Of course Asimov oversimplifies things. He's also playing to his audience and being sarcastic and humorous. He's being snarky, and when snarkiness is the goal, accuracy suffers.
We don't even know if this professor actually existed, or whether he/she was invented by Asimov for the sake of his essay.
I think the message is valuable though, even if there are nuances and exceptions to it. A "rule of thumb" if you will.
The idea Asimov was fighting against was this "new age" belief that nothing can be known, everything is equally wrong, everything is "opinion" and yours is as valid as mine, etc etc.
PS: a tangent, aren't things like string theory pretty controversial (in the sense of "is this real or fantasy") even within the Physics community?
> The idea Asimov was fighting against was this "new age" belief that nothing can be known, everything is equally wrong, everything is "opinion" and yours is as valid as mine, etc etc.
Yeah that's valid. I do find philosophical discussions about the nature of knowledge fascinating but it's often used as a bludgeon to assert one's opinion as being equal to fact.
Of course Asimov oversimplifies things. He's also playing to his audience and being sarcastic and humorous. He's being snarky, and when snarkiness is the goal, accuracy suffers.
We don't even know if this professor actually existed, or whether he/she was invented by Asimov for the sake of his essay.
I think the message is valuable though, even if there are nuances and exceptions to it. A "rule of thumb" if you will.
The idea Asimov was fighting against was this "new age" belief that nothing can be known, everything is equally wrong, everything is "opinion" and yours is as valid as mine, etc etc.
PS: a tangent, aren't things like string theory pretty controversial (in the sense of "is this real or fantasy") even within the Physics community?