ABSTRACT
Postmodernism is the latest move in the long dialectic between scepticism and claims to knowledge. The learned have a tendency towards scepticism, for so much of what there is to be learnt is that the beliefs of the unlearned are mistaken or doubtful. No other challenges to scepticism have had anything like the strength of the science that grew from the seventeenth century and formed the inspiration of the Enlightenment (Kant 1788:163 =1956:167). The question of the Battle of the Books, between ancient and modern learning, was answered. Swift (1704) was wrong. The modern was superior.
