Fashionable Nonsense

Picador USA

Introduction

So long as authority inspires awe, confusion and absurdity enhance conservative tendencies in society. Firstly, because clear and logical thinking leads to a cumulation of knowledge (of which the progress of the natural sciences provides the best example) and the advance of knowledge sooner or later undermines the traditional order. Confused thinking, on the other hand, leads nowhere in particular and can be indulged indefinitely without producing any impact upon the world. --Stanislav Andreski, Social Sciences as Sorcery (1972, p. 90)

The story of this book begins with a hoax. For some years, wehave been surprised and distressed by the intellectual trendsin certain precincts of American academia. Vast sectors of thehumanities and the social sciences seem to have adopteda philosophy that we shall call, for want of a better term,"postmodernism": an intellectual current characterized by themore-or-less explicit rejection of the rationalist tradition of theEnlightenment, by theoretical discourses disconnected fromany empirical test, and by a cognitive and cultural relativismthat regards science as nothing more than a "narration", a"myth" or a social construction among many others.

    To respond to this phenomenon, one of us (Sokal) decidedto try an unorthodox (and admittedly uncontrolled), experiment:submit to a fashionable American cultural-studies journal, SocialText, a parody of the type of work that has proliferated inrecent years, to see whether they would publish it. The article,entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a TransformativeHermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", is chock-full of absurditiesand blatant non-sequiturs. In addition, it asserts an extremeform of cognitive relativism: after mocking the old-fashioned"dogma" that "there exists an external world, whoseproperties are independent of any individual human being andindeed of humanity as a whole", it proclaims categorically that"physical `reality', no less than social `reality', is at bottom a socialand linguistic construct". By a series of stunning leaps oflogic, it arrives at the conclusion that "the [Pi] of Euclid and the Gof Newton, formerly thought to be constant and universal, arenow perceived in their ineluctable historicity; and the putativeobserver becomes fatally de-centered, disconnected from anyepistemic link to a space-time point that can no longer be definedby geometry alone". The rest is in the same vein.

    And yet, the article was accepted and published. Worse, itwas published in a special issue of Social Text devoted to rebuttingthe criticisms levelled against postmodernism and socialconstructivism by several distinguished scientists. For the editorsof Social Text, it was hard to imagine a more radical wayof shooting themselves in the foot.

    Sokal immediately revealed the hoax, provoking a firestormof reaction in both the popular and academic press.Many researchers in the humanities and social sciences wroteto Sokal, sometimes very movingly, to thank him for what hehad done and to express their own rejection of the postmodernistand relativist tendencies dominating large parts of theirdisciplines. One student felt that the money he had earned tofinance his studies had been spent on the clothes of an emperorwho, as in the fable, was naked. Another wrote that heand his colleagues were thrilled by the parody, but asked thathis sentiments be held in confidence because, although hewanted to help change his discipline, he could do so only aftersecuring a permanent job.

    But what was all the fuss about? Media hype notwithstanding,the mere fact the parody was published proves little in itself;at most it reveals something about the intellectualstandards of one trendy journal. More interesting conclusionscan be derived, however, by examining the content of the parody.On close inspection, one sees that the parody was constructedaround quotations from eminent French and Americanintellectuals about the alleged philosophical and social implicationsof mathematics and the natural sciences. The passagesmay be absurd or meaningless, but they are nonetheless authentic.In fact, Sokal's only contribution was to provide a "glue"(the "logic" of which is admittedly whimsical) to join these quotationstogether and praise them. The authors in question forma veritable pantheon of contemporary "French theory": GillesDeleuze, Jacques Derrida, Felix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, JacquesLacan, Bruno Latour, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Michel Serres, andPaul Virilio. The citations also include many prominent Americanacademics in Cultural Studies and related fields; but theseauthors are often, at least in part, disciples of or commentatorson the French masters.

    Since the quotations included in the parody were ratherbrief, Sokal subsequently assembled a series of longer texts toillustrate these authors' handling of the natural sciences, whichhe circulated among his scientific colleagues. Their reactionwas a mixture of hilarity and dismay: they could hardly believethat anyone--much less renowned intellectuals--could writesuch nonsense. However, when non-scientists read the material,they pointed out the need to explain, in lay terms, exactly whythe cited passages are absurd or meaningless. From that moment,the two of us worked together to produce a series ofanalyses and commentaries on the texts, resulting in this book.

