A New Method of Demarcating Science from Pseudoscience

By Townsend Rowland

The demarcation problem is the problem of delineating science from pseudoscience. The problem was first articulated in the mid-twentieth century by Karl Popper. Since then, philosophers have not come to a consensus on the solution to the demarcation problem. This article aims to present a novel solution to the problem. I argue that there are three necessary conditions that a demarcation criteria(on) must fulfill to be adequate, and together these conditions become sufficient to determine if a demarcation criteria(on) fulfills its function of separating science from pseudoscience. The three conditions are as follows:

  1. The demarcation criteria(on) correctly delineates between contemporary sciences and pseudosciences

  2. The demarcation criterion correctly delineates between historical sciences and pseudosciences

  3. The demarcation criterion correctly delineates between hypothetical sciences and pseudosciences. Or, at least, it provides guidance on how we ought to separate between different examples.

In this paper, I will briefly go over past demarcation attempts to contextualize the history of the problem. I will call these past attempts epistemological demarcation (ED). From these past attempts, it will become clear why the three conditions above are necessary and sufficient for any demarcation attempt to work. Finally, I will present a new method of demarcation that meets the necessary and sufficient conditions listed above. My method relies on a socio-cultural understanding of demarcation instead of an epistemological one. This new method of demarcation is called broad cultural demarcation (BCD).

Section 1: Past demarcation attempts

Karl Popper coined the term “demarcation problem” just before 1930, and he first presented his solution to the problem in a 1953 lecture at a constituent college of the University of Cambridge[1]. Popper’s solution to the demarcation problem was motivated by his disillusionment with psychoanalysis. In his native Vienna, he noticed how psychoanalysts could take a person with any neurosis and fit it into their theoretical framework (either Sigmund Freud or Alfred Adler’s frameworks)(2). In this way, he noticed that the psychoanalysts could never be wrong. Any mental disorder would somehow be made to fit back into the overarching theory. On the other hand, Popper was massively impressed with the bold claims of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Einstein’s theory could be disproven, easily, because it made concrete predictions. However, instead of failing the predictions that it made, the theory was unable to be proven wrong when in 1919 the observation of an eclipse had a non-intuitive result (in relation to accepted Newtonian mechanics): light was deflected towards solid bodies and not away from them. Unlike psychoanalytic theories, Popper argued, the whole of Einstein’s theory would have fallen had it failed the prediction it made about light deflection. Due to this, Popper regarded general relativity as real science and psychoanalytic theories as pseudoscience. This was because Einstein’s theory could be proven wrong, and psychoanalytic theories could never be proven wrong even in principle (because every individual case could be subsumed into the theory)[3].

Popper articulated his demarcation criterion in writing in his 1963 book, writing: “the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.”[4] Popper’s demarcation criterion is widely known as falsificationism. Put another way: If something is falsifiable then it is scientific; otherwise, it is pseudoscientific. I will discuss why falsification fails as a demarcation criterion later.

Other famous demarcation attempts include Thomas Kuhn’s, who argued that a theory's ability to be scientific was predicated on its ability to solve puzzles[5]. If something is able to solve puzzles then it is scientific. If it is not able to solve puzzles then it is not scientific (There is a distinction between nonscience and pseudoscience in the literature. However, for this case, the difference is unimportant because this is Kuhn’s attempt at a type demarcation. The paper’s aim, however, is a new demarcation criteria between science and pseudoscience not based on Kuhn).

Imre Lakatos proposed that individual theories should not be put to a demarcation test. Instead, whole research programs should be scrutinized, where if the programs proposed and adopted new theories that had “larger empirical content than its predecessor[s],” then they were scientific; otherwise they were degenerative[6]. “Degenerative” is distinct from “pseudoscientific,” but for this paper they can be used interchangeably because Lakatos intended his arguments to have a similar effect to other demarcation criteria(on). Before we go over the last class of demarcation criteria(on), it will be useful to examine why the conditions above are important and how previous attempts do not meet them.

