It's pretty common in social science/philosophy that a paradigm gets popular, overly drawn upon and that then pisses off the next commentators. Graener & Wengr

It's pretty common in social science/philosophy that a paradigm gets popular, overly drawn upon and that then pisses off the next commentators. Graener & Wengrove are as susceptible to this as others. I mean... the origins of enlightenment liberalism, the origin of money and such don't really have distinct answers. There are always multiple, arguable narratives. The "paradigm" concept is all about narrowing these to simple causal chains and dynamics... which then limits the next generation. We love paradigms, anti-paradigms, paradigm shifts... So, every author likes to rebel against the preceding simplification and argue their own, calling them myths and misconceptions. For the most part, imo, excess is what drives it all. The Jared Diamond paradigms, YNH's, Marx's... Graener & Wengrow are focused on challenging their paradigms as much as they are on promoting their own. If successful, these new paradigms develop their own excesses and a new generation can get pissy with them.