تيار ما بعد الحداثة هو اتجاه فكري بدأ في الظهور أواخر القرن العشرين وما زال آخذاً في الانتشار، خصوصاً بين مدعي العلم والثقافة في الجامعات ومراكز السلطة في جميع أنحاء العالم.
تقول هذه الحركة في أساسها أن كل أشكال المعرفة هي تصور وتركيب مجتمعي، ولا وجود لحقائق موضوعية أو نظريات مثبتة، بل يمكن لأي معتقد أو وجهة نظر أن تصحّ.
يستخدم بعض فلاسفة ما بعد الحداثة المؤثرين والمشهورين تكتيكات مريبة تسيء استخدام الحقائق العلمية وتعمل على طيّها، وهنا تكمن خطورتها على العلم والمجتمع.
من وسائل مدّعي العلم والثقافة من أتباع هذا التيار هو استخدام اللغة الغامضة المنمقة المحشوة بالكلمات البليغة والمصطلحات الفخمة، وهي في حقيقتها كلام فارغ خالٍ من أي معنى أو دلالة، فيصفّق لهم من يخافون الاعتراف بعدم الفهم ومن يرغبون بالظهور بمظهر الأذكياء، ويعملون على تقليدهم.
في محاولة لكشف هراء ما بعد الحداثة وأثرها على البحث العلمي، عمد المؤلف إلى كتابة ورقة بحثية مستخدماً ذات الأسلوب، مستعيناً بأسماء واقتباسات معروفة في الوسط العلمي ليعطي بحثه مصداقية وهمية، وقدم الورقة لمجلة علمية ذات أهمية. بعد قبول ورقته ونشرها في المجلة صرّح المؤلف أنه ليس لما كتبه أي قيمة علمية أو معنى، وما هو إلا رطانة خالصة وهراء مستتر تحت غطاء من التكلّف اللفظي والتنميق الإنشائي.

وهكذا، يسلط الكتاب الضوء على مخاطر فكر ما بعد الحداثة على الطريقة العلمية بشكل خاص، مورداً عدة أمثلة في هذا السياق.
أمتعني جداً وزادني اطلاعاً على ظاهرة ألاحظ تفشيها منذ زمن. ( )

1996-ban Alan Sokal „A határok áttörése: arccal a kvantumgravitáció transzformatív hermeneutikája felé" furcsa címmel egy esszét adott le a befolyásos Social Text nevű lapnak, amelyet hamarosan közöltek is. Ebben a cikkben a szerző - a fogalmak eredeti jelentését félreértő szövegek felhasználásával - egy teljesen értelmetlen elméletet fejtett ki.
A tanulmányt paródiának szánta, és hamarosan elkészült az önleleplező cikkel is, ám a neves folyóirat nem gyakorolt önkritikát, és elutasította a közlést. Az itt közreadott könyv Függeléke tartalmazza mindkét cikket, s azt javasoljuk, hogy az Olvasó elsősorban ezeket olvassa át. Az Intellektuális imposztorok ugyanis az említett csínytevés következménye. Sokal be akarta bizonyítani, hogy cikkével nem áll egyedül: a könyvben számos ismert és nagyra becsült francia posztmodern gondolkodótól idéz, s lépésről lépésre kimutatja, hogy a műveikben az általa elkövetettekkel rokon intellektuális merényletek érhetők tetten.
Amikor 1997 végén az Intellektuális imposztorok megjelent, az általa okozott sokk végiggyűrűzött Franciaországon. A könyvet magasztalták és gyalázták, heves vitákat váltott ki intellektuális szigorról és tisztességről.

A szerzők fizikusok. Alan Sokal professzor a New York-i egyetemen, Jean Bricmont a Louvain-i egyetemen, Belgiumban.
Könyvükkel nem az a céljuk, hogy leszedjék a keresztvizet az általuk irigyelt, neves filozófusokról, gondolkodókról. Hitük és meggyőződésük, hogy a tényeket figyelmen kívül hagyó, a tudomány leplébe burkolózó fantáziálás súlyos kárt okoz a mindenkori filozófiáknak.

Although this is an important book, it is not a very enjoyable one to read, for the simple fact that the authors felt compelled to quote at length from some of the most disfigured and meaningless jumbles of words that I have ever seen sewn together in the guise of sentences.

A major portion of the book is given over to reproductions of original 'postmodernist' sources that ramble for pages on end, with trifling comments by the authors on how the different scientific concepts have been misinterpreted or misused. However, the long barrage of academic verbiage is such manifest nonsense to begin with that there is little left for the sagacity of Sokal and Bricmont to say.

If a reader is not convinced of the absurdity of the postmodern examples within the first two sentences of a quotation, they probably so completely lack of the discriminating facility that another twenty pages will not do them any more good.

There are only so many ways to call a fraud a fraud, so many ways to point to a syntactic confusion of adjectives and say, 'this is gibberish.'

Much more instructive were the sections between the criticisms of the individual postmodern authors, that dealt more broadly with the roles of science and reason in the humanities and politics. Despite what other reviewers have said, there is nothing in these parts which does not seem to me to be thoroughly reasonable and correct.

Most incomprehensible is how anyone could have ever taken these postmodernist authors seriously in the first place - how entire segments of the academic world could have so completely taken leave of their senses as to give even one of these imposters an academic post - let alone legions of them spanning several generations.

By sheer chance, I recently ran into this comment by Jonathan Swift which seems to have some bearing on the situation:

"There are certain common Privileges of a Writer,
the Benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no Reason to doubt;
Particularly, that where I am not understood, it shall be concluded,
that something very useful and profound is coucht underneath." (1704) ( )

Battle vs. Nonsense Makes Strange Bedfellows

My political and social views are very, very different from Sokal's and Bricmont's (and I really don't care how much postmodernism damages the Left), but I have to appreciate their attempt to call on the carpet those who have misappropriated the terminology, ideas, and results of math and physics in their work.

The lengthy quotes from French intellectuals that Sokal and Bricmont present in their book remind me of a weird combination of Mad Libs, the nonsense-talking inmate Damon Wayans played on "In Living Color", and a Babelfish translation attempt gone awry. (But, of course, translators can't be blamed for the nutty things these French(wo)men say, because their words apparently don't make any more sense in the original. _Fashionable Nonsense_ itself was originally published in France as _Impostures Intellectuelles_.) If my math students wrote like this, I'd probably not only fail them but also arrange for them to receive psychiatric treatment.

Why only 4 stars? While the book starts out fun, after a couple hundred pages it gets a little bit tiresome. You only have to read so many page-long excerpts of gibberish followed by commentary on the order of "Well, that didn't make any sense" to get the point. Sokal and Bricmont's attempt to be patient, fair, and scholarly is understandable and laudable, but I have to say I that I found myself longing for the poison-pen approach that Norman Levitt took in _Prometheus Bedeviled_. ( )