Section 2: The necessity of my necessary and sufficient conditions

The above conditions are necessary for the following reasons. If a demarcation criteria(on) cannot meet condition 1 then it obviously doesn’t work. Any demarcation criteria(on) must be able to correctly delineate between obvious sciences and pseudosciences from the modern-day, say physics and flat-earthism respectively. Otherwise, a criteria(on) has no hope of solving more difficult modern-day cases and thus cannot stand.

Condition 2 is necessary because if a criteria(on) fails this condition, then our modern-day science faces the risk of being considered pseudoscience in the future. This problem is similar to a problem in the debate over scientific realism. Opponents of scientific realism have coined the term “pessimistic meta-induction” to refer to the fact that historical sciences offer a plethora of well-confirmed, empirically powerful theories that have come to be proven to be false[7]. Since past theories have been proven not to be true, they argue we should, by the power of induction, expect current and future theories to also not be true. Therefore, science is not reaching towards truth (or realism). In the case of a demarcation criteria(on), if past sciences or pseudosciences are not delineated between correctly, then we would, by the power of induction, expect current and future sciences and pseudosciences to be delineated between incorrectly. I call this problem pessimistic meta-demarcation. The biggest danger we face from pessimistic meta-demarcation is that disciplines we say must be scientific now, may become pseudoscientific in the future. This is an unacceptable result because something that is scientific now should always be scientific. The amount of time that passes or changing societal standards should not change a science into a pseudoscience or vice versa. Criteria(on) that misidentify historical sciences and pseudosciences run the risk of being used to define current sciences and pseudosciences incorrectly in the future. So, condition 2 must be met.

Condition 3 is necessary because if a demarcation criteria(on) does not correctly delineate between hypothetical sciences and pseudosciences, then we become unsure of how such a criteria(on) may delineate between not-yet-invented sciences and pseudosciences. This is important because, again, if we cannot be sure that a criteria(on) is correct, then it may make mistakes. If a criteria(on) does not delineate correctly between science and pseudoscience then it obviously fails as a delineation tool. Therefore condition 3 must be met.

At this point, I would like to anticipate an objection that I feel readers may have. The careful reader may object “Townsend, you are begging the question. You are assuming that we can determine the difference between science and pseudoscience before we see if it fits into a demarcation criteria(on). Shouldn’t a criteria(on) determine whether something is science or pseudoscience, instead of using our intuitions to check if something is scientific, and then seeing if a demarcation criteria(on) places it on the correct side of the line?” My response is that your objection is well taken. However, I argue that for obvious cases our intuitions must be correct. If flat-earthism is not pseudoscience I don’t know what is. Similarly, if modern-day biology is not science, then there must be some fundamental problem with how we see the world. If the objection still persists that the criteria(on) must still be the ultimate delineator between science and pseudoscience, you must be prepared to bite the bullet of unintuitive consequences that, I argue, all previous epistemological demarcation attempts provide. I will explain what I mean by epistemological demarcation below. For example, I think any putatively reasonable person that embraces flat-earthism as science based on a demarcation criteria(on) is both incorrect and not reasonable, or arguing in bad faith. Finally, imaginary objector, the demarcation criteria I will provide sidesteps the epistemological concerns of potentially using intuition, so I hope that relieves any remaining consternation you may feel at this point.

Section 3: Why past demarcation attempts fail

Popper’s falsification criterion fails all three conditions listed above. The problem with falsification is that obvious pseudosciences can make falsifiable statements. If they do, under Popper’s criterion, then they would become scientific. For example, a flat earther might state that "from space, the earth will appear as a flat disc." This statement is falsifiable, but it does not make flat earthism science. On a practical level, falsification also faces the difficulty of not persuading people away from pseudoscience. Flat earthers are not dissuaded from believing in a flat earth no matter how many times the theory is falsified. It also does not correctly identify some things we would want to call science. For example, astronomy that looks into deep space cannot be falsified (as we cannot go into deep space, and, because of the way that light travels, anything that we observe from telescopes happened in the past). Simply because some parts of astronomy cannot be falsified does not mean that it should not be considered science. Since the conditions listed above are necessary, failing any individual one of them means that the demarcation attempt as a whole fails. For this reason, and for the sake of brevity, I am confident in saying that Popper’s demarcation attempt fails without further analysis.