What We Intend to Show

The goal of this book is to make a limited but original contributiontoward the critique of the admittedly nebulous Zeitgeistthat we have called "postmodernism". We make no claim to analyzepostmodernist thought in general; rather, our aim is todraw attention to a relatively little-known aspect, namely the repeatedabuse of concepts and terminology coming from mathematicsand physics. We shall also analyze certain confusions ofthought that are frequent in postmodernist writings and thatbear on either the content or the philosophy of the natural sciences.

    The word "abuse" here denotes one or more of the followingcharacteristics:

    1) Holding forth at length on scientific theories about whichone has, at best, an exceedingly hazy idea. The most commontactic is to use scientific (or pseudo-scientific) terminologywithout bothering much about what the words actually mean.

    2) Importing concepts from the natural sciences into thehumanities or social sciences without giving the slightest conceptualor empirical justification. If a biologist wanted to apply,in her research, elementary notions of mathematical topology,set theory or differential geometry, she would be asked to givesome explanation. A vague analogy would not be taken very seriouslyby her colleagues. Here, by contrast, we learn fromLacan that the structure of the neurotic subject is exactly thetorus (it is no less than reality itself, cf. p. 20), from Kristeva thatpoetic language can be theorized in terms of the cardinality ofthe continuum (p. 40), and from Baudrillard that modern wartakes place in a non-Euclidean space (p. 147)--all without explanation.

    3) Displaying a superficial erudition by shamelessly throwingaround technical terms in a context where they are completelyirrelevant. The goal is, no doubt, to impress and, aboveall, to intimidate the non-scientist reader. Even some academicand media commentators fall into the trap: Roland Barthes isimpressed by the precision of Julia Kristeva's work (p. 38) andLe Monde admires the erudition of Paul Virilio (p. 169).

    4) Manipulating phrases and sentences that are, in fact,meaningless. Some of these authors exhibit a veritable intoxicationwith words, combined with a superb indifference to theirmeaning.

    These authors speak with a self-assurance that far outstripstheir scientific competence: Lacan boasts of using "the most recentdevelopment in topology" (pp. 21-22) and Latour askswhether he has taught anything to Einstein (p. 131). They imagine,perhaps, that they can exploit the prestige of the natural sciencesin order to give their own discourse a veneer of rigor.And they seem confident that no one will notice their misuse ofscientific concepts. No one is going to cry out that the king isnaked.

    Our goal is precisely to say that the king is naked (and thequeen too). But let us be clear. We are not attacking philosophy,the humanities or the social sciences in general; on the contrary,we feel that these fields are of the utmost importance andwe want to warn those who work in them (especially students)against some manifest cases of charlatanism. In particular, wewant to "deconstruct" the reputation that certain texts have ofbeing difficult because the ideas in them are so profound. Inmany cases we shall demonstrate that if the texts seem incomprehensible,it is for the excellent reason that they mean preciselynothing.

    There are many different degrees of abuse. At one end, onefinds extrapolations of scientific concepts, beyond their domainof validity, that are erroneous but for subtle reasons. At theother end, one finds numerous texts that are full of scientificwords but entirely devoid of meaning. And there is, of course,a continuum of discourses that can be situated somewhere betweenthese two extremes. Although we shall concentrate inthis book on the most manifest abuses, we shall also briefly addresssome less obvious confusions concerning chaos theory(Chapter 7).

    Let us stress that there is nothing shameful in being ignorantof calculus or quantum mechanics. What we are criticizing is thepretension of some celebrated intellectuals to offer profoundthoughts on complicated subjects that they understand, at best,at the level of popularizations.

    At this point, the reader may naturally wonder: Do theseabuses arise from conscious fraud, self-deception, or perhaps acombination of the two? We are unable to offer any categoricalanswer to this question, due to the lack of (publicly available)evidence. But, more importantly, we must confess that we donot find this question of great interest. Our aim here is to stimulatea critical attitude, not merely towards certain individuals,but towards a part of the intelligentsia (both in the United Statesand in Europe) that has tolerated and even encouraged this typeof discourse.

Yes, But...

