One point that Sokal and Bricmont miss making because of their fragmented approach to out-of-context quotes is the suspicious resemblance of Latour's "third observer" in his account of special relativity theory to Bergson's account (possibly via Deleuze's book on Bergson). Latour rarely gives reference to the sources of his ideas, preferring to appear to have created them out of whole cloth. He claims that in Einstein's special relativity theory there is a third observer who is describing the two observers mentioned in the exposition. Bergson makes a similar move in claiming that there is a unitary time subsuming the relative times of the two observers in Einstein. Sometimes, as in Latour's account, this is the time of the third observer subsuming the other two. Latour and his critics, as well as his physicist defender David Mermin confuse the issue of the number of physical "observers" needed in special relativity with the philosophical question of whether in thinking about some topic we are also thinking about ourselves thinking about it. (This latter issue leads to the old paradoxical claim that one cannot imagine oneself dead or unconscious, because one is imagining oneself consciously imagining oneself dead or unconscious. ) The third observer is not one of the observers in the physical system, but is this self-conscious theorist or reader thinking about the other two physical observers. Both Latour, Sokal and Bricmont, and Mermin treat this transcendental conscious observer as if it were an actual, physical observer located somewhere in the physical space-time being described. Ironically, David Bohm, whose deterministic quantum theory is admired by many of the physicist science warriors, has speculated in manners strangely similar to Bergson concerning notions that there might be other ways to think about or make models of physical processes other than the classical ones. This has been elaborated on by Capek, and the suggestions resemble in many respects Bohm's suggestions about trying new imaginary models and rejecting Bohr and Heisenberg's claim that we are trapped conceptually in classical models -- that supposedly prevents us from thinking directly about quantum reality. One philosopher who makes use of Bergson's ideas concerning time and process is Gilles Deleuze. Sokal and Bricmont seem to be particularly annoyed at Deleuze because he was excessively praised by Michel Foucault. (Deleuze and Guattari shared many interests such as anti-psychiatry and rejection of unitary systems, were both gay, interested in sadomasochism, and evidently took drugs together).. Much of the rancor in the science warriors' attack on the postmodernists seems to be jealousy at their undeserved fame. In Bricmont's case, the perhaps undeserved Nobel Prize and excessive fame of the popular writings of Ilya Prigogine, a fellow Belgian physicist who occasionally mentions Bergson and postmodernism, seem to stoke the fires of his resentment. Sokal and Bricmont should feel less of this now that they, through the Sokal hoax and this book, themselves have achieved worldwide fame. Sokal and Bricmont, like many of the uncritical epigones of Deleuze interested primarily in gay liberation, anti-psychiatry movements, focus on Deleuze's work with the psychiatrist and political activist Felix Guattari. Deleuze collaborated in his later life on a number of wild and unbuttoned books with his buddy. Sokal and Bricmont treat the two together in their critique, but have the harshest words for a passage by Guattari alone, with which they conclude as the ultimate in nonsense. Certainly Guattari, a lifelong rebel (whose early support of the Algerian independence and of reform of authoritarian mental institutions was admirable) rebelled even against the revolutionary sects he joined. His raging against the Oedipus complex seems to betray a major one of his own. Guattari was much wilder and sloppier in his writing than Deleuze, and the latter permitted much looser and free-associative formulations in joint productions written with his companion. However, Deleuze also wrote some seven academic books on various philosophers, such as Leibniz, Spinoza, Kant and Nietzsche, that Sokal and Bricmont do not discuss. For instance, Deleuze's book on Leibniz, The Fold, contains references to topology (the mathematics of continuity), the use of which by postmodernists Sokal and Bricmont descry. Since Leibniz was an inventor of both the calculus and analysis situs (precursor of topology) and made the principle of continuity central to his philosophy, these references are not guilty of the irrelevance of which Sokal and Bricmont accuse Deleuze's other references to mathematics. One claim that Sokal and Bricmont make throughout their work is that if the authors they criticize and expose are using scientific metaphors to illustrate their philosophical, psychological or literary ideas, these would not be illuminating to an audience ignorant of science. They suggest these scientific or mathematical examples are simply added to impress the scientifically illiterate literateurs. This may be the case with some of the phrases of Kristeva and Lacan. However, another use of scientific and mathematical concepts in philosophy is as models for metaphysical speculation. Since much of our thinking is based on images and spatial diagrams (following Kant but pace Hegel, Wittgenstein, and others), the precise, worked-out structures of mathematics and physics can suggest metaphysical models. Here the mathematical models are not window-dressing to impress the ignorant, but sources of admittedly vaguer metaphysical extrapolations. Deleuze, in a manner similar to (though nowhere as ably done as) Whitehead, mathematical structures are used as models for metaphysical ideas. Sokal and Bricmont do not totally reject philosophical thinking or even metaphysics, as they present some philosophy of science in order to set aside skepticism and to argue against relativism and subjectivism. Sokal and Bricmont do comment on two of Deleuze's serious works. Bricmont also mentions, in an open letter concerning the dropping of Bergson from the English edition of the book that Bergson's influence on Deleuze shows the relevance of the former. Evidently Anglo-American analytic philosophers convinced Sokal and Bricmont to ignore Bergson in the English edition, though several English books on Bergson have recently appeared. Ironically, two of the passages in Deleuze that they ridicule assert that relativity theory, measurement in quantum theory, and information in statistical mechanics should not be interpreted subjectively.