Kuhn's attempt fails because it also fails conditions 1 and 3. Obvious pseudosciences can solve puzzles without becoming a science. For example, a modern-day geocentrist (they exist) can argue that their model correctly predicts the observed positions of the planets. This puzzle solving is possible because Ptolemy did it over 2000 years ago. However, any modern person arguing for geocentrism is doing pseudoscience;, therefore Kuhn’s criteria fails condition 1. Condition 3 is not met for similar problems. Imagine a person who believes every solar body in our solar system revolves around Mars. Call this theory marscentrism. As far as I know, marscentrism is a made-up theory. However, the hypothetical marscentrist could easily solve puzzles of the position of the planets from this perspective with a few assumptions. In this hypothetical case, marscentrism in the modern-day should be a pseudoscience. However, Kuhn's criterion would place marscentrism as a science. This is unacceptable and so Kuhn’s criterion fails condition 3. Therefore, Kuhn’s criterion cannot be considered an acceptable solution to the demarcation problem.

Lakatos’s criterion of the productivity of research programs fails condition 2. All historical sciences which are no longer pursued would be considered degenerative. This result, while not exactly the same as considering historical science pseudoscience, has a similar pejorative connotation as calling something pseudoscience. I suspect modern scientists (and philosophers) would object to the risk of having their theories considered degenerative in the future simply because they stopped being pursued in light of newer theories. Lakato’s criterion fails condition 2 and is therefore untenable as a demarcation criterion.

The last class of demarcation attempts are those criteria that have a list of requirements and if a theory meets any of the listed requirements then it is pseudoscientific[8]. I call this type of demarcation list demarcation. These lists are often contentious among philosophers and frequently fail to meet conditions 1, 2, and 3. The reason these criteria fail is that they try to pick out the methods of science. Then, their proponents argue, if something does not meet a method of science it is pseudoscience. However, the sciences as we know them are extremely methodologically diverse, so it is difficult, if not impossible, to create a demarcation list that correctly delineates between modern sciences and pseudosciences[9]. I know of no demarcation criteria that works for all modern sciences and pseudosciences. Therefore, these list demarcation attempts fail to meet condition 1. For the same reasons, they fail condition 3. Hypothetical sciences and pseudosciences can at the very least be as methodologically diverse as existing sciences, so they too will not meet condition 3.

Condition 2 fails to be met because science, over time, updates its methods. In modern science, best practice is to run double-blind, experimental studies. However, this practice was not used when the field of statistics was still developing. Lambert Quetelet, a nineteenth-century statistician, ran some of the first studies on variation between people. From a modern perspective, his studies are seriously flawed. His data was biased and not collected randomly. Intuitively Quetelet’s statistics should not be seen as pseudoscience, and consistently historians of science and his historical scientific peers place him as a scientist[10]. Under many list demarcation attempts Quetelet’s statistics would be seen as pseudoscience. Even if a specific demarcation list properly places Quetelet’s statistics, there is almost certainly a historical science that it will misplace given the diversity of methods in historical science. Therefore, list demarcation attempts also fail condition 2.

All of the above demarcation attempts I group under in a broad class called epistemological demarcation. I call them this because they all attempt to use some epistemological method to be able to delineate between science and pseudoscience. I don’t think it is necessarily the case that it is impossible for an epistemological demarcation attempt to meet all three conditions listed above. However, no demarcation attempts that I know of can meet the above conditions. Theses failures point to the fact that we should turn away from epistemological demarcation to some other sort of demarcation.

