The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake

by Steven Novella

There are two main criticisms of the Kuhnian postmodernist position. The first is that it is a false dichotomy. You can’t separate scientific progress cleanly into normal incremental change within a paradigm and dramatic paradigm shifts. Rather, scientific change occurs along a continuum. Some discoveries are bigger and more disruptive than others, but you can’t lump them into two categories. The second and more devastating criticism of the postmodernist position is that this interpretation of the history of science confuses the context of discovery with the context of later justification. It actually doesn’t matter how scientists come up with their ideas. They can get them from science fiction, popular culture, or a drug trip. It simply doesn’t matter. What does matter is how those ideas are tested—later justification.