(January 8, 2016 at 2:42 pm)athrock Wrote: My point is simply that the crackpot ideas of today often turn out to be the bedrock of mainstream thought tomorrow.
No, the crackpot ideas of today often turn out to be the crackpot ideas of tomorrow. The key word there being 'often'. Crackpot ideas don't often turn out to have merit. Period. If you meant to say that they sometimes turn out to have merit, you would have been on firmer ground, the only question being how often is 'sometimes'. I would argue that it is rarely.