Section 4: Gordin’s particulate cultural demarcation

If we cannot look to epistemological demarcation for guidance, I propose we look to cultural methods of demarcation. Historian and philosopher of science Michael Gordin, in his book The Pseudoscience Wars, starts his demarcation criterion by imagining a sliding scale. On one end, Gordin places excellent science which slips into good science, mediocre science, and then bad science. Pseudoscience though, he argues “is off the grid altogether.” Moreover, he argues that pseudoscience is a “combative notion” which is used “to preserve the accepted boundaries of knowledge from intrusion.” Finally, he argues that “individual scientists... designate a doctrine a ‘pseudoscience’ only when they perceive themselves to be threatened—not necessarily by the ideas themselves, but by what those ideas represent about the authority of science...”[11] Gordin’s method of demarcation is what I will call particulate cultural demarcation (PCD). Pseudoscience is whatever scientists deem as pseudoscientific when it is a threat to their power and therefore them. In this way, it is the modern scientific culture that is present during the time period that Gordin examines which demarcates science from pseudoscience. I will get to why I call Gordin’s demarcative technique “particulate” below.

Gordin’s PCD works well for the historical time period he examines. The central figure in The Pseudoscience Wars is Immanuel Velikovsky. Velikovsky was a Russian- born doctor and psychoanalyst who immigrated to the United States in 1939. In 1950, Velikovsky published a book titled Worlds in Collision to an unprecedented scientific uproar[12]. Worlds in Collision argued that a series of homologous catastrophes could be found if one sifted through “ancient mythological, scriptural, and historical sources” carefully enough[13]. This hidden record of disastrous events was evidence, Velikovsky argued, that a comet was ejected from Jupiter and barely missed colliding with Earth. Afterward, in 1500 B.C., the comet became caught in the earth's atmosphere raining down petroleum jelly setting the heavens ablaze and tilting the earth's axis. Eventually, the comet left earth's immediate influence and began orbiting the, sun becoming Venus. Venus's new position, though, displaced Mars, which itself nearly collided with earth and in the process caused a second series of disasters. This was a revolutionary scientific claim:

“Velikovsky’s arguments presupposed a reformulation of geology, paleontology, archaeology, and celestial mechanics, not to mention ancient history.”[15]

Velikovsky’s work was not well received by the American scientific community. They panned the content of Worlds in Collision, but, interestingly, were more perturbed with the publisher of the book, the Macmillan Company. The Macmillan company was the premier publisher of scientific textbooks during the 1950s. Several scientists wrote to the Macmillan Company asking them not to publish Velikovsky’s book because they felt it would lend the book credence in the eyes of the public[16]. A hodgepodge of scientists also boycotted the Macmillan Company to various degrees until they agreed to stop publishing the book. The important thing is that astronomers (and credible scientists from other fields) designated Worlds in Collision pseudoscience because the book, author, and its publisher implicitly and explicitly threatened the authority of scientific practitioners. Velikovsky and his acolytes did this by suggesting that previous astronomical work was wrong, and also that scientists engaged in the suppression of the message of Worlds in Collision and thus couldn't be trusted altogether[17]. Thus the scientific community’s designation of Worlds in Collision as pseudoscience provides a clear example of the scientific community coming together to demarcate based on the threat of Velikovsky’s message against established scientific authority.

Gordin’s PCD does not meet condition 2 when examining historical time periods that don’t have extant and well-defined scientists and scientific institutions. Scientists cannot demarcate science from pseudoscience if there isn’t a stable phenomenon of science. For example, let’s say we were an aspiring geologist in Britain living in the 1830s trying to evaluate how the earth formed. There were two competing theories: catastrophism and uniformitarianism. Catastrophism was a geologic theory popularized in the 1820s. It posited that the earth was formed based on sudden and drastic geologic processes such as volcanic eruptions and large-scale flooding. Bolstering this view was the most up-to-date paleontological evidence. Mammoths frozen in ice, almost perfectly preserved, showed that geologic processes, like freezing, must have happened extremely quickly. Moreover, it provided a reliable explanation for speciation. New species were created by God and wiped out by different catastrophes. The older the strata that were examined, the higher proportion of extinct species that were found. Furthermore, since no human fossils had been found at the time, man must have “been created at some time between the last catastrophe and the one preceding it.”[18] Catastrophism was based on evidence and popularized by one of the most respected geologists of the time William Buckland (among others)[19].

