Talk:Essay:Crackpot

There was no definition here, and the definition and explanation that I found was taken in the main from : http://scienceweek.com/swbb/messages/bb236.htm. This was an on-line bulletin board and I thought the posting gave a pretty good all round account of a crackpot. I tidied it up a little.--AvengingAngel 14:50, 28 May 2007 (EDT)

I agree with point 4 removal, as it was probably redundant, but I do think we ought to re-insert some of point 3 back, in particular the bits in bold I think are important:

... when usually there is no "paradigm" in any Kuhnian sense, but merely a consensus view about a small scientific question. One basic philosophical failure of the crackpot is the failure to understand that "paradigms" and "paradigm shifts" are usually recognized after the fact by historians and almost never during the time of the shift, and secondly that paradigm shifts are almost always the work of younger scientists and not of older scientists.

I will not revert the edit, but can we discuss this point? --AvengingAngel 15:52, 28 May 2007 (EDT)

The crackpot don't fail to understand that; they tout that reason as further evidence of how their revolutionary ideas could be ignored by the establishment. I also don't think it helps to say that the crackpot can be presumed to be wrong because he is too old. RSchlafly 16:21, 28 May 2007 (EDT)