Michael Strevens is one of dying out clan of real philosophers--currently, American humanities are being restructured according to the British model--namely, upper-class banter-boxes and media stars (N. Ferguson, S. Pinker, P. Frankopan, Y. N. Harari; though the last has some real merits) occupy academic chairs and inflate their underdeveloped concepts to the point of orthodoxy. His book contains two self-contradicting ideas: first, that scientists do not think as rationally as their disciplines would presume (correct), and, second, that modern science emerged only "when thinkers' intellectual horizons were closed off by unreasonable constraints on argument was modern science being born". Strevens considers these "unreasonable constraints" as conforming only to the experiment, while for the pre-modern, pre-scientific outlook, the authority of the Scripture, prevailing opinions and aesthetic beauty was equally valid criteria of knowledge. In the latter treatment, he is correct, but he blurs distinctions between personal opinions and drives of the modern scientists--though he mentions them precisely, such as the "eight-fold way" of M. Gell-Mann--and the science paradigm, which, indeed is a sanitized version of the former. With modern juggernaut of "deep learning", the hiatus between textbook paradigm and actual research is bound to widen.
