Posted: Oct 28, 2014 12:36 pm
Darwinsbulldog wrote:@ epepke:-
So I think that plurality of theory in biology is not something that should worry people. The different "schools" will investigate different research programs and turn up different [often conflicting] evidence. For the foreseeable future at least, biology will tend to be messy in some respects.
I agree; it's definitely good in general and certainly essential for all science. However, there comes a point where it gets counterproductive.
I'm much more of a cognitive science person than a biologist. In that field, I think it's pretty fair to say that the Linguistics Wars held things back for two or three decades. It's just now beginning to catch up. I'm only getting back into it again because it seems to have gotten advanced to the point that I thought it would have gotten to by 1990.
Now, Dawkins and Gould had a brouhaha that was mild by comparison. Neither was really powerful or obnoxious enough to put much of a damper on things, and it was easy to avoid. Still, it resonated.
I'm eternally grateful that Chomsky has gone into politics. Not that I usually agree with him; he says a lot of stupid things. But at least he says them in a field that naturally goes toward stupidity and which nobody seems to know how to fix. It keeps him off the streets and away from linguistics.