I probably didn't clarify enough the difference between science and the kind of deep-thinking intellectualism I had in mind, the kind that's part of this "cold war." I agree there's a difference between disseminating knowledge and the quality of that knowledge. Science is part of liberal modernity in that it makes its products public to benefit everyone. But obviously that doesn't make science less rigorous.

Science is "deep," though, in a fragmented way, which means it's not broad, as in philosophical. It's the big picture in that sense which is typically unsettling and subersive and therefore "deep" specifically in undermining mass presumptions about our place in the world. To be sure, science undermined all kinds of religious and folk dogmas, but often by being joined with philosophy that put the pieces together. Science supplied the unsettling data, and explained that data, while philosophers, theologians, and artists wrestled with the implications for popular culture and for our self-image. If anything, science bypasses the big picture by supplying uses of the facts which distract us from nature's philosophical implications.

My point about positivism was just that positivism represented a wholesale attack on the humanities. I understand that positivsm defended science and therefore a type of deep thinking. But positivism denigrated another kind of deep thinking, namely the normative, evaluative kind on the grounds that it gives rise only to pseudoproblems. So positivism was quite shallow in that respect.

Another article exploring the difference between these kinds of intellectual depths wouldn't be out of bounds.