The riddle of how gravity works was unravelled, and frankly I'm grateful. The scientific view of the world is not just one paradigm amongst numerous equally-valid paradigms. If it is indeed thus, I would suggest you come here to Africa and consult a sangoma (witch-doctor) when, say for example, your appendix bursts. This kind of wooly postmodern thinking belongs in the realm of the religious fairytales that people are now trying to elevate to the same level of truth as the scientific worldview. Nice one, postmodernism: you've opened the doors to every snake-oil salesman in the world.

To each their own I would suppose. I think it is faulty to hold any one paradigm as the be all to end all without at least close observation. Shamans have long known about things that quantum science is just now confirming. We have been blinded thinking that science is the be all to end all, I merely suggest that we should see it for what it is - a lens, and treat it as such. Wooly post modern thinking pushes the envelopes of our society - no discovery was ever made by thinking inside the box of the current paradigm!

I agree. It pushed the envelope, and gave us an incredible toolbox for critiquing power, and the dominant discourses of our times, one of which is the scientific discourse. What seems a shame to me is this (and I'm sure agitators like Focault are turning in their graves): the dominant paradigm, the uber-paradigm, if you will, of our times, the god-like exaltation of the market economy, never ever seems to get the critiques it should get from those who still believe postmodernism to be of relevance.

And I think you are mistaken if you think the shamans pipped the scientists to the post regarding quantum physics. You will not find one single nuclear physicist who agrees with the hocus pocus peddled by books like The Secret. The truth is, how things work on a sub-atomic level is all still a bit of a mystery. That doesn't mean that we should just give up and call it The Hand of God, like we did with everything from lightning to gravity. Or even worse, claim with no conclusive proof, that our thoughts influence sub-atomic activity.

In fact, if you really look at numbers, the scientific paradigm is subscribed to by a tiny portion of people, restricted largely to China, Europe, Australia and the USA. And even in the USA, vast numbers of people, possibly the majority, do not subscribe to it, but instead believe, as do people all over the rest of the planet, a whole range of hocus pocus and abracadabra about the nature of the world. So actually, your duty as a postmodernist is to subvert those dominant paradigms too. Books like this do just that.