1. Against Post-Modernism
   A Marxist Critique
   Resource Type: Book
   Published: 1982
   Callinocos argues that the relativism preached by post-modernist leaves us with no objective criteria by which to reject those who would falsify the past.
2. An Annotated Bibliography of Nonsense
   Resource Type: Article/Report/Letter
   Published: 1998
   Academic critics today not only question the impact of science upon society, but they also question the very idea of scientific rationality.
3. Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science
   Resource Type: Book
   Published: 1998
   The authors criticize postmodernism in academia for its misuses of scientific and mathematical concepts in postmodern writing. Fashionable Nonsense examines two related topics: (1) The incompetent and pretentious usage of scientific concepts by a small group of influential philosophers and intellectuals; (2) the problems of cognitive relativism, the idea that "modern science is nothing more than a 'myth', a 'narration' or a 'social construction' among many others". The stated goal of the book is not to attack "philosophy, the humanities or the social sciences in general...[but] to warn those who work in them (especially students) against some manifest cases of charlatanism," and in particular to "deconstruct" the notion that some books and writers are difficult because they deal with profound and difficult ideas. "If the texts seem incomprehensible, it is for the excellent reason that they mean precisely nothing." The book includes long extracts from the works of Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Paul Virilio, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, and Jean Baudrillard who are considered by some to be leading academics of Continental philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis or social sciences. Sokal and Bricmont set out to show how those intellectuals have used concepts from the physical sciences and mathematics incorrectly. The extracts are intentionally rather long to avoid accusations of taking sentences out of context.
   Published in French as Impostures Intellectuelles and in the United Kingdom as Intellectual Impostures.
4. Postmodern Disrobed
   Review of Intellectual Impostures
   Resource Type: Article/Report/Letter
   Published: 1998
   An admirable job of exposing the daffy absurdity of postmodernism intellectuals.
5. Rationality/Science
   Resource Type: Article/Report/Letter
   Published: 1995
   Chomsky writes: "It strikes me as remarkable that the left today should seek to deprive oppressed people not only of the joys of understanding and insight, but also of tools of emancipation, informing us that the "project of the Enlightenment" is dead, that we must abandon the "illusions" of science and rationality--a message that will gladden the hearts of the powerful, delighted to monopolize these instruments for their own use."

Experts on Irrationality in the Sources Directory

1. Connexions Library/Archive