The competing theory was uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism was the theory that the geologic forces that existed in the present existed in the past and were what was responsible for shaping the world. Uniformitarianism was popularized by another respected geologist, Charles Lyell[20]. The uniformitarians argued that catastrophism must be wrong because the evidence they had wasn't good. They argued that proof for uniformitarianism could clearly be seen in valleys that had rivers at the bottom. It was much more likely that the rivers had carved the valleys over tremendous amounts of time rather than the valleys being created in a one-time, deluge event. Moreover, a single flood or or catastrophe could not explain the mixtures of salt and fresh water deposits that had been found[21].

Adding further force to this example is the fact that uniformitarianism was itself not an entirely coherent doctrine. So far, I’ve talked about uniformitarianism using Gillispie’s Genesis and Geology which was published in 1951. Since the 1950s, James Secord has shown that Lyell’s Principles of Geology, while a well-selling book, was picked apart ruthlessly by most contemporary geologists—including geologists who supported Lyell and would call themselves uniformitarians because of the book. Moreover, “uniformitarianism” was a doctrine specifically constructed by Whewell, not Lyell, to be in opposition to catastrophism (which Whewell was an advocate of)[22]. Furthermore, despite being an opponent of uniformitarianism (and coining the term) Whewell celebrated Principles of Geology as the “creation of a new science of ‘geological dynamics.’”[23] Thus, the debated status of seminal work on uniformitarianism and its author meant that it would have been impossible to determine if uniformitarianism, let alone geology as a whole, was scientific based on Gordin’s PCD.

To put it another way, Gordin’s demarcation exists between science and pseudoscience—to be drawn by scientists in response to the threat of whatever particular pseudoscience is assailing them. If, however, there is no agreement on who a scientist is or what their domain is, then no notion of pseudoscience can be created. The way I understand Gordin’s argument is that science and pseudoscience form a circuit whereby scientists perform the act of demarcation. Then, the circuit is closed by the demarcative act pushing pseudoscience out of accepted knowledge, and therefore entrenching the authority of the scientists who demarcated. Historical analyses of how and why scientists called a particular thing pseudoscience can then provide insight to historians and philosophers of science about scientists and science from a particular time period. The problem is when there is no set conception of a "scientist" or competing ideas of science the circuit breaks down. There is no longer a feedback loop from scientist to pseudoscience then back to scientist because there is no set scientist.

Section 5: Broad cultural demarcation

I’ve called his method of demarcation “particulate” because I think he draws the demarcation line too finely for many sciences before the twentieth century, causing his method to fail to meet condition 2. I think the way to save Gordin’s method is to broaden our notion of demarcation. Instead of understanding demarcation as an act by scientists who push out pseudoscience when they feel threatened by it, we should understand demarcation as follows:

Demarcation is an act by scientific practitioners who push everything that is (relevant) non-science out to preserve the accepted boundaries of knowledge and/or create new accepted boundaries of knowledge. I will call this Broad cultural demarcation (BCD). Non-science is a wider notion than pseudoscience as is scientific practitioner compared to scientist. A scientific practitioner is anyone who is involved in science, and nonscience is anything that a scientific practitioner feels is not the best science. The other keyword that I use is relevant. The relevant non-science is decided by the scientific practitioner. This is analogous to how scientists decide what is pseudoscientific under PCD. The last thing I want to clarify is that use nonscience in a fairly atypical way. Usually, nonscience is conceptualized as something outside of the bounds of science. Gordin gives the Catholic church and Vietnamese literature as examples of nonscience because scientists “rarely spend their energy arguing” that they are pseudoscience.” Gordin posits these “are just not science.”[24] Similarly, Hansson recognizes that “unscientific” and “nonscientific” are significantly different from science and pseudoscience[25]. When I say nonscience I mean anything that a scientific practitioner would not consider the best science or scientific practice. Significantly, this includes work that scientific practitioners would deem bad science (but science nonetheless). One objection that Hansson might have about my use of nonscience in BCD is that since “pseudoscience” and “nonscience” are different, it is “inadequate... to define pseudoscience as that which is not science.”[26] In other words, Hansson would argue that demarcation misses the mark if it can only tell science from nonscience; demarcation would not be demarcation (or useful) if it can’t show us what pseudoscience is. This objection gets at the point of BCD. I argue that it can be useful to reorient our conceptualization of demarcation from delineating science from pseudoscience to delineating science from nonscience. I will justify this reorientation below.

