicists and serious

philosophers of physics For an exp osition of one p oint of view see Bricmont b

18

Indeed in fo otnote p we say that Kellert gives a clear introduction to chaos

theory and a sob er examination of its philosophical implications although we do not agree with

all of his conclusions For a more detailed discussion of some philosophical issues related to chaos

theory see Bricmont a

19

See II second edition pp xviiixix for further examples of namecalling and attacks on our

alleged motivations

20

Should someone asserting that Einsteins views on quantum mechanics are wrong b e accused of

op en the question of whether Bergsons conception of time can b e reconciled with

relativity French edition of I I p We do not criticize later French philoso

phers for praising Bergson but rather for rep eating his errors concerning relativity

almost literally long after they were p edagogically corrected by physicists pp

And nally our main p oint is that Bergson actually defends a physical

theory that makes dierent empirical predictions from Einsteins but without recog

nizing that fact he and his followers p ersist in claiming that the debate is only ab out

the interpretation of relativity theory pp

21

Concerning the twin eect we are well aware that the solution can b e discussed

in several dierent ways using only inertial frames or using accelerating frames

Indeed we mention this in a fo otnote no p where we stress that even

some physics textb o oks make a subtle mistake So we are not surprised that

Marder could write a b o ok discussing alternative analyses of the twin eect oered

by physicists some of which are mutually incompatible and some of which are as

22

Marder observes simply wrong But if Dusek nds our own solution ob jectionable

23

why do esnt he say so and explain why Dusek seems to assert like Bergson that

b ecause velocity is relative the two twins must b e in a symmetrical situation so

that one could not b e younger than the other however as we explain in detail in our

b o ok pp velocity is relative but acceleration is not and only one

of the twins undergo es accelerations with resp ect to an inertial frame Finally the

fact that some mathematicians physicists or philosophers nd Bergsons intuitions

ab out time interesting do es not in any way constitute an ob jection to our analysis of

Bergsons errors

Concerning the third observer introduced by Latour but which Dusek reinter

prets as b eing from Bergsons p oint of view the selfconscious theorist thinking

ab out himself and other observers we explicitly discuss this interpretation of Berg

sons writings p see also pp We note however that Bergson

makes denite predictions concerning the b ehaviour of moving clocks and not only

conscious b eings that contradict those of relativity theory pp

Deleuze Dusek admits that Deleuzes b o oks coauthored with his buddy Guat

tari are wild and unbuttoned to put it mildly but he wants to defend the value of

dismissing him as a fo ol

21

Sometimes misleadingly called the twin paradox As we emphasize pp

The assertions of relativity are indeed sho cking at rst sight But they are para

doxical only in the sense that they contradict our prejudices not in the sense that

they contain any logical contradiction Moreover these paradoxical predictions have

b een veried exp erimentally at least for clo cks our prejudices are quite simply false

though they are go o d approximations when sp eeds are small compared to the sp eed

of light

22

The b o ok in question is Marder

23

Our solution is by no means original it is the standard one taught in all sp ecialrelativity

courses and is identical to the one explained p ersonally to Bergson by Becquerel and Metz

Deleuzes earlier works of academic philosophy Thats a p erfectly resp ectable goal

and we take no p osition on its ultimate merits How many times need we rep eat I I

pp ixx that the purp ose of our b o ok is not to analyze all of Deleuzes works or

even all of his references to mathematics Our aim is much more limited to question

the usefulness philosophical or otherwise of the avalanche of illdigested scientic

and pseudoscientic jargon I I p that p ermeates several of Deleuzes b o oks

24

b oth with and without Guattari

Dusek correctly summarizes our b elief that scientic metaphors would not

b e illuminating to an audience ignorant of science He retorts that mathematical

structures can b e used as mo dels for metaphysical sp eculation but without giving a

single example where such mo dels are put to fruitful use by Deleuze or Guattari much

less where they are explained in a way that could b e illuminating to an audience

ignorant of science

Dusek ob jects that philosophical and mathematical problems related to innites

imals could still b e raised after the work of Cauchy We agree entirely for example

serious philosophers of mathematics have b een discussing in recent years the con