Before proceeding any further, let us answer some of the objectionsthat will no doubt occur to the reader:

    1. The quotations' marginality. It could be argued that weare splitting hairs, criticizing authors who admittedly have noscientific training and who have perhaps made a mistake in venturingonto unfamiliar terrain, but whose contribution to philosophyand/or the social sciences is nevertheless importantand is in no way invalidated by the "small errors" we have uncovered.We would respond, first of all, that these texts containmuch more than mere "errors": they display a profound indifference,if not a disdain, for facts and logic. Our goal is not,therefore, to poke fun at literary critics who make mistakeswhen citing relativity or Godel's theorem, but to defend thecanons of rationality and intellectual honesty that are (or shouldbe) common to all scholarly disciplines.

    It goes without saying that we are not competent to judgethe non-scientific aspects of these authors' work. We understandperfectly well that their "interventions" in the natural sciencesdo not constitute the central themes of their oeuvre. Butwhen intellectual dishonesty (or gross incompetence) is discoveredin one part--even a marginal part--of someone's writings,it is natural to want to examine more critically the rest ofhis or her work. We do not want to prejudge the results of suchan analysis, but simply to remove the aura of profundity that hassometimes intimidated students (and professors) from undertakingit.

    When ideas are accepted on the basis of fashion or dogma,they are especially sensitive to the exposure even of marginalaspects. For example, geological discoveries in the eighteenthand nineteenth centuries showed that the earth is vastly olderthan the 5000-or-so years recounted in the Bible; and althoughthese findings directly contradicted only a small part, of theBible, they had the indirect effect of undermining its overallcredibility as a factual account of history, so that nowadays fewpeople (except in the United States) believe in the Bible in theliteral way that most Europeans did only a few centuries ago.Consider, by contrast, Isaac Newton's work: it is estimated that90 percent of his writings deal with alchemy or mysticism. But,so what? The rest survives because it is based on solid empiricaland rational arguments. Similarly, most of Descartes' physicsis false, but some of the philosophical questions he raised arestill pertinent today. If the same can be said for the work of ourauthors, then our findings have only marginal relevance. But ifthese writers have become international stars primarily for sociologicalrather than intellectual reasons, and in part becausethey are masters of language and can impress their audiencewith a clever abuse of sophisticated terminology--non-scientificas well as scientific--then the revelations containedin this essay may indeed have significant repercussions.

    Let us emphasize that these authors differ enormously intheir attitude toward science and the importance they give it.They should not be lumped together in a single category, and wewant to warn the reader against the temptation to do so. For example,although the quotation from Derrida contained in Sokal'sparody is rather amusing, it is a one-shot abuse; since there isno systematic misuse of (or indeed attention to) science in Derrida'swork, there is no chapter on Derrida in this book. By contrast,the work of Serres is replete with more-or-less poeticallusions to science and its history; but his assertions, thoughextremely vague, are in general neither completely meaninglessnor completely false, and so we have not discussed them herein detail. Kristeva's early writings relied strongly (and abusively)on mathematics, but she abandoned this approach morethan twenty years ago; we criticize them here because we considerthem symptomatic of a certain intellectual style. The otherauthors, by contrast, have all invoked science extensively intheir work. Latour's writings provide considerable grist for themill of contemporary relativism and are based on an allegedlyrigorous analysis of scientific practice. The works of Baudrillard,Deleuze, Guattari and Virilio are filled with seeminglyerudite references to relativity, quantum mechanics, chaos theory,etc. So we are by no means splitting hairs in establishingthat their scientific erudition is exceedingly superficial. Moreover,for several authors, we shall supply references to additionaltexts where the reader can find numerous further abuses.

    2. You don't understand the context. Defenders of Lacan,Deleuze et al. might argue that their invocations of scientificconcepts are valid and even profound, and that our criticismsmiss the point because we fail to understand the context. Afterall, we readily admit that we do not always understand the restof these authors' work. Mightn't we be arrogant and narrow-mindedscientists, missing something subtle and deep?

    We would respond, first of all, that when concepts frommathematics or physics are invoked in another domain of study,some argument ought to be given to justify their relevance. In allthe cases cited here, we have checked that no such argument isprovided, whether next to the excerpt we quote or elsewhere inthe article or book.

