The Ashtray by Errol Morris review – revenge against Thomas Kuhn

For the film-maker, Kuhn is ‘The Man Who Denied Reality’, whose relativism opened the door to fake news. The trouble is, he is totally wrong

Forty-five years ago, the inventor of the term “paradigm shift” threw an ashtray in exasperation at a young graduate student in the philosophy of science, and soon afterwards ejected him from Princeton. The ashtray hurler was Thomas Kuhn, and his student grew up to become the documentary film-maker Errol Morris, who has – perhaps understandably – harboured a grudge ever since. This book is his long-brewed revenge.

Morris explains early on that he is worried about post-truth, fake news, the Trump administration’s invocation of “alternative facts”, and so forth, and hopes his book will serve as an “antidote”. But what exactly makes Kuhn a proto-Trumpian?

Morris goes on a flamethrower rampage from the start of the book in an attempt to reduce everything to smouldering ash