The OP is a review of a recently released book, "The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science," by Michael Strevens, a professor of philosoph

The OP is a review of a recently released book, "The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science," by Michael Strevens, a professor of philosophy at NYU: https://smile.amazon.com/Knowledge-Machine-Irrationality-Created-Science-ebook/dp/B085SSXY45 https://smile.amazon.com/Knowledge-Machine-Irrationality-Cre... Streven proposes a new explanation as to how and why science has advanced over time, that builds upon but is different from the widely accepted explanations proposed by Karl Popper ("science progresses by disproving false theories") and Thomas Kuhn ("science progresses when popular paradigms stop working"). Streven suggests that science adanvaces because scientists (quoting from the OP): > have no choice. They are constrained by a central regulation that governs science, which he calls the “iron rule of explanation.” The rule is simple: it tells scientists that, “if they are to participate in the scientific enterprise, they must uncover or generate new evidence to argue with”; from there, they must “conduct all disputes with reference to empirical evidence alone.” Compared with the theories proposed by Popper and Kuhn, Strevens’s rule can feel obvious and underpowered. That’s because it isn’t intellectual but procedural. “The iron rule is focused not on what scientists think,” he writes, “but on what arguments they can make in their official communications.” Still, he maintains, it is “the key to science’s success,” because it “channels hope, anger, envy, ambition, resentment—all the fires fuming in the human heart—to one end: the production of empirical evidence.”