Michael: Alright Kevin, quick-fire. I say 'postmodern philosophy,' you give me the first word that comes to mind. Kevin: Obscure. Or... expensive. Definitely expensive. Michael: Perfect. Because today we're talking about a book that argues it's not just obscure, it's sometimes complete, fashionable nonsense. Kevin: I like the sound of that. It feels like someone is finally saying the quiet part out loud. Michael: Exactly. The book is Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science by two physicists, Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont. And the story behind it is just incredible. Sokal isn't some conservative critic taking potshots at the humanities; he's a self-described 'Old Leftist' who got so frustrated with the intellectual rot he saw in his own camp that he decided to pull off one of the greatest academic pranks in history. Kevin: A prank? In a stuffy academic journal? I'm already in. That’s like a heist movie for nerds. Michael: It absolutely is. And it set off a firestorm that people are still debating today. It’s a story about intellectual honesty, the nature of truth, and what happens when big ideas go completely off the rails.

Kevin: Okay, you can't just leave it there. A prank. Unpack this for me. What did he actually do? Michael: So, you have to picture the scene. It's the mid-1990s, and there's this intellectual battle raging in academia called the "science wars." On one side, you have scientists who believe in objective reality and the scientific method. On the other, you have a growing number of postmodern thinkers in the humanities who argue that science is just another "social construct," a "narrative" with no more inherent claim to truth than a myth or a story. Kevin: Right, the idea that there's no objective truth, just different perspectives. My truth, your truth. Michael: Precisely. And Alan Sokal, the physicist, is reading this stuff and getting increasingly alarmed. He sees these hugely influential thinkers quoting science, using scientific jargon, but it's clear to him they have no idea what they're talking about. It's just word salad. So he thinks, "Are the editors of these journals even paying attention? Or will they publish anything as long as it sounds profound and flatters their ideological biases?" Kevin: That’s a dangerous question to ask. So he put it to the test? Michael: He put it to the ultimate test. He wrote a paper with the most magnificent, nonsensical title you can imagine: "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." Kevin: Wow. That title alone sounds like it costs $200,000 in student debt. I have no idea what a single one of those words means in that order. Michael: Nobody does! That's the point! The article was a deliberate parody, a collage of the worst academic jargon he could find. It was filled with blatant non-sequiturs, absurd claims, and praise for the very editors he was submitting it to. He argued, for example, that "physical ‘reality’, no less than social ‘reality’, is at bottom a social and linguistic construct." Kevin: Hold on. He, a physicist, wrote that physical reality isn't real, it's just something we've all agreed to talk about? Michael: Yes! He was testing if they would publish an article from a scientist that seemingly confirmed their most extreme beliefs. He larded it with footnotes and quotes from famous postmodern thinkers, making it look incredibly scholarly. But the core argument was pure, unadulterated gibberish. He sent it off to a top cultural studies journal, Social Text, for their special "Science Wars" issue. Kevin: And they fell for it. Please tell me they fell for it. Michael: Hook, line, and sinker. They published it. They didn't even send it out for peer review to a physicist, because, as they later admitted, they thought it was a serious effort by a scientist to engage with their ideas. They found it a bit dense, but they thought he was just being modest. Kevin: Oh, that is brutal. So what happened when it came out? Michael: The moment the journal hit the shelves, Sokal published another article in a different magazine, Lingua Franca, revealing the whole thing was a hoax. He laid it all bare: the paper was a parody, its arguments were nonsensical, and he did it to expose the decline in intellectual standards in parts of the humanities. Kevin: I can only imagine the fallout. The academic world must have exploded. Michael: It was a massive scandal. It made headlines everywhere. The book, Fashionable Nonsense, is basically the detailed explanation of the problem he was parodying. The hoax was the opening shot, and the book is the full artillery barrage. It was, as you can imagine, a very polarizing book. Scientists mostly cheered it on, while many in the humanities were, to put it mildly, not amused.

