I Am, Somehow, Less Interested In The

A Man Does Not Attain The Status Of Galileo Merely Because He Is Persecuted; He Must Also Be Right.

With Copious Evidence Ranging From Plato's Haughtiness To Beethoven's Tirades, We May Conclude That The Most Brilliant People Of History Tend To Be A Prickly Lot.

Good Scholars Struggle To Understand The World In An Integral Way (pedants Bite Off Tiny Bits And Worry Them To Death). These Visions Of Reality [...] Demand Our Respect, For They Are An Intellectual's Only Birthright. They Are Often Entirely Wrong And Always Flawed In Serious Ways, But They Must Be Understood Honorably And Not Subjected To Mayhem By The Excision Of Patches.

When We Seek A Textbook Case For The Proper Operation Of Science, The Correction Of Certain Error Offers Far More Promise Than The Establishment Of Probable Truth. Confirmed Hunches, Of Course, Are More Upbeat Than Discredited Hypotheses. Since The Worst Traditions Of "popular" Writing Falsely Equate Instruction With Sweetness And Light, Our Promotional Literature Abounds With Insipid Tales In The Heroic Mode, Although Tough Stories Of Disappointment And Loss Give Deeper Insight Into A Methodology That The Celebrated Philosopher Karl Popper Once Labeled As "conjecture And Refutation.

[t]ruly Grand And Powerful Theories [...] Do Not And Cannot Rest Upon Single Observations. Evolution Is An Inference From Thousands Of Independent Sources, The Only Conceptual Structure That Can Make Unified Sense Of All This Disparate Information. The Failure Of A Particular Claim Usually Records A Local Error, Not The Bankruptcy Of A Central Theory. [...] If I Mistakenly Identify Your Father's Brother As Your Own Dad, You Don't Become Genealogically Rootless And Created De Novo. You Still Have A Father; We Just Haven't Located Him Properly.