Scientific relativism is one of the most important results (yeah I said results) of postmodernism. This paradigm shift was significantly started by Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Because Kuhn was a scientist, and because this was an early work, it is so balanced and non-controversial that they cover it in vanilla natural science research methods courses (so my sister tells me). Simon found the whole book written up in outline format, so now the only-PowerPoint-literate can read it.

As an example application, I think Big Oil et al is losing out against global warming because they are fighting within the same paradigm. A long time ago, climate research assumed that humans could not significantly affect the environment and models were too inaccurate. Now, human action is considered the default cause of change in self-regulating ecosystems, and modelling is considered the primary method of research.

My interpretation of Kuhn is that major results are almost mechanically generated by the scientific paradigm, so you can’t argue with them. If Big Oil wanted to prevent the global warming consensus, they needed to stop human-focus and modelling from becoming accepted in the first place. It’s no use quibbling over the details or trying to cast doubt on methods in use for decades. Intelligent Design proponents at least seem to understand that they need to cause a paradigm shift, but they are unable to come up with a paradigm that scientists are interested in.