Kevin: Okay, so the hoax proved it was possible to get nonsense published. But what kind of 'nonsense' was he actually parodying? What were these 'intellectual impostures' the book talks about? Michael: This is where it gets both hilarious and deeply troubling. The book is a systematic breakdown of how famous intellectuals were using—or rather, abusing—concepts from math and physics. They weren't just getting small details wrong; they were building entire philosophical systems on complete misunderstandings. Kevin: Can you give me a prime example? Who’s the worst offender? Michael: The undisputed heavyweight champion of scientific nonsense, according to Sokal and Bricmont, is the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. He was a hugely influential figure, and he loved to borrow the authority of mathematics to make his psychoanalytic theories sound rigorous and scientific. Kevin: Okay, so how does a psychoanalyst use math? Michael: In the most bizarre ways imaginable. For instance, Lacan was obsessed with a branch of mathematics called topology, which studies the properties of shapes that are preserved under continuous deformation—stretching, twisting, but not tearing. Kevin: Wait, topology? Isn't that about maps and landscapes? Michael: That's a common use, but in math it's more abstract. It deals with concepts like surfaces, knots, and continuity. Think of a coffee mug and a donut. Topologically, they're the same because you can theoretically squish and stretch one into the other without tearing it, since they both have one hole. Kevin: Right, I've heard that one. It's a classic bit of trivia. So how did Lacan use this? Michael: Well, at a lecture at Johns Hopkins University, he was presenting his ideas and someone in the audience asked if his use of topology was just an analogy. Lacan's response was stunning. He held up a torus—which is the mathematical name for a donut shape—and declared, and I quote, "This torus really exists and it is exactly the structure of the neurotic." Kevin: Hold on. A neurotic... is a donut? What does that even mean? Is he saying my anxiety has a hole in it? Or that it's glazed? Michael: That's the million-dollar question! It means nothing. It's a completely arbitrary assertion. There is no argument, no evidence, no logical connection between the mathematical properties of a torus and the psychological state of a neurotic person. It's just a profound-sounding statement designed to intimidate the listener into thinking he's discovered some deep truth. Kevin: That is absolutely wild. It's like me saying, "This toaster is exactly the structure of political disappointment." It sounds vaguely interesting for a second, and then you realize it's just a random collection of words. Michael: Precisely. And it gets worse. Lacan also had a fascination with imaginary numbers. He famously declared that human life could be defined as "a calculus in which zero was irrational." Then he corrected himself and said by "irrational" he meant an "imaginary number," like the square root of minus one. Kevin: Okay, my high school math is rusty, but even I know that irrational numbers and imaginary numbers are two completely different things. That's a pretty basic error. Michael: It's a freshman-level mistake. But he didn't stop there. He went on to create what he called "algebra" for psychoanalysis, where he claimed the erectile organ is equivalent to the square root of minus one. Kevin: Come on. You're making that up. Michael: I wish I were. It's in his seminars. He presents these formulas that look mathematical but are just gibberish. He's taking the symbols of science, stripping them of all meaning, and wearing them like a costume to look smart. And this is the core of what Sokal and Bricmont call "fashionable nonsense." It's the practice of using scientific jargon not to clarify, but to mystify.

Kevin: This is all wild and, frankly, very funny. But it does feel like a very niche academic food fight from the 90s. Why should anyone outside of a university philosophy department care if some French psychoanalyst thought a donut was a neurotic? Michael: That is the most important question, and it's the real heart of the book. Sokal wasn't just on a crusade against bad writing. He was deeply concerned about the political and social consequences of this kind of thinking. Remember, he’s a man of the Left. He was seeing these ideas—relativism, subjectivism, the idea that science is just a "narration"—become dominant in the very political circles that were supposed to be fighting for social justice. Kevin: How does that connect? What’s the danger? Michael: The danger is this: if you abandon the idea of objective truth, you lose the ability to effectively critique power. Think about it. How do you fight climate change denial? You point to the objective evidence. How do you fight against historical revisionism? You point to the historical facts. How do you argue for social justice? You point to real, measurable inequalities. Kevin: Right. You need a shared reality to even have the debate. Michael: Exactly. But if truth is just a "social construct," if it's just an "effect of power," as some of these thinkers claimed, then you've just handed the most powerful people in the world their greatest weapon. Their "truth" becomes just as valid as yours. The CEO of an oil company's "narrative" about the climate becomes just as legitimate as the climate scientist's data. Sokal saw this as a form of political suicide for the Left. Kevin: Wow. So he wrote this in the 90s, but it sounds like he was predicting the "post-truth" era we're living in now. If everything is just a 'narrative,' then my conspiracy theory is just as valid as your scientific evidence. Michael: He was incredibly prescient. The book is a warning against going down that road. He quotes the philosopher Bertrand Russell, who warned about the "intoxication of power" that comes when you remove the check of objective reality. It's the idea that you can shape the world just by thinking it, which is a very dangerous fantasy. Sokal and Bricmont argue that there's nothing progressive about being hostile to science and rationality. In fact, it's the opposite. Kevin: That flips the whole thing on its head. I always thought of these postmodern critiques as being anti-establishment. But you're saying Sokal saw them as actually helping the establishment by muddying the waters. Michael: That's his core argument. He believed that clear thinking and a respect for evidence are the sharpest tools we have for challenging the status quo. When you throw those tools away in favor of fashionable, obscure jargon, you're not being radical; you're just disarming yourself.

Michael: So when you boil it all down, Fashionable Nonsense isn't just a book about dunking on a few philosophers who didn't do their math homework. It's a passionate, and at times very funny, defense of a simple but profound idea: that clarity, reason, and a respect for evidence are not just academic virtues, they are essential for a functioning society. Kevin: It’s a defense of the ground we all need to stand on to have any meaningful conversation, whether it's about science, politics, or just our own lives. If we can't agree on some basic facts about reality, then we're just shouting into the void. Michael: And the book's ultimate insight is that intellectual honesty isn't a luxury. It's a prerequisite for progress. Sokal’s prank wasn't just mean-spirited; it was an act of desperation by someone who saw his own political side sawing off the branch it was sitting on. He was trying to sound an alarm. Kevin: It's fascinating how a book that felt so specific to a 1990s academic debate now feels more relevant than ever. It really makes you wonder, where do we see 'fashionable nonsense' in our own lives today—jargon-filled ideas that sound profound but might just be empty? Michael: That's the perfect question to end on. It's everywhere once you start looking for it—in business, in wellness, in politics. We encourage everyone listening to think about that. What's the modern-day equivalent of saying a neurotic is a donut? Kevin: We’d love to hear your examples. Find us on our social channels and share the most brilliant piece of fashionable nonsense you've encountered recently. Michael: It's a powerful exercise in critical thinking, which is what this book is all about. Kevin: This is Aibrary, signing off.