[btilly]

I am quite sure that Paul did not miss this in his essay. Every period has congratulated itself on being enlightened in contrast to what came just before, and every period has been right on some things and wrong on others. He is intensely aware of that, and his whole point was to be careful about current intellectual fashion.

Therefore an intellectually honest person should be suspicious of any statement that can be read as, "We were always wrong about X but now we're right." Outside of hard science, it is more likely than not that the new statement is more determined by fashion than actual evidence. Which means that after another generation or two the pendulum will swing back again and we'll arrive at a more nuanced place which keeps some actual improvements we found, and throws out most of it.