    Moreover, there are some "rules of thumb" that can be usedto decide whether mathematics are being introduced with somereal intellectual goal in mind, or merely to impress the reader.First of all, in cases of legitimate use, the author needs to havea good understanding of the mathematics he/she is purportingto apply--in particular, there should be no gross mistakes--andhe/she should explain the requisite technical notions, asclearly as possible, in terms that will be understandable to theintended reader (who is presumably a non-scientist). Secondly,because mathematical concepts have precise meanings, mathematicsis useful primarily when applied to fields in which theconcepts likewise have more-or-less precise meanings. It is difficultto see how the mathematical notion of compact space canbe applied fruitfully to something as ill-defined as the "space ofjouissance" in psychoanalysis. Thirdly, one should beparticularly suspicious when abstruse mathematical concepts (like theaxiom of choice in set theory) that are used rarely, if at all, inphysics--and certainly never in chemistry or biology--miraculouslybecome relevant in the humanities or the social sciences.

    3. Poetic licence. If a poet uses words like "black hole" or"degree of freedom" out of context and without really understanding their scientific meaning, it doesn't bother us. Likewiseif a science-fiction writer uses secret passageways in space-timein order to send her characters back to the era of the Crusades,it is purely a question of taste whether one likes or dislikes thetechnique.

    By contrast, we insist that the examples cited in this bookhave nothing to do with poetic licence. These authors are holdingforth, in utter seriousness, on philosophy, psychoanalysis,semiotics, or sociology. Their works are the subject of innumerableanalyses, exegeses, seminars, and doctoral theses.Their intention is clearly to produce theory, and it is on thisground that we criticize them. Moreover, their style is usuallyheavy and pompous, so it is highly unlikely that their goal isprincipally literary or poetic.

    4. The role of metaphors. Some people will no doubt thinkthat we are interpreting these authors too literally and that thepassages we quote should be read as metaphors rather than asprecise logical arguments. Indeed, in certain cases the "science"is undoubtedly intended metaphorically; but what is the purposeof these metaphors? After all, a metaphor is usually employedto clarify an unfamiliar concept by relating it to a morefamiliar one, not the reverse. Suppose, for example, that in atheoretical physics seminar we were to explain a very technicalconcept in quantum field theory by comparing it to the conceptof aporia in Derridean literary theory. Our audience of physicistswould wonder, quite reasonably, what is the goal of such ametaphor--whether or not it is apposite--apart from displayingour own erudition. In the same way, we fail to see the advantageof invoking, even metaphorically, scientific conceptsthat one oneself understands only shakily when addressing areadership composed almost entirely of non-scientists. Mightthe goal be to pass off as profound a rather banal philosophicalor sociological observation, by dressing it up in fancy scientificjargon?

    5. The role of analogies. Many authors, including some ofthose discussed here, try to argue by analogy. We are by nomeans opposed to the effort to establish analogies between diversedomains of human thought; indeed, the observation of avalid analogy between two existing theories can often be veryuseful for the subsequent development of both. Here, however,we think that the analogies are between well-established theories(in the natural sciences) and theories too vague to be testedempirically (for example, Lacanian psychoanalysis). One cannothelp but suspect that the function of these analogies is to hidethe weaknesses of the vaguer theory.

    Let us emphasize that a half-formulated theory--be it inphysics, biology, or the social sciences--cannot be redeemedsimply by wrapping it in symbols or formulae. The sociologistStanislav Andreski has expressed this idea with his habitualirony:

The recipe for authorship in this line of business is as simple as it is rewarding: just get hold of a textbook of mathematics, copy the less complicated parts, put in some references to the literature in one or two branches of the social studies without worrying unduly about whether the formulae which you wrote down have any bearing on the real human actions, and give your product a good-sounding title, which suggests that you have found a key to an exact science of collective behaviour. (Andreski 1972, pp. 129-130)

Andreski's critique was originally aimed at American quantitativesociology, but it is equally applicable to some of the textscited here, notably those of Lacan and Kristeva.