ceptual issues raised by nonstandard analysis But that is light years from what

Deleuze do es which is to launch long meditations on classical mostly preCauchy

topics characterized by a bizarre mixture of p edantry and confusion Neither Dusek

nor anyone else has yet oered even a glimpse of which genuine intellectual role is

fullled by this display of mathematical pseudoerudition in Deleuzes work Nor is

Duseks throwing around the names of mathematicians and philosophers Wronski

Maimon Lautman Vuillemin Herbrand Cavaillesand Dieudonneall in the space of

a single paragraph a substitute for concrete analysis of ideas and arguments

Dusek observes correctly that

Ironically two of the passages in Deleuze that they SB ridicule assert that

relativity theory measurement in quantum theory and information in statisti

cal mechanics should not b e interpreted sub jectively pp This agrees

with Sokal and Bricmonts own p osition but they do not note this It would

sp oil the fun

We were certainly aware of the irony but the passages in question are so garbled they

are useless as arguments in favour of any p osition

Finally Dusek asks

Marxs sidekick Friedrich Engels wrote far worse stu concerning elementary

algebraic op erations and the dialectic Would leftist Sokal move from a similar

discussion of Marx and Engels on mathematics to discrediting Marxs insights

ab out capitalism as Intel lectual Impostures moves from Lacans Irigarays or

Kristevas mathematical errors to question their honesty

First of all as we make abundantly clear I I pp ixx we do not draw general

conclusions ab out the value of Lacans Irigarays or Kristevas work and we explic

itly refrain from guessing whether their abuses result from dishonesty or from gross

24

Note also that we give many references to texts that for lack of space we refrain from quoting

in order to illustrate the ubiquity of pseudoscientic language in Deleuze and Guattaris work as

well as in some of Deleuzes soleauthored work see I I p fo otnote and p

incomp etence I I pp Our goal is rather to exp ose discourses that have a

reputation of b eing deep but obscure and ab out which we can show at least when

mathematics and physics are invoked that the obscurity is unnecessary Engels

writings on mathematics by contrast are deeply confused but not terribly obscure

In conclusion Duseks comments remind us of the observation made by Jacques

Bouveresse professor of philosophy in the Collegede France that whereas our back

ground as scientists should allow us to understand the technical concepts invoked by

Deleuze et al were they to make any sense we face p eople who without providing

any details nevertheless claim that what they do not understand may actually very

25

well b e understo o d

Steve Fuller

Like Krips Fuller should b e commended b ecause he tries to address some of the

issues raised in our b o ok fo cusing on its epistemological part I I Chapter His

criticisms that we are naive in linking science to everyday rationality and that our

views on the history of science are naive as well reect misunderstandings that are

suciently common to merit some discussion

Let us b egin however by p ointing out some rather gross deformations of our

arguments Fuller claims that we want to trace lapses from professionalism to a

relativist philosophical sensibility which in turn is held resp onsible for the dissipation

of the US academic left and that we attempt to trace all p ostmo dern crimes against

science to an omnibus b ogey relativism This conates at least three distinct topics

treated in our b o ok which we take pains to distinguish already in the preface I I

pp xxii it attributes to us alleged links that we did not assert and do not in fact

b elieve Indeed we rep eatedly stress that the imp ostures part of our b o ok has only

a tenuous link with relativism and we are careful to separate b oth of these issues

from p olitical considerations

Let us now discuss Fullers six curiosities

Fuller radically misunderstands the connection we draw b etween the scien

tic attitude and everyday rationality by disregarding our clearlystated distinction

b etween the methodology of science which in our view extends and p erfects ordi

nary rationality and the substantive content of scientic knowledge which frequently

contradicts common sense

For us the scientic metho d is not radically dierent from the rational attitude

in everyday life or in other domains of human knowledge Historians detectives

and plumbers indeed all human b eings use the same basic metho ds of in

duction deduction and assessment of evidence as do physicists or bio chemists

Mo dern science tries to carry out these op erations in a more careful and sys

tematic way by using controls and statistical tests insisting on replication and

so forth Moreover scientic measurements are often much more precise than

everyday observations they allow us to discover hitherto unknown phenomena

25

Bouveresse p

and they often conict with common sense But the conict is at the level of

conclusions not the basic approach I I p

We are thus p erfectly aware of the dierence b etween the manifest and scientic

26

images of the world to which Fuller refers indeed we stress it And in a fo otnote

