About Illingworth's interview, one part stood out:
I will give Illingworth the benefit of the doubt here because it takes a while to come to terms with things that undermine your belief system. But notice that one thing is missing from his alternatives: "Or maybe our theory is wrong".Then, within weeks, there was another one even further back in time, closer to the Big Bang, that was still very massive. That has really been a surprise. We have to ask ourselves: is it really massive? Or does it have really unusual stars in it that are very bright, but not so much mass? We just don't know at this point, but Webb can answer these questions.
The link below is to an article about the social context of research. It focuses on Plate Tectonics / Continental Drift, but I believe it's particularly relevant to the "cosmological crisis" we're experiencing.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 018-9439-7A first general idea I would like to acknowledge as regards the use of the “style of thought” concept is that there are different ways of reasoning that may coexist in space or time. Underlying the diversity of styles of thought is the general idea that in science and knowledge there are several patterns of thinking.
The second powerful idea to be used in relation to the “style of thought” concept is that the acceptance or rejection of a scientific theory can only be understood within a broader cultural context which defines what is acceptable or not. Indeed, each style of thought possesses its own frame of validity, that is to say, its own tools to define what kind of theories are acceptable.
A third element to be emphasized is that a style of thought exists only as long as it is linked to a particular social group. To understand the existence of a style of thought is to analyse the social institutions behind it. This is particularly important since it helps to explain changes that may occur in the dominant thoughts of a society. The replacement of one way of knowing for another is not to be understood in terms of some specific truths that emerge, since they only take place within a certain style of thought. Rather, it ought to be seen in relation to the changes in the social actors who carry and reproduce that style of thought.