    6. Who is competent? We have frequently been asked the followingquestion: You want to prevent philosophers from speakingabout science because they don't have the requisite formaltraining; but what qualifications do you have to speak of philosophy?This question betrays a number of misunderstandings.First of all, we have no desire to prevent anyone from speakingabout anything. Secondly, the intellectual value of an interventionis determined by its content, not by the identity of thespeaker, much less by his or her diplomas. Thirdly, there is anasymmetry: we do not purport to judge Lacan's psychoanalysis,Deleuze's philosophy, or Latour's concrete work in sociology.We limit ourselves to their statements about the mathematicaland physical sciences or about elementary problems in the philosophyof science.

    7. Don't you too rely on argument from authority? For ifwe assert that Lacan's mathematics are nonsense, how is thenon-scientist reader to judge? Mustn't he or she take our wordfor it?

    Not entirely. First of all, we have tried hard to provide detailedexplanations of the scientific background, so that the nonspecialistreader can appreciate why a particular assertion iserroneous or meaningless. We may not have succeeded in allcases: space is limited, and scientific pedagogy is difficult. Thereader is perfectly entitled to reserve judgment in those caseswhere our explanation is inadequate. But, most importantly, itshould be remembered that our criticism does not deal primarilywith errors, but with the manifest irrelevance of the scientificterminology to the subject supposedly under investigation.In all the reviews, debates and private correspondence that havefollowed the publication of our book in France, no one hasgiven even the slightest argument explaining how that relevancecould be established.

    8. But these authors are not "postmodernist". It is true thatthe French authors discussed in this book do not all regardthemselves as "postmodernist" or "poststructuralist". Some ofthese texts were published prior to the emergence of these intellectualcurrents, and some of these authors reject any linkwith these currents. Moreover, the intellectual abuses criticizedin this book are not homogeneous; they can be classified, veryroughly, into two distinct categories, corresponding roughly totwo distinct phases in French intellectual life. The first phase isthat of extreme structuralism, extending through the early1970s: the authors try desperately to give vague discourses inthe human sciences a veneer of "scientificity" by invoking thetrappings of mathematics. Lacan's work and the early writingsof Kristeva fall into this category. The second phase is that ofpoststructuralism, beginning in the mid-1970s: here any pretenseat "scientificity" is abandoned, and the underlying philosophy(to the extent one can be discerned) tends towardirrationalism or nihilism. The texts of Baudrillard, Deleuze andGuattari exemplify this attitude.

    Furthermore, the very idea that there exists a distinctivecategory of thought called "postmodernist" is much less widespreadin France than in the English-speaking world. If we neverthelessemploy this term for convenience, it is because all theauthors analyzed here are utilized as fundamental points of referencein English-language postmodernist discourse, and becausesome aspects of their writings (obscure jargon, implicitrejection of rational thought, abuse of science as metaphor) arecommon traits of Anglo-American postmodernism. In any case,the validity of our critiques can in no way depend on the use ofa word; our arguments must be judged, for each author, independentlyof his or her link--be it conceptually justified ormerely sociological--with the broader "postmodernist" current.

    9. Why do you criticize these authors and not others? Along list of "others" has been suggested, both in print and in privatecorrespondence: these include virtually all applications ofmathematics to the social sciences (e.g. economics), physicists'speculations in popular books (e.g. Hawking, Penrose), sociobiology,cognitive science, information theory, the Copenhageninterpretation of quantum mechanics, and the use of scientificconcepts and formulas by Hume, La Mettrie, D'Holbach, Helvetius,Condillac, Comte, Durkheim, Pareto, Engels, and sundryothers.

    Let us begin by observing that this question is irrelevant tothe validity or invalidity of our arguments; at best it can be usedto cast aspersions on our intentions. Suppose there are otherabuses as bad as those of Lacan or Deleuze; how would thatjustify the latter?

    However, since the question of the grounds for our "selection"is so often asked, let us try to answer it briefly. First of all,we have no desire to write a ten-volume encyclopedia on "nonsensesince Plato", nor do we have the competence to do so. Ourscope is limited, firstly, to abuses in those scientific fields inwhich we can claim some expertise, namely mathematics andphysics; secondly, to abuses that are currently fashionable ininfluential intellectual circles; and thirdly, to abuses that havenot previously been analyzed in detail. However, even withinthese constraints, we do not claim that our set of targets is exhaustiveor that they constitute a "natural kind". Quite simply,Sokal stumbled on most of these texts in the course of writinghis parody, and we decided, after reflection, that it was worthmaking them public.

