In science, theories eventually get discarded if they lack explanatory power. This mechanism acts quite slowly at times, as we can see in the case of string theory. But over the course of history it has worked quite well. Nobody spends time on the phlogiston theory of combustion. It is at best of historical interest but doesn’t inform current science or engineering. In philosophy on the other hand, texts continue to be studied, no matter how impractical, useless, or even detrimental the ideas...