About the Book
Subvert! is a philosophical guide for the modern scientist, written from an unapologetically anarchist perspective. It opens by showing how contemporary scientific society no longer resembles the open, democratic community imagined by thinkers like Merton and Popper, and how entrenched power structures distort everything from funding and publishing to communication and education. Throughout the book, the argument builds that these structures suppress creativity, silence criticism, and ultimately blunt science’s ability to serve society.
As the book unfolds, it shifts from critique to liberation. It exposes the myth of objectivity, the ideological nature of method, and the arbitrary traditions that scientists are taught to treat as sacred. Instead of defending the status quo, it encourages readers to see science as a human activity shaped by bias, culture, incentives and authority. What emerges is a case for scientific self-determination: a call to reclaim the joy, creativity and dissent that once drove discovery, and to rebuild scientific life on the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.
The book ultimately argues for a subversive stance – not revolution for its own sake, but careful, intentional piecemeal change. Scientists are urged to work within the system where necessary but resist giving their intellectual loyalty to it. Subversion becomes a responsible act: a way of doing science honestly while acknowledging the system’s failures. The result is a clear, forceful argument for a scientific culture that is more open, more imaginative, and more humane.
What You'll Learn
You’ll learn how power and authority have shaped scientific society since the seventeenth century, and why structures designed to protect knowledge have gradually become mechanisms of control. The book traces how publishing monopolies, seniority hierarchies, and funding gatekeepers reinforce the status quo, and how these forces erode scientific creativity and suppress dissent. It makes explicit the ways modern science fails to meet its own ideals, helping you see the hidden assumptions that guide research today.
You’ll also learn how much of what scientists call “method” is historical convention rather than philosophical necessity. Through chapters on uncertainty, modelling, evidence and communication, the book shows how rigid procedural thinking has replaced imagination, and how the myth of objectivity has dehumanised scientific work. You will confront how bias shapes every part of science – not because scientists are careless, but because objectivity is impossible at the level of the individual.
Finally, you’ll learn what it means to be a “principled subversive.” The book outlines anarchist-inspired principles for rebuilding scientific culture: reclaiming the scientific archive, widening participation, reviving creativity, and transforming communication into a genuinely cooperative practice. You’ll come away with a practical, ethical framework for doing science differently – one that embraces evidence but rejects authoritarianism, encourages dissent, and treats scientific work as both a creative and moral activity.
Who the Book Is For
Subvert! is for scientists, researchers, and graduate students who feel disillusioned with the way science is organised but haven’t yet found the language to express why. It’s for those who recognise the gap between the ideals they were taught – openness, curiosity, collaboration – and the realities of hierarchy, competition and gatekeeping. If you’ve ever felt that scientific culture punishes creativity or rewards obedience, this book speaks directly to your experience.
It is also for educators and mentors who want to teach science in a way that honours uncertainty, acknowledges bias, and restores the excitement and humanity of inquiry. The text addresses how training “indoctrinates” scientists into narrow ways of thinking and how changing educational practice is essential for reclaiming the discipline. Anyone working in academic structures – whether in teaching, supervision, publishing or funding – will recognise themselves in its critique and find practical ideas for change.
Finally, the book is for readers outside science who care about how knowledge is created: activists, philosophers, policy-makers, and those interested in academic reform. It invites everyone into the conversation about what science could be if its structures were more democratic, more transparent, and more aligned with social good. If you believe science should belong to everybody, this book is written with you very much in mind.
About Dan Cleather
Dan Cleather has spent most of his life trying to understand how people get better at the things they care about. Sometimes that has meant coaching athletes in weight rooms and on tracks; sometimes it has meant teaching critical thinking and research skills; sometimes it has meant writing books to make sense of training in a way that feels human rather than mechanical.
His work has always followed the same thread: training is a process of change, not a set of rules. Bodies learn, adapt, and reorganise themselves over time, because that is what the are designed to do. He tries to help people see that process more clearly - coaches, athletes, teachers, and anyone interested in long-term development.
Over the years he has worked across elite sport, academia, and high-performance environments, including the English Institute of Sport, St Mary’s University, and as a collaborator with national space agencies. Those experiences shaped his interest in how stress, rhythm, coordination, and load interact to produce real, durable change.
The Training Wisdom Collection brings this work together: a set of books, courses, and resources built on first principles rather than trends. The aim is not to provide a system to follow, but a set of tools to think with - a way of making sense of training that respects both physiology and practice, theory and craft.
He lives in Prague, where he writes, teaches, and continues to explore how people learn, move, and adapt.
About The Training Wisdom Collection
The Training Wisdom Collection began as an attempt to make sense of the ideas that kept returning in coaching conversations - the patterns that sit underneath good training, regardless of method or sport. Over time it grew into a set of books and courses that approach training from first principles, not fashion.
The Collection isn’t a system. It doesn’t claim to reveal the hidden truth of strength and conditioning or promise a shortcut to progress. Instead, it tries to show how training actually works: how bodies learn, how stress and rhythm shape adaptation, how coordination becomes skill, and why long-term development depends more on clarity and patience than on novelty.
Each book takes a different angle on that same problem. The Little Black Book of Training Wisdom was the starting point - a compact attempt to explain why simple principles matter, and the thread that runs through everything that followed. The Practice of Change looks at the rhythms of work and recovery that shape adaptation. The Force series examines how movement and load interact. The courses take these ideas into practice, turning them into tools a coach or athlete can use straight away.
The aim is simple. Training should feel understandable. It should have a shape that makes sense. And it should help people build capacities that last longer than the programmes they come from. The Training Wisdom Collection exists to offer that kind of clarity - not by reducing training to rules, but by giving people a language that reflects what actually happens when bodies change.
