Demarcation problem
Encyclopedia
The demarcation problem in the philosophy of science
is about how and where to draw the lines around science
. The boundaries are commonly drawn between science and non-science, between science and pseudoscience
, between science and philosophy and between science and religion. A form of this problem, known as the generalized problem of demarcation subsumes all four cases.
After over a century of dialogue among philosophers of science
and scientist
s in varied fields
, and despite broad agreement on the basics of scientific method
, the boundaries between science and non-science continue to be debated.
produced by Charles Darwin
. Precursors and preconditions for the apparent split did exist before Darwin's publication of The Origin of Species
, but it was this work which brought the debate into the popular British
press and became a figurehead for the tensions between science and religion among certain groups (a position it still holds for some today). In 1874, the influential science historian John William Draper
published his History of the Conflict between Religion and Science. In it he portrayed the entire history of scientific development as a war against religion. This view was propagated further by such prestigious followers as Andrew Dickson White
in his essay A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896).
Many religious people don't see any conflict between science and religion (e.g. between The Origin of Species
and the original Hebrew language of the Bible) as seen in such compatibilist
views as theistic evolution
.
The work by Draper and White must be seen as directly coming out of this social climate, and their model of science and religion as being eternally opposed, if not historically accurate, became a dominant social trope
. Sociologists of science have studied the attempts to erect hard distinctions between science and non-science as a form of boundary-work
, emphasizing the high stakes for all involved in such activities.
. Their philosophical position, known as Logical positivism
, espoused a theory of meaning which held that only statements about empirical observations and formal logical propositions are meaningful, effectively asserting that statements which are not derived in this manner (including religious and metaphysical
statements) are by nature meaningless (see the verifiability theory of meaning also known as verificationism).
noticed that the philosophers of the Vienna Circle had mixed two different problems and had accordingly given them a single solution: verificationism. In opposition to this view, Popper emphasized that a theory might well be meaningful without being scientific, and that, accordingly, a criterion of meaningfulness may not necessarily coincide with a criterion of demarcation. His own falsificationism
, thus, is not only an alternative to verificationism; it is also an acknowledgment of the conceptual distinction that previous theories had ignored.
Popper saw demarcation as a central problem in the philosophy of science. In place of verificationism he proposed falsification as a way of determining if a theory is scientific or not. If a theory is falsifiable, then it is scientific; if it is not falsifiable, then it is not science. Falsifiability was one of the criteria used by Judge William Overton
to determine that 'creation science
' was not scientific and should not be taught in Arkansas
public schools (see McLean v. Arkansas
).
Falsifiability is a property of statements and theories, and is itself neutral. As a demarcation criterion, it seeks to take this property and make it a base for affirming the superiority of falsifiable theories over non-falsifiable ones as a part of science, in effect setting up a political position that might be called falsificationism. However, much that would be considered meaningful and useful is not falsifiable(reference). Certainly non-falsifiable statements have a role in scientific theories themselves. What the Popperian criterion allows to be called scientific is open to interpretation. A strict interpretation would concede too little since there are no scientific theories of interest that are completely free of anomalies
. Conversely, if we do not consider the falsifiability of an assumption or theory and the willingness of an individual or group to obtain or accept falsifying instances, we would then permit almost any assumption or theory.
It is nevertheless very useful to know if a statement or theory is falsifiable, if for no other reason than it provides us with an understanding of the ways in which one might assess the theory.
