REVIEWS

TAKE IT TO THE LIMIT

Arkady Plotnitsky, The Knowable and the Unknowable: Modern Science,

Nonclassical Thought, and the Two Cultures. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 2002. Pp. 317. US$24.95 PB; US$60.00 HB.

By David S. Caudill

One cannot be too critical of anyone who sets out to explain in one volume
not only Bohr’s quantum mechanics, Lacan’s mathematisation of desire,
and Derrida’s (and, perhaps surprisingly, Heisenberg’s) deconstructive
methodology, but also their commonalities and connections. Plotnitsky
succeeds in the project only by employing a series of narrowing strategies.
First, these theorists/theories are presented as just a few examples of
non-classical thought, the objects of which are irreducibly, in practice,
and in principle, inaccessible, unknowable, unrepresentable, etc. (p. 2).
(Examples not discussed include Nietzsche, Deleuze, Lyotard, Irigaray,
Latour, Bataille, Blanchot, de Man, and Levinas.) Second, Plotnitsky
contextualises his analysis generally as a contribution to the Science
Wars, and specifically as a critique of Gross and Levitt’s Higher Super-
stitions: The Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science (Baltimore,
1998), the Sokal Hoax, and Sokal and Bricmont’s Fashionable Nonsense;
Postmodern Intellectuals Abuse of Science (New York, 1998). Finally,
rather than attempting to summarise all of quantum mechanics, Lacanian
psychoanalysis, and Derridian literary theory, he deals only (!) with Bohr’s
complementarity principle, Lacan’s analogy between the phallic signifier
and v-1, Derrida’s remark (at a conference) on Einstein’s relativity theory,
and Heisenberg’s own descriptions of his deconstruction of classical
physics. Plotnitsky’s task is thereby made a bit more manageable, although
readers who are, respectively, devout students of quantum physics, psycho-
analysis, or French critical theory may be disappointed that the author
offers more quality (intense, chapter-long scrutiny of a single passage) than
quantity (e.g., a systematic survey) in this book.
By designating his topic (and the category into which Bohr, Heisen-
berg, Lacan, and Derrida are classified) as nonclassical thought, Plotnitsky
avoids the ambiguity and baggage that accompany the term postmodern.

Metascience 12: 238–241, 2003.

© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
 REVIEWS 239

Indeed, a central aim of the book is to challenge simplistic character-

isations (by critics like Gross and Levitt, or Sokal and Bricmont) of
postmodernists as anti-scientific, ignorant concerning mathematics, and
proponents of irrationality. To clarify matters, Plotnitsky explains that
non-classical “thinking and . . . theories radically redefine the nature of
knowledge by making the unknowable an irreducible part of knowledge,
insofar as the ultimate objects under investigation by non-classical theories
are seen as being beyond any knowledge or even conception, while, at the
same time, affecting what is knowable” (p. xiii).
Moreover, to the extent that classical theories fail to account for their
data, non-classical epistemology enables us to advance where epistemolo-
gically classical accounts fall short (p. 99). The primary example here is
quantum mechanics, which in Bohr’s account radically calls into question
causation, determinism, and realism. The quantum world is unknowable
(p. 10). The limits of classical theories are likewise exemplified by Bohr’s
complementarity model, wherein:

quantum-technical effects, such as . . . those associated with waves or particles, manifest

themselves as macroscopic effects, pertaining to . . . certain parts of measuring instruments,
rather than as properties of quantum objects themselves . . . . In other words, the appearance
of the phenomena of each type uniquely depends on a particular type of experimental setup
. . . (pp. 36–37)

Critics who view Bohr’s model as being in conflict with the basic principles
of science, Plotnitsky explains, simply fail to see that “given the data in
question in quantum mechanics, complementarity is a (perhaps necessary)
condition of scientific disciplinarity and . . . the discovery of new physical
laws” (p. 30). Nevertheless, the statistical nature of quantum mechanics
appears to be irreducible, as demonstrated in the famous double-slit exper-
iment knowing through which slit the particles pass would inevitably
destroy the interference pattern (p. 64). Uncertainty and unknowability are
therefore part and parcel of scientific knowledge.
Turning to Lacan, a notorious suspect for those who decry postmodern
abuses of science,√ Plotnitsky defends the analogy between a complex
number such as −1 and the erectile organ as a symbolic signifier, since
they both function at the very limit of our knowledge “the properties
of these objects . . . may need to be seen in terms of certain effects”
(p. 130). Neither object can be accessed or visualised, and both belong to
the register of the Real (which is responsible for the nonclassical features
of Lacan’s epistemology)
√ (p. 143). While it would be silly to identify the
phallus with −1, √ “the image . . . of the erectile organ is a scandal . . .
not unlike what −1 in mathematics was epistemologically at one point”
240 REVIEWS

(p. 152). As an aside, I should mention that readers who are unfamiliar with
Lacanian psychoanalytic theory will not get much help from Plotnitsky,
whose
√ method is to focus on one small (and bizarre) formula phallus =
−1 rather than to summarise the multi-volume transcriptions and trans-
lations of the Seminar of Jacques Lacan (which is impossible in any event).
Nevertheless, Plotnitsky is both careful and fair in his treatment of Lacan,
in contrast to Gross, Levitt, Sokal and Bricmont, which is exactly what
Plotnitsky wants to demonstrate. Lacan was neither anti-scientific nor a
mathematical dilettante. Moreover, Plotnitsky suggests that disciples of
and commentators on Lacan have not yet fully appreciated the connec-
tion between Lacanian theory and quantum physics as epistemologically
nonclassical (pp. 270–271 n. 42).
Plotnitsky also serves as apologist for Jacques Derrida, another target
of the Gross–Levitt–Sokal–Bricmont cabal, with respect to Derrida’s brief
reply to a question (from Jean Hyppolite) concerning parallels between
deconstruction and relativity theory: “the Einsteinian constant is not a
constant, is not a center. It is the very concept of variability . . . of the
game [jeu]. In other words, it is not the concept of something of a center”
(p. 157). That remark, which has been circulated in the discourse of the
Science Wars as evidence of abuse of science by postmodernists, is given
a sensible, scientifically sophisticated interpretation by Plotnitsky. More to
the point, the broader matrix of relativity is philosophically and epistemo-
logically correlative to Derrida’s concepts of decentreing, variability, and
play (p. 184). For example, in Derrida’s complex nonclassical dynamic,
“space or space-time, or even the world, however conceived, is not given
as a background in which whatever play of events takes place. Instead, we
deal with différance and play in which such effects as space and time . . .
emerge in a nonclassical manner, while their ultimate efficacity remains
inaccessible” (pp. 185–186). We can therefore learn something about
relativity from Derrida, just as we can learn something about complex
numbers from Lacan; reciprocally, we can learn a great deal about nonclas-
sical epistemology from mathematics and science (p. 220). Heisenberg’s
deconstruction of classical wave and particle theories, by letting each chal-
lenge the assumptions of the other, exemplifies (for Plotnitsky) Derrida’s
methodology (p. 227).
As to the two cultures in his subtitle, Plotnitsky seems to be recom-
mending that we all settle down and, for example, refrain from criticising
Lacan or Derrida, or Bohr or Heisenberg, or anyone, without first under-
standing them. Scholars in the humanities undoubtedly make mistakes,
sometimes, when they employ mathematical concepts or address scientific
 REVIEWS 241

controversies, but scientists do not always have proper expertise in areas

outside their own (p. 213). Above all else, Plotnitsky intends his book to
be an example of the minimal level of fairness and caution that is required
for productive debate nowadays.

Law Faculty
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, VA 24450
USA