    Furthermore, we contend that there is a profound differencebetween the texts analyzed here and most of the other examplesthat have been suggested to us. The authors quoted inthis book clearly do not have more than the vaguest understandingof the scientific concepts they invoke and, most importantly,they fail to give any argument justifying the relevanceof these scientific concepts to the subjects allegedly understudy. They are engaged in name-dropping, not just faulty reasoning.Thus, while it is very important to evaluate critically theuses of mathematics in the social sciences and the philosophicalor speculative assertions made by natural scientists, theseprojects are different from--and considerably more subtlethan--our own.

    A related question is:

    10. Why do you write a book on this and not on more seriousissues? Is postmodernism such a great danger to civilization?First of all, this is an odd question. Suppose someonediscovers documents relevant to the history of Napoleon andwrites a book about it. Would anyone ask him whether he thinksthis is a more important topic than World War II? His answer,and ours, would be that an author writes on a subject undertwo conditions: that he is competent and that he is able to contributesomething original. His subject will not, unless he is particularlylucky, coincide with the most important problem inthe world.

    Of course we do not think that postmodernism is a greatdanger to civilization. Viewed on a global scale, it is a rathermarginal phenomenon, and there are far more dangerous formsof irrationalism--religious fundamentalism, for instance. Butwe do think that the critique of postmodernism is worthwhilefor intellectual, pedagogical, cultural and political reasons; weshall return to these themes in the Epilogue.

Finally, to avoid useless polemics and facile "refutations", let usemphasize that this book is not a right-wing pamphlet againstleft-wing intellectuals, or an American imperialist attackagainst the Parisian intelligentsia, or a simple know-nothingappeal to "common sense". In fact, the scientific rigor we areadvocating often leads to results at odds with "common sense";obscurantism, confused thinking, anti-scientific attitudes andthe quasi-religious veneration of "great intellectuals" are in noway left-wing; and the attachment of part of the American intelligentsiato postmodernism demonstrates that the phenomenonis international. In particular, our critique is in no waymotivated by the "theoretical nationalism and protectionism"that French writer Didier Eribon claims to detect in the workof some American critics. Our aim is, quite simply, to denounceintellectual posturing and dishonesty, from whereverthey come. If a significant part of the postmodernist "discourse"in contemporary American and British academia is ofFrench origin, it is equally true that English-language intellectualshave long since given it an authentic home-grown flavor.

Plan of This Book

The bulk of this book consists of an analysis of texts, author byauthor. For the convenience of non-specialist readers, we haveprovided, in footnotes, brief explanations of the relevant scientificconcepts as well as references to good popular and semi-popularexplanatory texts.

    Some readers will no doubt think that we are taking thesetexts too seriously. That is true, in some sense. But since thesetexts are taken seriously by many people, we think that they deserveto be analyzed with the greatest rigor. In some cases wehave quoted rather long passages, at the risk of boring thereader, in order to show that we have not misrepresented themeaning of the text by pulling sentences out of context.

    In addition to abuses in the strict sense, we have also analyzedcertain scientific and philosophical confusions that underliemuch postmodernist thinking. First, we shall considerthe problem of cognitive relativism, and show that a series ofideas coming from the history and philosophy of science do nothave the radical implications that are often attributed to them(Chapter 4). Next we shall address several misunderstandingsconcerning chaos theory and so-called "postmodern science"(Chapter 7). Finally, in the Epilogue, we shall situate our critiquein a wider cultural context.

    Many of the texts quoted in this book originally appeared inFrench. Where a published English translation exists, we havemost often used it (sometimes noting our corrections); it is citedin the bibliography, along with the original French source inbrackets. In other cases, the translation is ours. We have endeavoredto remain as faithful as possible to the original French,and in case of doubt we have reproduced the latter in bracketsor even in toto. We assure the reader that if the passage seemsincomprehensible in English, it is because the original French islikewise.

Continues...
Excerpted from Fashionable Nonsenseby Alan Sokal Copyright ©1999 by Alan Sokal. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Alan Sokal is a professor of physics at New York University.

Jean Bricmont is a theoretical physicist with the Université de Louvaine in Belgium.

Alan Sokal is a professor of physics at New York University.

Jean Bricmont is a theoretical physicist with the Université de Louvaine in Belgium.