I thank Donkey for his contribution, and am pleased that he remembers that time. I certainly do, with great fondness. Calling myself a 'logical positivist' was a form of shorthand. Like everyone else I have a mixture of approaches to issues and knowledge, but when in doubt I ask for evidence, and consider the quality of the argument. The older I get, the less sure I am of anything. Cicero said something like that in his essay De Senectute, as I remember.

An excellent piece, Don. It would be an excellent contribution on The Conversation, but for the very reasons you have described so well, it would be very unlikely to be published and if it were, would be very poorly received.

There is a great reluctance on the part of many who call themselves intellectuals to entertain conflicting views, it seems. No sign of liberalism or enlightenment or even much in the way of reason, just a rigid adherence to a mindless form of navel-gazing groupthink that will brook no disagreement and very little questioning.

Considering our Government places so much reliance on our educational system to produce the workers for a putative "knowledge economy" that will become the mainstay of our future prosperity, it makes it hard to be very optimistic.

The older I get, the less sure I am of anything.
Don Aitkin,
So, what of those who contradicted or rather questioned statements by the likes of you in the early days ? They'd undoubtedly have been dismissed as not understanding just as is happening now. Some people & especially the educated or rather indoctrinated are incapable of accepting that others can have a clearer view of things than the educated.
IQ tests are typical of present academic mentality. There are many with huge IQ but they're incapable of supporting themselves unlike the pragmatists. No, the high IQ brigade is in 99% of cases on some sort of Government payroll.
Of course high IQ is not to be taken lightly but at the same time it should not be so overrated either. What's that old adage, horses for courses ?
To me the term radical scholar goes both ways. There are radical scholars who positively contribute to the world around them & there are radical scholars who go against anything to do with sense.