we add

Throughout this chapter we stress the metho dological continuity b etween sci

entic knowledge and everyday knowledge This is in our view the prop er way

to resp ond to various sceptical challenges and to disp el the confusions generated

by radical interpretations of correct philosophical ideas such as the underdeter

mination of theories by data But it would b e naive to push this connection to o

far Science particularly fundamental physics introduces concepts that

are hard to grasp intuitively or to connect directly to commonsense notions

For example forces acting instantaneously throughout the universe in New

tonian mechanics electromagnetic elds vibrating in vacuum in Maxwells

theory curved spacetime in Einsteins general relativity And it is in dis

cussions ab out the meaning of these theoretical concepts that various brands

of realists and antirealists eg instrumentalists pragmatists tend to part

company Relativists sometimes tend to fall back on instrumentalist p ositions

when challenged but there is a profound dierence b etween the two attitudes

Instrumentalists may want to claim either that we have no way of knowing

whether unobservable theoretical entities really exist or that their meaning

is dened solely through measurable quantities but this do es not imply that

they regard such entities as sub jective in the sense that their meaning would

b e signicantly inuenced by extrascientic factors such as the p ersonality of

the individual scientist or the so cial characteristics of the group to which she

b elongs Indeed instrumentalists may regard our scientic theories as quite

simply the most satisfactory way that the human mind with its inherent bio

logical limitations is capable of understanding the world I I p fo otnote

While the subtle debates b etween mo derate forms of realism and instrumentalism lie

b eyond the scop e of our epistemological chapter whose goal is to dissect far grosser

confusions ab out science and its metho ds we are quite aware of them and have

27

discussed them elsewhere

and Fullers claim notwithstanding we do not assume that there is some

prescientic natural need to explain the coherence of our exp erience nor do

we make any assertions whatso ever concerning the historical so cial and biological

factors leading to the development or nondevelopment of scientic thought these

28

questions are not addressed at all in our b o ok It go es without saying that we

26

For example we note that water app ears to us as a continuous uid but chemical and physical

exp eriments teach us that it is made of atoms I I p fo otnote

27

See eg Bricmont

28

We do of course make the trivial observations that so cial factors play at least the role of

enabling or disabling conditions on science and that our biological constitution may imp ose limits

on what we are able to know

are not committed to the idea that the search for knowledge except in p ostth

century Europ e has b een usually retarded or otherwise p erverted nor do we hold a

cryptoteleological vision of epistemic growth

Fuller writes

The intractability of the problem of induction is presented as a ma jor philo

sophical reason for science studies going down the path of relativismscepticism

While there is some truth to this observation it is cast in the wrong light The

source of concern is not that there is no fo olpro of means of determining whether

the sun will rise tomorrow rather it is that there is no fo olpro of means of de

termining whether if the sun rises tomorrow it will b e for the same reason as it

did yesterday Clearly if the sun fails to rise then the background assumptions

that made us think it would are thrown into doubt But we still have reason

to b e sceptical even if the sun do es rise

Of course But several issues need to b e disentangled

First of all if we b egin our discussion of epistemology by briey addressing the

problems of solipsism and radical scepticism I I pp it is precisely in order

to get red herrings out of the way by conceding that these do ctrines are irrefutable

which is not to say that anyone really b elieves them or that there is any reason to

b elieve they are true But as we stress

the key observation is that such scepticism applies to al l our knowledge not

only to the existence of atoms electrons or genes but also to fact that blo o d

circulates in our veins that the Earth is approximately round and that at

birth we emerged from our mothers womb Indeed even the most commonplace

knowledge in our everyday lives there is a glass of water in front of me on

the table dep ends entirely on the supp osition that our p erceptions do not

systematically mislead us and that they are indeed pro duced by external ob jects

