It's curious reading that Cold Steel. For me, that uncertainty, that possibility to improve knowledge is a positive thing. So things changing, based on evidence, isn't so much 'egg on its face' but the willingness to perform evaluation and take the world as it is. A new fact can shift the foundations of a discipline. That's exciting, not a sign of failure. Science is evidence driven, as are humanities where evidence plays a role. Knowledge builds upon knowledge. There's rarely anything which doesn't require work done by others to provoke, inspire or create the foundations.
But, saying that, there's frequently fundamentals which will never be totally shifted because they have been proven to be accurate descriptions of how things are. Evolution for biology is as gravity to astronomy. It works, and it's moved into being applied science now. We are creating medicines using our knowledge of evolution. Took 250 years and another genius to figure out the 'why' of gravity. It didn't invalidate Newton's original conclusion or stop his calculations working in the meantime. Quite like how Newton summed it up. "It is enough that gravity does really exist and acts according to the laws I have explained, and that it abundantly serves to account for all the motions of celestial bodies" - Newton.