A new abbreviation, with a new way of looking at things, does not justify its use. I think that BCD can resolve problems that ED and Gordin’s PCD face when confronted with condition 2 and the older historical sciences. I also think that conceptualizing demarcation in this new way can allow for a better understanding of historical sciences. I will go over the problems that BCD resolves with epistemological demarcation and PCD in turn. The rest of the paper will then be devoted to showing that BCD meets all 3 conditions above.

BCD avoids the problems that ED methods face because it allows scientific practitioners from the time period in which they practiced to demarcate science from non-science rather than have to face a modern, epistemological standard of reliability. Therefore, it is flexible in the methods it counts as scientific and pseudoscientific and meets conditions 1 and 3.

PCD also solves this problem by changing demarcation standards from the epistemological to the cultural, but problems crop up when there is no clear notion of science to complete the circuit that PCD requires. This circuit problem is resolved when we broaden what we mean by demarcation to BCD. While what “science” or “scientists” are can become blurry in historical contexts, I argue that it is easier to find a scientific practitioner. Since “scientific practitioner” encompasses more than “scientist” we can recognize a larger range of activities as scientific. Therefore, the circuit can exist as a system where scientific practitioners perform the act of demarcation. Then, the circuit is closed by the demarcative act of pushing nonscience out of accepted knowledge (or thereby creating new accepted knowledge), and therefore entrenching the authority of the scientific practitioners who demarcated. In this case, PCD fails to meet condition 2, while BCD does not because BCD allows scientific practitioners from the past to correctly identify their own contemporary science and nonscience. Past scientific practitioners cannot be incorrect in demarcating science from nonscience from their own time period because they are who created and were doing the science. Therefore, BCD meets condition 2.

Moreover, I don’t think we would have to worry about the concern that Hansson brings up that by shifting demarcation from pseudoscience to nonscience we would lose information about pseudoscience. If scientists are the ones demarcating (and I argue for reasons stated above that they should be), then in the modern day the only thing they would be demarcating is science from pseudoscience. Since we have well-established scientific institutions and scientists, scientists today would (very) rarely demarcate between science and anything besides pseudoscience because they wouldn't need to. A scientist’s authority qua scientist isn’t going to be challenged by any nonscience besides pseudoscience—a modern scientist will not feel the need to differentiate Vietnamese literature from their science. Therefore, when modern scientists demarcate something under BCD we can be fairly confident it is pseudoscience.

To address the intuition objection raised above again: nothing in my BCD method relies on intuition. It is not up to the philosopher’s intuition of what science and pseudoscience are when determining if they fit a particular demarcation method. Instead, scientific practitioners decide what science and pseudoscience are, and thus intuition is avoided. In response to this, someone may argue I am just shifting intuition around from what the difference between science and pseudoscience is, to what a scientific practitioner is or is not. I have two responses to this. The first is that while in some way intuition is still being used, it is not the purpose of the paper to justify this new usage of intuition. This paper aims to propose a method of delineating science from pseudoscience. The aim was never to delineate a scientific practitioner from a quack. In this way, the objection is not called for. My second response is that even if you believe that intuition is still being used in an improper way in this paper, the democratization of intuition in BCD is probably less problematic than a single person's intuition. If we imagine 99 scientific practitioners demarcating some doctrine as pseudoscientific, and one person who may be a quack who argues the same discipline is real science and the other 99 practitioners are the real pseudoscientists, then I think we should feel comfortable using BCD to call said discipline pseudoscience. Therefore, democratized intuition under BCD avoids the issue of a single person’s intuition about science becoming problematic.