that in some way resemble those p erceptions

The universality of Humean scepticism is also its weakness Of course it

is irrefutable But since no one is systematically sceptical when he or she is

sincere with resp ect to ordinary knowledge one ought to ask why scepticism

is rejected in that domain and why it would nevertheless b e valid when applied

elsewhere for instance to scientic knowledge I I p

Secondly Fuller following Go o dman is correct in p ointing out that the prob

lem of induction involves among other things that of determining which p erceived

commonalities in the world corresp ond to categories to which induction could validly

b e applied in other words the problem of determining which of our theories and

metatheories are at least approximately true Science addresses this problem not by

nding some a priori solution to it which in our opinion is imp ossible but rather

by developing theories with wideranging explanatory and predictive p ower and using

the empirical successes of those theories as a posteriori justications of their proba

ble approximate truth in full knowledge that there are no absolutely certain a priori

grounds on which to base any empirical knowledge even in everyday life

But neither of these is our main p oint for pace Fuller we do not regard sceptical

arguments ab out induction as a ma jor philosophical reason for science studies going

down the path of relativismscepticism Rather as we demonstrate through nu

merous examples in our b o ok sciencestudies practitioners sometimes invoke radical

sceptical arguments but only in a highly selective manner to cast doubt on the

validity of theories in the natural sciences But if as Fuller rightly observes there is

no fo olpro of way to determine whether if the sun rises tomorrow it will b e for the

same reason as it did yesterday then surely there is no fo olpro of way to determine

whether some theory ab out the relations b etween Boyle Hobb es the Royal So ciety

and the so cial classes of seventeenthcentury England is true or not Physicists his

torians and so ciologists are in the same b oat that of empirical research from which

absolute certainties such as those of sp eculative philosophy or revealed religions

are excluded So why rehearse constantly that fact and state it as if it applied only

29

to the natural sciences

In our b o ok we argue as Fuller accurately summarizes that although the

empirical evidence in favour of the atomic hypothesis was less than overwhelming

when Dalton rst prop osed it we nevertheless have today so much evidence in favour

of atomism much of which is indep endent of chemistry that it has b ecome irrational

to doubt it I I p Fuller ob jects that this is a sup erstitious app eal to history

and that unsp ecied alternative theories not b een given a fair trial But do es

Fuller really b elieve this claim in the face not only of years of evidence from

chemistry and statistical mechanics but ab ove all in the face of the stunning successes

of quantum mechanics in explaining and predicting a vast range of chemical and

29

Indeed if the accurate prediction of unexp ected phenomena and the subsuming of diverse

phenomena under a simple explanatory theory are indications alb eit not fo olpro of ones that a

theory is on the right track then surely there is no contest b etween physics and history or so ciology

As we p ointed out in the b o ok

the evidence of the Earths rotation to take just one example is vastly stronger than

anything Kuhn could put forward in supp ort of his historical theories This do es

not mean of course that physicists are more clever than historians or that they use

b etter metho ds but simply that they deal with less complex problems involving a

smaller number of variables which moreover are easier to measure and to control

It is imp ossible to avoid introducing such a hierarchy in our b eliefs based on the

quantity and quality of the evidence supp orting them and this hierarchy implies that

there is no conceivable argument based on the Kuhnian view of history that could give

succor to those so ciologists or philosophers who wish to challenge in a blanket way

the reliability of scientic results I I pp

30

physical phenomena sometimes to decimal places accuracy And if Fuller really

do es b elieve this would he then b e willing to renounce using drugs that were designed

31

by computer simulations based on the atomic theory Atomic theory grounded

nowadays in quantum mechanics and electro dynamics is not simply b etter than its

comp etitors in explaining and predicting what interests us to day as Fuller asserts

it also succeeds in explaining and predicting what interested chemists and physicists

years ago in ways that they would have considered utterly miraculous

Regarding our ob jection to a strong interpretation of Kuhns incommensura

bility thesis here is what we said quoting the philosopher of science Tim Maudlin

