Pseudoscience - Criterion Of Meaning, Scientific Method, Current Debates, Bibliography
Pseudoscience is a term applied to a field of inquiry by critics claiming that it is a pretended or spurious science because it does not meet established standards. The term pseudoscience is reserved for fields that claim to be a science, that make claims about the world and give explanations of natural processes. Statements of personal values or beliefs are neither scientific nor pseudoscientific, nor are works of art or literature. Religion is not a pseudoscience because it does not make scientific claims, but a faith-based alternative to Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory would be. Freudian psychology is an example of a theory considered pseudoscientific by some and defended as legitimate by others. Since the term pseudoscience is general, it is used to dismiss an entire field, rather than a specific study or the work of a particular individual. Alternative medicine might be dismissed, for example, when there are no double-blind controlled studies to support the claims of various treatments.
Additional Topics
The prefix pseudo is taken directly from the ancient Greek, and it has been applied to a multitude of terms. While the labeling of various fields as pseudoscience is especially associated with the philosophers of science of the early twentieth century, the term predates them by eighty years or so. The members of the Vienna Circle and their collaborators, often called logical positivists, embarked …
Popper and other twentieth-century philosophers of science focused on method. They claimed that all of the sciences, as opposed to other fields of inquiry, shared a common methodology
that deserves the name of "the scientific method." Philosophers disagreed about what this method was, but no one doubted that a single scientific method characterized all of science from the time of th…
While many philosophers may have convinced each other that the problem of demarcation is unsolvable, scientists feel that there are obvious differences between science and pseudo-sciences and many want to continue to use the distinction. The editors of the Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience (2000) reply to the problem by taking an ecumenical approach that presents differing views on the nature of pseud…
Braude, Stephen E. The Limits of Influence: Psychokinesis and the Philosophy of Science. Rev. ed. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1997. Carnap, Rudolf. "The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language." In Logical Positivism, edited by A. J. Ayer, 60–81. New York: Free Press, 1959. Hempel, Carl G. "Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Cri…
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