According to
New York Review of Books editor
Barbara Epstein, who was delighted by Sokal's hoax, the response to the book within the
humanities was bitterly divided, with some delighted and some enraged; and agreeing that "there does seem to be something about the Parisian scene that is particularly hospitable to reckless verbosity." Several scientists have expressed similar sentiments.
Richard Dawkins, in a review of this book, said regarding the discussion of
Lacan:
Criticism Limiting her considerations to physics, science historian Mara Beller maintained that it was not entirely fair to blame contemporary postmodern philosophers for drawing nonsensical conclusions from
quantum physics, since many such conclusions were drawn by some of the leading quantum physicists themselves, such as
Bohr or
Heisenberg when they ventured into philosophy.
Regarding Lacan Bruce Fink offers a critique in his book
Lacan to the Letter, in which he accuses Sokal and Bricmont of demanding that "serious writing" do nothing other than "convey clear meanings". Fink asserts that some concepts which the authors 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." This point has been disputed by Arkady Plotnitsky (one of the authors mentioned by Sokal in his
original hoax). Plotnitsky says that "some of their claims concerning mathematical objects in question and specifically complex numbers are incorrect", specifically attacking their statement that
complex numbers and
irrational numbers "have nothing to do with one another". Plotnitsky nevertheless agrees with Sokal and Bricmont that the "square root of −1" which Lacan discusses (and for which Plotnitsky introduces the symbol \scriptstyle (L)\sqrt{-1}) is not, in spite of its identical name, "identical, directly linked, or even metaphorized via the mathematical
square root of −1", and that the latter "is
not the erectile organ". However, they point out that Irigaray might still be correct in asserting that is a "
masculinist" equation, since "the social genealogy of a proposition has no logical bearing on its truth value." Derrida reminds his readers that science and philosophy have long debated their likenesses and differences in the discipline of
epistemology, but certainly not with such an emphasis on the
nationality of the philosophers or scientists. He calls it ridiculous and weird that there are intensities of treatment by the scientists, in particular, that he was "much less badly treated", when in fact he was the main target of the US press. Derrida then proceeds to question the validity of their attacks against a few words he made in an off-the-cuff response during a conference that took place thirty years prior to their publication. He suggests there are plenty of scientists who have pointed out the difficulty of attacking his response. He also writes that there is no "
relativism" or a critique of Reason and the
Enlightenment in his works. He then writes of his hope that in the future this work is pursued more seriously and with dignity at the level of the issues involved. ==See also==