Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science: Summary & Key Insights

Before writing 'Fashionable Nonsense', I carried out what later became known as the 'Sokal Affair'. I submitted a deliberately nonsensical paper—stuffed with pseudo-scientific jargon and flattering allusions to postmodern theory—to a cultural studies journal, and it was published without a hint of skepticism. That moment confirmed our suspicion: some academic circles had drifted so far into linguistic self-enchantment that the basic norms of meaningful argument were neglected. The Affair was not intended as humiliation, but as diagnosis. It demonstrated that style had begun to outweigh content, that critical judgment was often displaced by ideological conformity.

Through that backdrop, this book seeks to expose why such errors happen. When theoretical discourse prizes obscurity over explanation, it becomes vulnerable to abuses of scientific language. Terms like 'nonlinearity' or 'quantum discontinuity' carry technical meanings developed through decades of experiment and abstraction. But when transported into cultural commentary, they often serve merely to suggest profundity, not convey it. A passage brimming with mathematical metaphors might impress the unspecialized reader but collapse under scrutiny. Our method in the book is empirical—we quote passages verbatim, we analyze them grammatically and semantically, and we ask: does this usage make sense within any scientific framework? Time after time, the answer is no.

The deeper significance lies in the moral dimension of scholarship. Rigor is not a property of the natural sciences alone—it is a moral stance, a willingness to test one’s ideas against evidence and coherence. In the absence of this stance, intellectual discourse degenerates into performance. The Sokal Affair was not about one fraudulent article; it was a mirror showing a culture infatuated with abstraction unmoored from precision. 'Fashionable Nonsense' became our extended reflection on that mirror image.

Postmodernism emerged as a rebellion against grand narratives—against the confidence that reason could yield universal truths. It was a movement born from historical disappointment, a reaction to the failures of ideological totalities. In literature and philosophy, it brought refreshing diversity and self-awareness. But in some hands, its skepticism spiraled into denial of rational discourse itself. In the book, we acknowledge the rich intellectual roots of postmodernism—from Lyotard’s critique of metanarratives to Derrida’s deconstruction—but we focus on its damaging excesses. When science becomes merely a story among stories, we lose the distinction between empirical constraint and imaginative freedom.

What we found disturbing was not the questioning of scientific authority—that can be valuable—but the casual misuse of scientific formalisms as poetic ornaments. Authors cited quantum mechanics or Gödel’s theorem in discussions of social identity, sometimes arguing that uncertainty in physics justifies relativism in ethics. This conflation undermines both fields. Postmodernism’s initial promise, to resist dogmatism, dissolves when it replaces precision with fashionable vagueness. Our critique is thus not against creativity, but against intellectual irresponsibility.

We urge readers to respect both the beauty and limits of science. Interdisciplinarity requires dialogue, not appropriation. A philosopher may engage with the implications of relativity, but must do so by understanding what relativity actually means. Otherwise, discourse becomes an echo chamber where terminology performs prestige. Throughout 'Fashionable Nonsense', this is the recurring theme: the drift from insight to obscurantism and the cultural celebration of opacity as depth. We aim to show that clarity is not naïve—it is courageous.