, an American historian of science
, has proven very influential in the philosophy of science
, and is often connected with what has been called postpositivism
or postempiricism. In his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
, Kuhn divided the process of doing science into two different endeavors, which he called normal science
and extraordinary science (which he sometimes also called revolutionary science). The process of "normal" science is what most scientists do while working within what he calls the current accepted paradigm
of the scientific community, and within this context Karl Popper
's ideas on falsification as well as the idea of a scientific method
still have some currency. This sort of work is what Kuhn calls "problem solving": working within the bounds of the current theory and its implications for what sorts of experiments should or should not be fruitful. However, during the process of doing "normal" science, Kuhn claimed, anomalies are generated, some of which lead to an extension of the dominant "paradigm" in order to explain them, and others for which no satisfactory explanation can be found within the current model. When enough of these anomalies have accumulated, and scientists within the field find them significant (often a very subjective
judgment), a "crisis period" is begun, Kuhn argues, and some scientists begin to participate in the activity of "extraordinary" science. In this phase, it is recognized that the old model is fundamentally flawed and cannot be adapted to further use, and totally new (or often old and abandoned) ideas are looked at, most of which will be failures. But during this time, a new "paradigm" is created, and after a protracted period of "paradigm shift
," the new paradigm is accepted as the norm by the scientific community and integrated into their previous work, and the old paradigm is banished to the history books. The classic example of this is the shift from Maxwellian/Newtonian physics
to Einsteinian
/Quantum physics in the early 20th century. If the acceptance or failure of scientific theories relied only on simple falsification, according to Kuhn, then no theory would ever survive long enough to be fruitful, as all theories contain anomalies.
The process by which Kuhn said a new paradigm is accepted by the scientific community at large does indicate one possible demarcation between science and pseudoscience. Rejecting Popper's simple model of falsification, Kuhn argued instead that a new paradigm is accepted mainly because it has a superior ability to solve problems that arise in the process of doing normal science. That is, the value of a scientific paradigm is its predictive power
and its ability to suggest solutions to new problems while continuing to satisfy all of the problems solved by the paradigm that it replaces. Pseudoscience can then be defined by a failure to provide explanations within such a paradigm.
Demarcation is problematic when standard scientific ways (experiments, logic, etc.) of assessing a theory or a hypothesis cannot be applied for some reason. An example would be trying to identify what is currently science in the domains of meteorology
or medicine
. The argument goes that these domains are not unlike early astrology
in several ways, which was once considered a science. Astrology did not conflict with other known facts at the time, it occasionally failed to make accurate predictions, and certain gaps in knowledge of the causal mechanisms were tolerated.
quality of scientific change. The radical philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend
took these arguments to their limit, arguing that science does not occupy a special place in terms of either its logic or method, so that any claim to special authority made by scientists cannot be upheld. This leads to a particularly democratic and anarchist approach to knowledge formation. He claimed that there can be found no method within the history of scientific practice which has not been violated at some point in the advancing of scientific knowledge. Both Lakatos
and Feyerabend suggest that science is not an autonomous form of reasoning, but is inseparable from the larger body of human thought and inquiry. If so, then the questions of truth and falsity, and correct or incorrect understanding are not uniquely empirical. Many meaningful questions can not be settled empirically — not only in practice, but in principle.
According to this way of thinking, the difficulty string theorists
have had in applying experimental science would not bring in to question their status as scientists, but rather as metaphysicians
.
For example, many obvious examples of pseudoscience have been shown to be falsifiable, or verifiable, or revisable. Therefore many of the previously proposed demarcation criteria have not been judged as particularly reliable.
Paul R. Thagard
has proposed another set of principles to try to overcome these difficulties, and believes it is important for society to find a way of doing so. According to Thagard's method, a theory is not scientific if it satisfies two conditions:
Thagard specifies that sometimes theories will spend some time as merely "unpromising" before they truly deserve the title of pseudoscience. He cites astrology as an example: it was stagnant compared to advances in physics during the 17th century, and only later became "pseudoscience" in the advent of alternative explanations provided by psychology during the 19th century.
Thagard also rejects that his criteria should be interpreted so narrowly as to allow ostrichism (willful ignorance
of alternative explanations) or so broadly as to discount our modern science compared to science of the future. His definition is a practical one, which generally seeks to distinguish pseudoscience as theories that are stagnant and are not actively being scientifically investigated.
