Paradigm Shift : How Expert Opinions Keep Changing on Life, the Universe, and Everything

Why do giraffes have long necks? It can't really be for reaching tasty leaves since their main food is ground level bushes, tidy though that explanation would be. And how does relativity theory cope with the fact that the observable universe defies prediction by being far too small and anything but homogeneous? By inventing a vastly larger, but invisible, universe. And what exactly should we make of the scientists who claim to be witnessing thought itself, when the changes of blood flow in the brain that they observe are a thousand times slower than the neuronal activity it is supposed to reveal? A little scepticism is in order.

Yet if philosophers of science, from Thomas Kuhn to Paul Feyerabend, have argued that science is a more haphazard process, driven by political fashion and short-term economic self-interest, today almost everyone seems to assume it is a vast jigsaw of interlocking facts pieced slowly but steadily together by expert practitioners.

In this witty but profound 21st-century update on the issues, Martin Cohen offers vital clues for understanding not only the way knowledge develops, but also into the dangers of accepting too readily or too uncritically the claims of experts of all kinds -- even philosophical ones! The claims are invariably presented as objective fact, yet are rooted in human subjectivity.

Martin Cohen is a British philosopher who specialises in philosophy of science and political philosophy.

He studied philosophy and social science at Sussex University under some of the early group of philosophers who launched the University's pioneering language and values programme. After teaching and research posts in Britain and Australia, he moved to France to concentrate on his writing, which typically blends 'psychological and social studies with philosophical theory... eschewing technical jargon and using easily understood scenarios to demonstrate the theme', as one reviewer put it. His most popular book, 101 Philosophy Problems has been published in a dozen languages, sold nearly a quarter of a million copies, and is now in its fourth English edition. A book on thought experiments, Wittgenstein's Beetle and Other Classic Thought Experiments was selected by The Guardian as one of its 'books of the week', while Mind Games was selected by France Culture as one of new philosophy books for dissection in the program essai du jour. His book Critical Thinking Skills for Dummies (2015) is popular with educators in the US.