Originally published: Anything goes. [Australia] : Macleay Publishers, 1998

Includes bibliographical references and index

Philosophy and the English language : how irrationalism about science is made credible. Neutralising success words ; Sabotaging logical expressions -- How irrationalism about science began. The historical source located ; The key premise of irrationalism identified ; Further evidence for this identification

"Since its inception in the 1940s, the field of science studies, originally intended to bridge the gap between science and the humanities, has been the center of controversy and debate. The most notable figures in this debate are Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper. In Scientific Irrationalism: Origins of a Postmodern Cult, David Stove demonstrates how extravagant has been the verbiage wasted on this issue and how irrational the combatants have been. He shows that Kuhn and Popper share considerable common ground. Stove argues that the problems all reside in the reasoning of the critics. He identifies the logical mistakes by and conceptual allusions made by Kuhn and Popper and their supporters, as well as their collective dependency on a single argument made by the philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment, David Hume. He then demonstrates how little potency that argument actually has for the claims of science."--Jacket