Kuhn vs Popper - About James H. Collier

. CHAPTER 15 .HOW TO BE RESPONSIBLE FORIDEAS – THE POPPERIAN WAY… my guess is that should individual scientistsever become ‘objective and rational’ in the sense of‘impartial and detached’, then we should indeedfind the revolutionary progress of science barred byan impenetrable obstacle.Karl Popper, ‘The Rationality ofScientific Revolutions’Among those inspired by Popper’s The Open Societyand Its Enemies was the French political sociologistRaymond Aron (1905–83), whose 1955 book, TheOpium of the Intellectuals, sparked the genre knownas the ‘critique of intellectuals’. However, there is asignificant difference in context between Popperand Aron, on the one hand, and their recentAmerican emulators, Richard Wolin, Mark Lilla andTony Judt, on the other. Both groups of writersare preoccupied with, inter alia, Nazis andCommunists. But Popper and Aron criticised intellectualswho supported Nazi Germany or the SovietUnion at times (the 1940s and 1950s respectively)169