For [Karl] Marx, science was a creative, historic and revolutionary force.
It is generally agreed by philosophers of science that important contributions which have a revolutionary impact on science are often methodologically inadequate, reveal many anomalies, and may indeed be factually erroneous.
The transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all.
Science is the first expression of punk, because it doesn't advance without challenging authority. It doesn't make progress without tearing down what was there before and building upon the structure.
Kuhn was the intellectual of whom many scientists said he's 'telling it as is it is' insofar as talking about a process of 'tinkering' in terms of theory and experiment followed by radical changes. But often, what Kuhn had in mind were some very spectacular incidents in the history of the sciences that changed our way of looking at the world.
There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before.
The planet's hope and salvation lies in the adoption of revolutionary new knowledge being revealed at the frontiers of science.
The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the decision to accept another, and the judgment leading to that decision involves the comparison of both paradigms with nature and with each other.
I wrote the first book, Harvest of Stars, and as I was writing it, I saw that certain implications had barely been touched on... It's perfectly obvious that two completely revolutionary things are going on, with cybernetics, and biological science.
Mainstream science starts as heresy.
