Jean Bricmont

This article briefly reviews and criticizes various strategies that have been proposed by philosophers of science in order to establish a distinction between science and non-science. It also proposes a more modest, but easier, way to make such a distinction. Throughout this text I will first address the problems of the demarcation criteria of the philosophy of science during the first half of the twentieth century; then, I will defend that they absolutely do not justify the radical conclusions reached during the second half of the century.

There are several important philosophical problems to which quantum mechanics is often said to have made significant contributions: • Determinism: quantum theory has been taken to refute determinism; • Free Will: in turn, this is thought to open the door to free will; • The mind-body problem: relatedly, it is sometimes said to shed light on consciousness; • Idealism: more radically, quantum theory is assumed to have refuted realism and to have placed the observer at the center of the world; • Reductionism: even granting realism, it has been claimed that quantum theory undermines reductionism. Our main thesis in this paper is that none of this is either necessary or desirable. By adopting the de Broglie–Bohm theory (or Bohmian mechanics), one can straightforwardly account for quantum phenomena without endorsing any of these claims.

It is often claimed that there are three “realist” versions of quantum mechanics: the de Broglie–Bohm theory or Bohmian mechanics, the spontaneous collapse theories and the many worlds interpretation. We will explain why the two latter proposals suffer from serious defects coming from their ontology (or lack thereof) and that the many worlds interpretation is unable to account for the statistics encoded in the Born rule. The de Broglie–Bohm theory, on the other hand, has no problem of ontology and accounts naturally for the Born rule.

This book explains, in simple terms, with a minimum of mathematics, why things can appear to be in two places at the same time, why correlations between simultaneous events occurring far apart cannot be explained by local mechanisms, and why, nevertheless, the quantum theory can be understood in terms of matter in motion. No need to worry, as some people do, whether a cat can be both dead and alive, whether the moon is there when nobody looks at it, or whether quantum systems need an observer to acquire definite properties. The author's inimitable and even humorous style makes the book a pleasure to read while bringing a new clarity to many of the longstanding puzzles of quantum physics.

In 1996 physicist Alan Sokal published an essay in Social Text--an influential academic journal of cultural studies--touting the deep similarities between quantum gravitational theory and postmodern philosophy. Soon thereafter, the essay was revealed as a brilliant parody, a catalog of nonsense written in the cutting-edge but impenetrable lingo of postmodern theorists. The event sparked a furious debate in academic circles and made the headlines of newspapers in the U.S. and abroad. In Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science, Sokal and his fellow physicist Jean Bricmont expand from where the hoax left off. In a delightfully witty and clear voice, the two thoughtfully and thoroughly dismantle the pseudo-scientific writings of some of the most fashionable French and American intellectuals. More generally, they challenge the widespread notion that scientific theories are mere "narrations" or social constructions.

Au printemps 1996, une revue américaine fort respectée - Social Text - publiait un article au titre étrange : "Transgresser les frontières : vers une herméneutique transformative de la gravitation quantique". Son auteur, Alan Sokal, étayait ses divagations par des citations d'intellectuels célèbres, français et américains. Peu après, il révélait qu'il s'agissait d'une parodie. Son but était de s'attaquer, par la satire, à l'usage intempestif de terminologie scientifique et aux extrapolations abusives des sciences exactes aux sciences humaines. Plus généralement, il voulait dénoncer le relativisme postmoderne pour lequel l'objectivité est une simple convention sociale. Ce canular a déclenché un vif débat dans les milieux intellectuels, en France et à l'étranger. Dans ce livre, les auteurs ont rassemblé et commenté des textes illustrant les mystifications physico-mathématiques de Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari et Paul Virilio, auteurs qui jouissent tous d'une grande notoriété aux Etats-Unis. Ils montrent que, derrière un jargon imposant et une érudition scientifique apparente, le roi est nu. Après les vives polémiques suscitées par la version initiale d'Impostures intellectuelles, cette nouvelle édition, revue et enrichie d'une préface inédite (1999), procure aux auteurs l'occasion d'une nécessaire mise au point. Ils y précisent leur point de vue. Ils écartent les idées voire les arrière-pensées qui leur ont été à tort attribuées.

You will remember that in 1996 a physicist at New York University named Alan Sokal brought off a delicious hoax that displayed the fraudulence of certain leading figures in cultural studies. He submitted to the journal Social Text an article entitled "Transgressing the boundaries: Toward a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity", espousing the fashionable doctrine that scientific objectivity is a myth, and combining heavy technical references to contemporary physics and mathematics with patently ridiculous claims about their broader philosophical, cultural and political significance, supported by quotations in similar vein from prominent figures like Lacan and Lyotard, and references to many more. The nonsense made of the science was so extreme that only a scientific ignoramus could have missed the joke.

Noam Chomsky applies a rational, scientific approach to disciplines as diverse as linguistics, ethics, and politics. His best-known innovations involve a groundbreaking theory of generative grammar, the revolution it initiated in cognitive science, and a radical encounter with political theory and practice. In _Chomsky Notebook_, Cedric Boeckx and Norbert Hornstein tackle the evolution of Chomsky's linguistic theory. Akeel Bilgrami revisits Chomsky's work on freedom and truth, and Pierre Jacob analyzes his naturalism. Chomsky's own contributions include an interview with Jean Bricmont and an essay each on Edward Said and the natural world. Altogether, these works reveal the penetrating insight of a remarkable intellectual whose thought extends into a number of fields within and outside of academia. For the uninitiated reader and longtime fan, this anthology attests to the power of Chomsky's rationalism and the dexterity of his critical investigations.