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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;EWC3, post: 4311044, member: 93416&quot;]Nope, that is why we have to check our ideas against the facts. Clinging to the skirts of the eminent may give a feeling of security or, if you aspire to a career, help you up the greasy pole. But swapping your own bias for a communal (and very often politically dictated) bias is a retrograde step.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I welcome criticism so hope they will try. I published plenty, so if signs of crankiness are there please point ‘em out.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Respect is due to facts and logic, persons have to earn it, and not just by putting on a fancy costume.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>The idea that science cannot ever legitimately claim to have discovered a general truth seems to have been the normal position ever since Democritus, before 400 BC.&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; Feyerabend was more interested in putting Voodoo on a par with science. Berkeley, Yale and LSE gave him professorships for it</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Prior to WWII most archaeology was done by passionate amateurs. Some was good, some not so, but there was no central misdirection going on. I agree there was a “positivist” phase after that in archaeology. It seems primarily to me to have been a push by a then rather small bunch of professional in a turf war with the amateurs - to get power over the subject. Adopting a kind of puritanical dismissal of theory altogether was a useful platform from which to scoff at all amateur efforts. I can point to a good study bearing on that if you wish. Then, as you say, once the professionals got control of the subject we had the kid-in-the-candy-shop over enthusiasm, every bit as bad as the worst sort of amateur theorising. So its just your “has now been largely corrected” bit I disagree with. To me it seems that critical rationalism has almost been stamped out these days. People generally seem blind to the gross errors that turn up way too often. Kings new clothes.</p><p><br /></p><p>Rob T[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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