concluded, after examining various historical attempts to establish a demarcation criterion, that "philosophy has failed to deliver the goods" in its attempts to distinguish science from non-science, to distinguish science from pseudoscience. None of the past attempts would be accepted by a majority of philosophers nor, in his view, should they be accepted by them or by anyone else. He noted that many well-founded beliefs are not scientific and, conversely, many scientific conjectures are not well-founded. He also found that demarcation criteria were historically used as "machines de guerre" in polemical disputes between "scientists" and "pseudo-scientists." Advancing a number of examples from everyday practice of football and carpentry and non-scientific scholarship such as literary criticism and philosophy, he saw the question of whether a belief is well-founded or not to be more practically and philosophically significant than whether it is scientific or not. In his judgment, the demarcation between science and non-science was a pseudo-problem that would best be replaced by focusing on the distinction between reliable and unreliable knowledge, without bothering to ask whether that knowledge is scientific or not. He would consign hollow phrases like "pseudo-science" or "unscientific" to the rhetoric of politicians or sociologists.
and formal science
. The criteria typically include (1) the formulation of hypotheses that meet the logical criterion of contingency, defeasibility, or falsifiability
and the closely related empirical
and practical criterion of testability
, (2) a grounding in empirical evidence
, and (3) the use of scientific method. The procedures of science typically include a number of heuristic
guidelines, such as the principles of conceptual economy or theoretical parsimony that fall under the rubric of Ockham's razor. A conceptual system that fails to meet a significant number of these criteria is likely to be considered non-scientific. The following is a list of additional features that are highly desirable in a scientific theory:
Philosophy of science
The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...
is about how and where to draw the lines around science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
. The boundaries are commonly drawn between science and non-science, between science and pseudoscience
Pseudoscience
Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...
, between science and philosophy and between science and religion. A form of this problem, known as the generalized problem of demarcation subsumes all four cases.
After over a century of dialogue among philosophers of science
Philosophy of science
The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...
and scientist
Scientist
A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...
s in varied fields
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
, and despite broad agreement on the basics of scientific method
Scientific method
Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...
, the boundaries between science and non-science continue to be debated.
Science and religion part ways
Historically speaking, the relationship between science and religion has been complicated. Some scientists were very religious, and religion was often a chief motivator and sponsor of scientific investigation. However, towards the end of the 19th century, science and religion came to be seen by the public as being increasingly at odds, a gradual phenomenon which came to a head around the debates over the work on evolutionEvolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
produced by Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
. Precursors and preconditions for the apparent split did exist before Darwin's publication of The Origin of Species
The Origin of Species
Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the...
, but it was this work which brought the debate into the popular British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
press and became a figurehead for the tensions between science and religion among certain groups (a position it still holds for some today). In 1874, the influential science historian John William Draper
John William Draper
John William Draper was an American scientist, philosopher, physician, chemist, historian, and photographer. He is credited with producing the first clear photograph of a female face and the first detailed photograph of the Moon...
published his History of the Conflict between Religion and Science. In it he portrayed the entire history of scientific development as a war against religion. This view was propagated further by such prestigious followers as Andrew Dickson White
Andrew Dickson White
Andrew Dickson White was a U.S. diplomat, historian, and educator, who was the co-founder of Cornell University.-Family and personal life:...
in his essay A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896).
Many religious people don't see any conflict between science and religion (e.g. between The Origin of Species
The Origin of Species
Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the...
and the original Hebrew language of the Bible) as seen in such compatibilist
Relationship between religion and science
The relationship between religion and science has been a focus of the demarcation problem. Somewhat related is the claim that science and religion may pursue knowledge using different methodologies. Whereas the scientific method basically relies on reason and empiricism, religion also seeks to...
views as theistic evolution
Theistic evolution
Theistic evolution or evolutionary creation is a concept that asserts that classical religious teachings about God are compatible with the modern scientific understanding about biological evolution...
.
The work by Draper and White must be seen as directly coming out of this social climate, and their model of science and religion as being eternally opposed, if not historically accurate, became a dominant social trope
Trope (philosophy)
The term "trope" is both a term which denotes figurative and metaphorical language and one which has been used in various technical senses. The term trope derives from the Greek τρόπος , "a turn, a change", related to the root of the verb τρέπειν , "to turn, to direct, to alter, to change"; this...
. Sociologists of science have studied the attempts to erect hard distinctions between science and non-science as a form of boundary-work
Boundary-work
In science studies, boundary-work comprises instances in which boundaries, demarcations, or other divisions between fields of knowledge are created, advocated, attacked, or reinforced...
