For a long time I've seen Kant as someone who deeply misunderstood the Enlightenment. It was specifically meant to free people of this endless bickering over some scripture or other abstract issue, and told them see for themselves. But science has long descended back into "rationalism" (what an unfortunate term), and is no better than what the enlightenment fought against.
Rationalism is the rejection of the idea that knowledge needs to be gathered, rather than intuited. A rationalist, in practice, necessarily derives his worldview either starting from some gut instict (that something just has to be a certain way, because it feels that way), or from preexisting texts, be it a religious scripture, or a scientific theory that is treated as inviolable.
It depends more on the person who does it, rather than a specific theory, but I will pick obesity in particular - there has hardly been any idea so widely contradicted by practical experience, yet it is still treated as an indisputable fact, to the extent that all the further work aims at resolving why people "lie" and how to make them eat less, rather than coming up with something else.
I don't understand... "obesity" has been "contradicted by practical experience"? Or do you mean the idea that following a calorie-restricted diet leads to weight loss?
For the vast majority of obese people the cause lies in overeating - especially where it concerns high-fat and -sugar foods - and the cure in eating less and to a certain (but lesser) extent getting more physical exercise. There are people for whom this does not hold as they gain weight due to other reasons - thyroid problems, Prader-Willi syndrome, Cushings syndrome, 'side effects' of medication they take for other conditions and more - but these are the exceptions to the rule.
Famine doesn't mean the absence of food. There is often plenty, but the food is inadequate. The skeletal children are often basically propaganda, they refuse to show the real ones. They look fat, and they fear they wouldn't get anything. I believe it is the same thing. The signs are the same.
so do you meanwhile recognize him as one of the guys who started the age of enlightenment and defined what it is? with, for example this very essay that is referenced here? which is one of the groundbreaking philosophical works of that epoch?
