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[Not so] Black and White

If there is one valuable insight that philosophers of science and sociologists have demonstrated it is that issues in science (and metascience) are frequently decided (or at least argued) in quite non-”scientific” ways (by which I mean what is generally claimed to be the scientific way — in truth a formalisation of rationality, common sense, and long-standing methods of human reasoning). In the skirmishes within science, certain “paradigms” take hold not because of their technical superiority but often because of certain very human prejudices. The idea that selfishness precedes (and even excludes) co-operation, is an example, and one that is beginning to deservedly face resistance, not just in popular science writing through which it has gained its hold, but also in more serious analysis which it had constrained in the past:

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