, emphasizing the high stakes for all involved in such activities.
Logical Positivism
This new conception of science as something not only independent from religion, but actually opposed to it raised the inevitable question of what separates the two. Among the first to develop an answer were the members of the Vienna CircleVienna Circle
The Vienna Circle was an association of philosophers gathered around the University of Vienna in 1922, chaired by Moritz Schlick, also known as the Ernst Mach Society in honour of Ernst Mach...
. Their philosophical position, known as Logical positivism
Logical positivism
Logical positivism is a philosophy that combines empiricism—the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge—with a version of rationalism incorporating mathematical and logico-linguistic constructs and deductions of epistemology.It may be considered as a type of analytic...
, espoused a theory of meaning which held that only statements about empirical observations and formal logical propositions are meaningful, effectively asserting that statements which are not derived in this manner (including religious and metaphysical
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
statements) are by nature meaningless (see the verifiability theory of meaning also known as verificationism).
Falsificationism
The philosopher Karl PopperKarl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
noticed that the philosophers of the Vienna Circle had mixed two different problems and had accordingly given them a single solution: verificationism. In opposition to this view, Popper emphasized that a theory might well be meaningful without being scientific, and that, accordingly, a criterion of meaningfulness may not necessarily coincide with a criterion of demarcation. His own falsificationism
Falsifiability
Falsifiability or refutability of an assertion, hypothesis or theory is the logical possibility that it can be contradicted by an observation or the outcome of a physical experiment...
, thus, is not only an alternative to verificationism; it is also an acknowledgment of the conceptual distinction that previous theories had ignored.
Popper saw demarcation as a central problem in the philosophy of science. In place of verificationism he proposed falsification as a way of determining if a theory is scientific or not. If a theory is falsifiable, then it is scientific; if it is not falsifiable, then it is not science. Falsifiability was one of the criteria used by Judge William Overton
William Overton (judge)
William Ray Overton was a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas.Overton was born in Malvern, Arkansas. He received a B.S./B.A. from the University of Arkansas in 1961, and an LL.B. from the University of Arkansas School of Law in 1964...
to determine that 'creation science
Creation science
Creation Science or scientific creationism is a branch of creationism that attempts to provide scientific support for the Genesis creation narrative in the Book of Genesis and disprove generally accepted scientific facts, theories and scientific paradigms about the history of the Earth, cosmology...
' was not scientific and should not be taught in Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
public schools (see McLean v. Arkansas
McLean v. Arkansas
McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, 529 F. Supp. 1255, 1258-1264 , was a 1981 legal case in Arkansas.A lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas by various parents, religious groups and organizations, biologists, and others who argued that the...
).
Falsifiability is a property of statements and theories, and is itself neutral. As a demarcation criterion, it seeks to take this property and make it a base for affirming the superiority of falsifiable theories over non-falsifiable ones as a part of science, in effect setting up a political position that might be called falsificationism. However, much that would be considered meaningful and useful is not falsifiable(reference). Certainly non-falsifiable statements have a role in scientific theories themselves. What the Popperian criterion allows to be called scientific is open to interpretation. A strict interpretation would concede too little since there are no scientific theories of interest that are completely free of anomalies
Anomaly (physics)
In quantum physics an anomaly or quantum anomaly is the failure of a symmetry of a theory's classical action to be a symmetry of any regularization of the full quantum theory. In classical physics an anomaly is the failure of a symmetry to be restored in the limit in which the symmetry-breaking...
. Conversely, if we do not consider the falsifiability of an assumption or theory and the willingness of an individual or group to obtain or accept falsifying instances, we would then permit almost any assumption or theory.
It is nevertheless very useful to know if a statement or theory is falsifiable, if for no other reason than it provides us with an understanding of the ways in which one might assess the theory.
Kuhn and paradigm shifts
Thomas KuhnThomas Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American historian and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was deeply influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term "paradigm shift," which has since become an English-language staple.Kuhn...
, an American historian of science
History of science
The history of science is the study of the historical development of human understandings of the natural world and the domains of the social sciences....
, has proven very influential in the philosophy of science
Philosophy of science
The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...
