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The publication in France of our book Impostures Intellectuelles [1] appears to have created a small storm in certain intellectual circles. According to Jon Henley in The Guardian, we have shown that ``modern French philosophy is a load of old tosh.''[2] According to Robert Maggiori in Libération, we are humourless scientistic pedants who correct grammatical errors in love letters.[3] We shall try to explain here why neither is the case.
Some commentators go farther, attacking not our arguments but our alleged motivations for writing the book. Julia Kristeva, writing in Le Nouvel Observateur, accuses us of spreading ``disinformation'' as part of an anti-French politico-economic campaign[4]; she was even quoted (we hope misquoted) by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera as saying that we should undergo psychiatric treatment.[5] Vincent Fleury and Yun Sun Limet, again in Libération, accuse us of seeking to divert research funds from the social to the natural sciences.[6] These defences are curious: for even if our motivations were indeed as ascribed (and they most certainly aren't), how would that affect the validity or invalidity of our arguments? We have the modest hope that calmer heads will soon prevail among both our supporters and our critics, so that the debate can focus on the substantive content of our book.
Which is what? The book grew out of the now-famous hoax in which one of us published, in the American cultural-studies journal Social Text, a parody article chock-full of nonsensical, but unfortunately authentic, quotes about physics and mathematics by prominent French and American intellectuals.[7] However, only a small fraction of the ``dossier'' discovered during Sokal's library research could be included in the parody. After showing this larger dossier to scientist and non-scientist friends, we became (slowly) convinced that it might be worth making it available to a wider audience. We wanted to explain, in non-technical terms, why the quotes are absurd or, in many cases, simply meaningless; and we wanted also to discuss the cultural circumstances that enabled these discourses to achieve such prominence and to remain, thus far, unexposed. Hence our book, the noise and the furore.
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