(pp. 14-150). This agrees with Sokal and Bricmont's own position, but they do not note this. It would spoil the fun. Sokal and Bricmont hold up for ridicule selective passages in Deleuze's Difference and Repetition concerning the differential calculus. They quote long passages, followed by the remark that the passage is meaningless or nonsense (pp. 151-155). They claim that the problems of the calculus were solved by Cauchy in the early nineteenth century. (They even claim that the problems "were solved by the work of d'Alembert around 1760," (p. 151) though d'Alembert did not clarify in terms of inequalities or explicitly apply the limit concept that he advocates in the Encyclopedia.) They claim the status of the infinitesimals in the derivative is no longer worth bothering about, as it has been replaced by the limit. Sokal and Bricmont's comments on Deleuze on the calculus resemble Bertrand Russell's comments on Zeno's paradoxes of motion. Russell claimed that the nineteenth century theory of real numbers and Weierstrass's "static theory of the variable" solves Zeno's paradoxes (and makes irrelevant the reflections on them of process philosophers like Bergson). But some later analytic philosophers noted that showing that mathematics is internally consistent hardly solves the physical version of Zeno's paradoxes. Unless one is willing to say that the mathematical structure (of all the real numbers) is physically existent, or one says that the mathematical formalism is all we need and that questions of physical reality should be rejected (a position that a scientific realist would have to reject) then there is still a physical problem of motion and infinitesimal processes, and the question of whether an infinite number of acts can be performed in a finite time. Similarly, Sokal and Bricmont, claim that the question of the status of the infinitesimal is eliminated by the limit notion. Sokal and Bricmont claim that Cauchy solved the problems of the status of infinitesimals with the concept of the limit and criticize Deleuze for puzzling over the status of differentials. If, indeed, the only consistent way to present derivatives were by reducing them to limits, this would be true. That is, if the infinitesimal has been reduced to a meaningless notational component of a ratio that is really a limit, then puzzling over the status of the infinitesimal in isolation is made obsolete. However Abraham Robinson's non-standard analysis (and Lawvere's less well known category theory approach) has shown how one can make direct mathematical sense of infinitesimal quantities without resorting to the replacement of their ratios by limits, and eliminating the individual differentials. Deleuze seems to borrow some of his discussion from Hegel. Similar criticism to that of Sokal and Bricmont has been made of Hegel., claiming that Cauchy's formalization of the concept of limit has made all such discussion otiose. However some are beginning to reexamine Hegel's writing on the calculus with less dismissive attitudes than had Whitehead and Russell. Marx also wrote philosophical discussions of the calculus. Edmund Wilson,, consulted a mathematician, who told him that Marx's comments on the calculus were worthless, and Wilson duly reported this. Some Marxist mathematicians, on the other hand, have defended the value of Marx's remarks on the calculus, even claiming he arrived at results similar to Cauchy. Marx's side-kick Friedrich Engels wrote far worse stuff concerning elementary algebraic operations and the dialectic. Would leftist Sokal move from a similar discussion of Marx and Engels on mathematics to discrediting Marx's insights about capitalism as Intellectual Impostures moves from Lacan's, Irigaray's or Kristeva's mathematical errors to question their honesty? Sokal and Bricmont skip a number of linking passages in Deleuze's discussion, that treat in great detail writings of various mathematicians and philosophers. These include early nineteenth century figures such as the mathematician Wronski (a mathematician with whose Wronskian matrix they are undoubtedly familiar, but whose mysticism probably embarrasses them) and the philosopher Salomon Maimon. In one of the passages that they do quote, they omit by means of ellipsis the reference to Maimon and Wronski's philosophical approaches to the calculus, that would help make sense of some of the "nonsense" of the passage. Deleuze does not simply discuss the early nineteenth century debates on the "metaphysics of the calculus," but also uses twentieth century philosophers of mathematics, such as Albert Lautman who wrote in the 1930s and Jules Vuillemin, a contemporary analytic philosopher. Lautman, whose conception of mathematical problems Deleuze uses, had a correspondence with great logician Jacques Herbrand and the philosopher of mathematics Jean Cavaillès, and was praised in a commemorative volume by the mathematician Jean Dieudonné, suggesting that his understanding of logic and mathematics was taken seriously by his peers. Several French philosophers of mathematics were inspired to attempt to build on Lautman's approach to a logic of mathematical problems and interpretations because of Deleuze's lectures. Obviously Deleuze is no mathematical virtuoso, but his treatment of the issues of the calculus is far more detailed, informed and serious than Sokal and Bricmont let on. For instance Sokal and Bricmont note in footnotes that some of Deleuze's errors are shared by Hegel, such as a dated treatment of functions in terms of Taylor series, but they neglect to note that Deleuze himself, in discussing Hegel mentions that he is well aware that the series approach to the calculus has been replaced in modern writers. According to the standard account of the Sokal hoax, scientifically illiterate literary critics and sociologists have been bamboozled by the pretentious claims of French postmodernists concerning science. Ironically those same benighted scientific illiterates now have to take on faith the words of physicists Sokal and Bricmont concerning the errors of the French theorists. In some cases the great unwashed masses of humanists and social scientists may be misled again. Val Dusek Department of Philosophy University of New Hampshire Durham, NH 03824 USA