, and is often connected with what has been called postpositivism
Postpositivism
In philosophy and models of scientific inquiry, postpositivism is a metatheoretical stance that critiques and amends positivism. Postpositivists believe that human knowledge is based not on unchallengeable, rock-solid foundations, but rather upon human conjectures...
or postempiricism. In his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , by Thomas Kuhn, is an analysis of the history of science. Its publication was a landmark event in the history, philosophy, and sociology of scientific knowledge and it triggered an ongoing worldwide assessment and reaction in — and beyond — those scholarly...
, Kuhn divided the process of doing science into two different endeavors, which he called normal science
Normal science
Normal Science is a concept originated by Thomas Samuel Kuhn and elaborated in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The term refers to the routine work of scientists experimenting within a paradigm, slowly accumulating detail in accord with established broad theory, not actually challenging or...
and extraordinary science (which he sometimes also called revolutionary science). The process of "normal" science is what most scientists do while working within what he calls the current accepted paradigm
Paradigm
The word paradigm has been used in science to describe distinct concepts. It comes from Greek "παράδειγμα" , "pattern, example, sample" from the verb "παραδείκνυμι" , "exhibit, represent, expose" and that from "παρά" , "beside, beyond" + "δείκνυμι" , "to show, to point out".The original Greek...
of the scientific community, and within this context Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
's ideas on falsification as well as the idea of a scientific method
Scientific method
Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...
still have some currency. This sort of work is what Kuhn calls "problem solving": working within the bounds of the current theory and its implications for what sorts of experiments should or should not be fruitful. However, during the process of doing "normal" science, Kuhn claimed, anomalies are generated, some of which lead to an extension of the dominant "paradigm" in order to explain them, and others for which no satisfactory explanation can be found within the current model. When enough of these anomalies have accumulated, and scientists within the field find them significant (often a very subjective
Subjectivity
Subjectivity refers to the subject and his or her perspective, feelings, beliefs, and desires. In philosophy, the term is usually contrasted with objectivity.-Qualia:...
judgment), a "crisis period" is begun, Kuhn argues, and some scientists begin to participate in the activity of "extraordinary" science. In this phase, it is recognized that the old model is fundamentally flawed and cannot be adapted to further use, and totally new (or often old and abandoned) ideas are looked at, most of which will be failures. But during this time, a new "paradigm" is created, and after a protracted period of "paradigm shift
Paradigm shift
A Paradigm shift is, according to Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , a change in the basic assumptions, or paradigms, within the ruling theory of science...
," the new paradigm is accepted as the norm by the scientific community and integrated into their previous work, and the old paradigm is banished to the history books. The classic example of this is the shift from Maxwellian/Newtonian physics
Classical mechanics
In physics, classical mechanics is one of the two major sub-fields of mechanics, which is concerned with the set of physical laws describing the motion of bodies under the action of a system of forces...
to Einsteinian
Theory of relativity
The theory of relativity, or simply relativity, encompasses two theories of Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity. However, the word relativity is sometimes used in reference to Galilean invariance....
/Quantum physics in the early 20th century. If the acceptance or failure of scientific theories relied only on simple falsification, according to Kuhn, then no theory would ever survive long enough to be fruitful, as all theories contain anomalies.
The process by which Kuhn said a new paradigm is accepted by the scientific community at large does indicate one possible demarcation between science and pseudoscience. Rejecting Popper's simple model of falsification, Kuhn argued instead that a new paradigm is accepted mainly because it has a superior ability to solve problems that arise in the process of doing normal science. That is, the value of a scientific paradigm is its predictive power
Predictive power
The predictive power of a scientific theory refers to its ability to generate testable predictions. Theories with strong predictive power are highly valued, because the predictions can often encourage the falsification of the theory...
and its ability to suggest solutions to new problems while continuing to satisfy all of the problems solved by the paradigm that it replaces. Pseudoscience can then be defined by a failure to provide explanations within such a paradigm.