Section 6: Conclusion

In this paper, I have argued that 3 conditions are necessary and sufficient for a demarcation criteria(on) to function. The first is that it must correctly differentiate between current science and pseudoscience. The second is that it must correctly delineate between historical science and pseudoscience. The third is that hypothetical sciences and pseudosciences must be correctly separated. Then, I went over a broad range of past demarcation attempts, which I classed as epistemological demarcation methods, and I argued that they failed to meet one or all of the necessary conditions listed above. I then considered a new class of cultural demarcation methods, particularly Michael Gordin’s particulate cultural demarcation. I used the historical example of nineteenth-century geology to explain why PCD fails to meet condition 2. Finally, I argued for a new method of demarcation called broad cultural demarcation which is similar to Gordin’s method, however, this method is broader than Gordin’s method so it does not fail condition 2.] BCD argues that scientific practitioners demarcate between science and nonscience to preserve the accepted boundaries of knowledge or to create new accepted boundaries of knowledge. I also considered, but ultimately rejected, the objections that I was broadening the demarcation problem up too broadly for a solution to be useful, and that I was relying on too much intuition to create my necessary and sufficient conditions for a demarcation criteria(on). I rejected the former by arguing that in modern-day, under BCD, scientists would only demarcate between science and pseudoscience, so no information would be lost that traditional demarcation methods seek to find. I rejected the latter by arguing that BCD effectively skirts around the problem of using intuition to place science and pseudoscience; if you still believe that intuition is unavoidable under my framework, I argued that BCD effectively democratized intuition so it becomes less problematic. Demarcation is a difficult problem to solve, but I believe BCD meets all three necessary and sufficient conditions above, so it is therefore an acceptable answer (and the only acceptable answer that I know of) to the demarcation problem.

Endnotes

  1. Michael Gordin, The Pseudoscience Wars (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012), 7.

  2. Gordin, Pseudoscience Wars (cit, n. 1), 7.

  3. Gordin, Pseudoscience Wars (cit. n. 1) 7.

  4. Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (New York: BASIC BOOKS, 1962), 7.

  5. Sven Ove Hansson, “Defining Pseudoscience and Science,” In Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem, edited by Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry, 61–77, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 72.

  6. Hansson, “Defining Pseudoscience” (cit. n. 5.) 72.

  7. Larry Laudan, “A Confutation of Convergent Realism,” Philosophy of Science 48 (March 1981): 19-49, on 33.

  8. See Hansson, “Defining Pseudoscience” (cit. n. 5.) 72-73 for an example list.

  9. Hansson, “Defining Pseudoscience” (cit. n. 5.) 74.

  10. Theodore Porter, The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820-1900 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986). See chapter 4 for Quetelet’s contribution to nineteenth-century statistics.

  11. Gordin, Pseudoscience Wars (cit. n. 1), 1-2.

  12. Gordin, Pseudoscience Wars (cit. n. 1), 19.

  13. Gordin, Pseudoscience Wars (cit. n. 1), 4.

  14. Gordin, Pseudoscience Wars (cit. n. 1), 5.

  15. Gordin, Pseudoscience Wars (cit. n. 1), 5.

  16. Gordin, Pseudoscience Wars (cit. n. 1), 36.

  17. Gordin, Pseudoscience Wars (cit. n. 1), 42-43.

  18. Charles Gillispie Genesis and Geology, a Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought, Natural Theology, and Social Opinion in Great Britain, 1790-1850 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1951), 98-101.

  19. Gillispie, Genesis and Geology (cit. n. 18), 98-101.

  20. Gillispie, Genesis and Geology (cit. n. 18), 122.

  21. Gillispie, Genesis and Geology (cit. n. 18), 122.

  22. Charles Lyell and James Secord Principles of Geology (Strand, London: Penguin Group, 1997), introduction section 1

  23. Lyell and Secord, Principles of Geology (cit. n. 22). Introduction section 1.

  24. Gordin, Pseudoscience Wars (cit. n. 1), 1.

  25. Hansson, “Defining Pseudoscience” (cit. n. 5), 62.

  26. Hansson, “Defining Pseudoscience” (cit. n. 5), 62.

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