If presented with a mo on ro ck Aristotle would exp erience it as a ro ck and as an

ob ject with a tendency to fall He could not fail to conclude that the material of

which the mo on is made is not fundamentally dierent from terrestrial material

with resp ect to its natural motion Similarly ever b etter telescop es revealed

more clearly the phases of Venus irresp ective of ones preferred cosmology

and even Ptolemy would have remarked the apparent rotation of a Foucault

p endulum The sense in which ones paradigm may inuence ones exp erience

of the world cannot b e so strong as to guarantee that ones exp erience will

always accord with ones theories else the need to revise theories would never

arise Maudlin p cited in I I pp

Fuller ob jects that such a thought exp eriment b egs the question against the in

commensurability thesis b ecause it undermines the crucial supp osition that the

mutual incomprehensibility of paradigms is supp osed to reect a breakdown in com

munication b etween two largely selfcontained research communities

30

One stunning example is cited in our b o ok

Quantum electro dynamics predicts that the magnetic moment of the electron has the

value

;

where the denotes the uncertainties in the theoretical computation which involves

several approximations A recent exp eriment gives the result

;

where the denotes the exp erimental uncertainties This agreement b etween theory

and exp eriment when combined with thousands of other similar though less sp ectac

ular ones would b e a miracle if science said nothing true or at least approximately

true ab out the world I I pp

In particular the predictive success of quantum mechanics would b e a miracle if electrons and atoms

did not really exist in some sense or other We say in some sense or other in order to emphasize

that electrons quarks etc may not b elong to the fundamental ontology of the universe but may

only b e as we now know that Daltons atoms are merely approximations ob jectively valid

at certain scales of size and energy For further discussion of the history of the electronmagnetic

moment problem see Lautrup and Zinkernagel

31

Questions like this are often considered demagogic but we fail to see why The fact that new

molecules can b e designed by computer simulation and then synthesized in the lab oratory is far from

the cleanest evidence in favour of atomic theory but it is p owerful evidence nonetheless

But this reply misses our p oint which was to refute the radical idea which

p eople often attribute to Kuhn whether or not he intended it that changes of

paradigm are due principally to nonempirical factors and once accepted they con

dition our p erception of the world to such an extent that they can only b e conrmed

by our subsequent exp eriences I I p Indeed Fuller himself adopts this radical

interpretation when he says that the b enchmark here is Kuhns incommensurability

thesis according to which scientists cannot recognize evidence that contradicts the

fundamental tenets of their paradigm But if that were true then as Maudlin ob

serves the need to revise fundamental theories such as Newtonian mechanics would

never arise

Sure Aristotle might or might not agree with Galileo either at rst or up on

reection in interpreting the fall of a mo on ro ck He might even fail to understand

the theory Galileo is trying to present But all that is irrelevant to our and Maudlins

p oint which concerns not the theoretical interpretations but simply the p erceptions

Could Aristotle really fail to p erceive that a mo on ro ck when dropp ed falls to the

ground Could Ptolemy fail to notice the precession of a Foucault p endulum No

doubt all p erception is in part theoryladen but as Maudlin observes the sense in

which ones paradigm may inuence ones exp erience of the world cannot b e so strong

as to guarantee that ones exp erience will always accord with ones theories

Let us conclude by p ointing to a fundamental curiosity in Fullers text namely

his statement that

constructivist narratives of science in action typically show that there is no fact

of the matter which statements are true or false until closure often misleadingly

called consensus so as to mask the p ower relations involved is reached over

what the relevant agents are thought to have accomplished

Do es Fuller really mean to assert that there was no fact of the matter ab out the exis

tence and orbit of the celestial ob ject we now call Neptune b efore the astronomers

the relevant agents reached closure And if not what on earth does he mean

to assert

Fuller continues

In that resp ect the distinction b etween ontology and epistemology collapses as

the existence of an entity b ecomes dep endent on our mo de of access to it which

once established may change and p erhaps even b e reversed over time thereby

rendering intelligible the idea that entities can go in and out of existence To b e

sure this is a controversial p osition that presupp oses an op enended pro cess

oriented metaphysics However as such it do es not require the commission of

any philosophical errors rather it implies a philosophically resp ectable p osition

known most broadly as antirealism

Supp ose that after a nuclear war the human sp ecies b ecomes extinct Will Nep

tune then kindly go out of existence since our mo de of access to it will have

disapp eared along with our race in order to vindicate Fullers op enended pro cess

oriented metaphysics

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