Demarcation is problematic when standard scientific ways (experiments, logic, etc.) of assessing a theory or a hypothesis cannot be applied for some reason. An example would be trying to identify what is currently science in the domains of meteorology
Meteorology
Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere. Studies in the field stretch back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the 18th century. The 19th century saw breakthroughs occur after observing networks developed across several countries...
or medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
. The argument goes that these domains are not unlike early astrology
Astrology
Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...
in several ways, which was once considered a science. Astrology did not conflict with other known facts at the time, it occasionally failed to make accurate predictions, and certain gaps in knowledge of the causal mechanisms were tolerated.
Feyerabend and the problem of autonomy in science
There has been a post-Kuhn trend to downplay the difference between science and non-science, as Kuhn's work largely called to question the Popperian ideal of simple demarcation, and emphasized the human, subjectiveSubjectivity
Subjectivity refers to the subject and his or her perspective, feelings, beliefs, and desires. In philosophy, the term is usually contrasted with objectivity.-Qualia:...
quality of scientific change. The radical philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend
Paul Feyerabend
Paul Karl Feyerabend was an Austrian-born philosopher of science best known for his work as a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked for three decades . He lived a peripatetic life, living at various times in England, the United States, New Zealand,...
took these arguments to their limit, arguing that science does not occupy a special place in terms of either its logic or method, so that any claim to special authority made by scientists cannot be upheld. This leads to a particularly democratic and anarchist approach to knowledge formation. He claimed that there can be found no method within the history of scientific practice which has not been violated at some point in the advancing of scientific knowledge. Both Lakatos
Imre Lakatos
Imre Lakatos was a Hungarian philosopher of mathematics and science, known for his thesis of the fallibility of mathematics and its 'methodology of proofs and refutations' in its pre-axiomatic stages of development, and also for introducing the concept of the 'research programme' in his...
and Feyerabend suggest that science is not an autonomous form of reasoning, but is inseparable from the larger body of human thought and inquiry. If so, then the questions of truth and falsity, and correct or incorrect understanding are not uniquely empirical. Many meaningful questions can not be settled empirically — not only in practice, but in principle.
According to this way of thinking, the difficulty string theorists
String theory
String theory is an active research framework in particle physics that attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. It is a contender for a theory of everything , a manner of describing the known fundamental forces and matter in a mathematically complete system...
have had in applying experimental science would not bring in to question their status as scientists, but rather as metaphysicians
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
.
Thagard's method
There has been some decrease in interest in the demarcation problem in recent years. Part of the problem is that many suspect that it is an intractable problem, since so many previous attempts have come up short.For example, many obvious examples of pseudoscience have been shown to be falsifiable, or verifiable, or revisable. Therefore many of the previously proposed demarcation criteria have not been judged as particularly reliable.
Paul R. Thagard
Paul R. Thagard
- Major Works :Thagard is the author / co-author of 11 books and over 100 peer-reviewed articles.* Princeton University Press, 2010 ISBN 978-1-4008-3461-7...
has proposed another set of principles to try to overcome these difficulties, and believes it is important for society to find a way of doing so. According to Thagard's method, a theory is not scientific if it satisfies two conditions:
Thagard specifies that sometimes theories will spend some time as merely "unpromising" before they truly deserve the title of pseudoscience. He cites astrology as an example: it was stagnant compared to advances in physics during the 17th century, and only later became "pseudoscience" in the advent of alternative explanations provided by psychology during the 19th century.
Thagard also rejects that his criteria should be interpreted so narrowly as to allow ostrichism (willful ignorance
Ignorance
Ignorance is a state of being uninformed . The word ignorant is an adjective describing a person in the state of being unaware and is often used as an insult...
of alternative explanations) or so broadly as to discount our modern science compared to science of the future. His definition is a practical one, which generally seeks to distinguish pseudoscience as theories that are stagnant and are not actively being scientifically investigated.
Laudan's rejection of the demarcation problem
Larry LaudanLarry Laudan
Larry Laudan is a contemporary philosopher of science and epistemologist. He has strongly criticized the traditions of positivism, realism, and relativism, and he has defended a view of science as a privileged and progressive institution against popular challenges...
concluded, after examining various historical attempts to establish a demarcation criterion, that "philosophy has failed to deliver the goods" in its attempts to distinguish science from non-science, to distinguish science from pseudoscience. None of the past attempts would be accepted by a majority of philosophers nor, in his view, should they be accepted by them or by anyone else. He noted that many well-founded beliefs are not scientific and, conversely, many scientific conjectures are not well-founded. He also found that demarcation criteria were historically used as "machines de guerre" in polemical disputes between "scientists" and "pseudo-scientists." Advancing a number of examples from everyday practice of football and carpentry and non-scientific scholarship such as literary criticism and philosophy, he saw the question of whether a belief is well-founded or not to be more practically and philosophically significant than whether it is scientific or not. In his judgment, the demarcation between science and non-science was a pseudo-problem that would best be replaced by focusing on the distinction between reliable and unreliable knowledge, without bothering to ask whether that knowledge is scientific or not. He would consign hollow phrases like "pseudo-science" or "unscientific" to the rhetoric of politicians or sociologists.
Demarcation in contemporary scientific method
The criteria for a system of assumptions, methods, and theories to qualify as science today vary in their details from application to application, and vary significantly among the natural sciences, social sciencesSocial sciences
Social science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...
and formal science
Formal science
The formal sciences are the branches of knowledge that are concerned with formal systems, such as logic, mathematics, theoretical computer science, information theory, systems theory, decision theory, statistics, and some aspects of linguistics....
. The criteria typically include (1) the formulation of hypotheses that meet the logical criterion of contingency, defeasibility, or falsifiability
Falsifiability
Falsifiability or refutability of an assertion, hypothesis or theory is the logical possibility that it can be contradicted by an observation or the outcome of a physical experiment...
and the closely related empirical
Empirical
The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation or experimentation. Empirical data are data produced by an experiment or observation....
and practical criterion of testability
Testability
Testability, a property applying to an empirical hypothesis, involves two components: the logical property that is variously described as contingency, defeasibility, or falsifiability, which means that counterexamples to the hypothesis are logically possible, and the practical feasibility of...
, (2) a grounding in empirical evidence
Evidence
Evidence in its broadest sense includes everything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion. Giving or procuring evidence is the process of using those things that are either presumed to be true, or were themselves proven via evidence, to demonstrate an assertion's truth...
, and (3) the use of scientific method. The procedures of science typically include a number of heuristic
Heuristic
Heuristic refers to experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery. Heuristic methods are used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution, where an exhaustive search is impractical...
guidelines, such as the principles of conceptual economy or theoretical parsimony that fall under the rubric of Ockham's razor. A conceptual system that fails to meet a significant number of these criteria is likely to be considered non-scientific. The following is a list of additional features that are highly desirable in a scientific theory:
- Reproducible. Makes predictions that can be tested by any observer, with trials extending indefinitely into the future.
- Falsifiable and testable. See FalsifiabilityFalsifiabilityFalsifiability or refutability of an assertion, hypothesis or theory is the logical possibility that it can be contradicted by an observation or the outcome of a physical experiment...
and TestabilityTestabilityTestability, a property applying to an empirical hypothesis, involves two components: the logical property that is variously described as contingency, defeasibility, or falsifiability, which means that counterexamples to the hypothesis are logically possible, and the practical feasibility of...
. - Consistent. Generates no obvious logical contradictions, and 'saves the phenomena'Scientific formalismScientific formalism is a broad term for a family of approaches to the presentation of science. It is viewed as an important part of the scientific method, especially in the physical sciences.-Levels of formalism:...
, being consistent with observation. - Pertinent. Describes and explains observed phenomena.
- Correctable and dynamic. Subject to modification as new observations are made.
- Integrative, robust, and corrigible. Subsumes previous theories as approximations, and allows possible subsumption by future theories. ("Robust", here, refers to stability in the statistical sense, i.e., not very sensitive to occasional outlying data points.) See Correspondence principleCorrespondence principleIn physics, the correspondence principle states that the behavior of systems described by the theory of quantum mechanics reproduces classical physics in the limit of large quantum numbers....
- Parsimonious. Economical in the number of assumptions and hypothetical entities.
- Provisional or tentative. Does not assert the absolute certainty of the theory.