DEMARCATION PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE FROM NON-SCIENCE

2013

ABSTRACT- This paper deals with the demarcation problem in philosophy of science. In this context, I look for answers from logical positivists to Popper and to nowadays philosophers to the following questions: What makes a text, a theory or a research scientific? How can we demarcate science and scientific views from metaphysical thoughts, ideologies, pseudo-sciences and conspiracy theories? What are the distinguishing characteristics of scientific method?

Scientonomy: The Journal for the Science of Science, 2018

The demarcation between science and non-science seems to play an important role in the process of scientific change, as theories regularly transition from being considered scientific to being considered unscientific and vice versa. However, theoretical scientonomy is yet to shed light on this process. The goal of this paper is to tackle the problem of demarcation from the scientonomic perspective. Specifically, we introduce scientificity as a distinct epistemic stance that an agent can take towards a theory. We contend that changes in this stance are to be traced and explained by scientonomy. Thus, we formulate a new law of theory demarcation to account for changes in scientificity within the scientonomic framework.

2013

1972

This paper considers objections to Popper's views on scientific method. It is argued that criticism of Popper's views, developed by Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Lakatos, are not too damaging, although they do require that Popper's views be modified some¬what. It is argued that a much more serious criticism is that Popper has failed to provide us with any reason for holding that the methodological rules he advocates give us a better hope of realizing the aims of science than any other set of rules. Con¬sequently, Popper cannot adequately explain why we should value scientific theories more than other sorts of theories ; which in turn means that Popper fails to solve adequately his fundamental problem, namely the problem of demarcation. It is sug¬gested that in order to get around this difficulty we need to take the search for explana¬tions as a fundamental aim of science.

2017

Contents ▲ Nature of philosophy of science ▲ Some central figures in the development of philosophy of science ▲ Falsification and verification hypothesis ▲ Popper's submission on pseudo-science ▲ Meaning of verifiability of hypothesis ▲ Verification and falsification: similarity and difference ▲ Models in science ▲ Scientific procedures-Hypothesis, theories and laws ▲ The problem of induction ▲ Confirmation theory.

Metascience, 2013

Hoyningen-Huene is rightly famous for his book on Thomas Kuhn's philosophy, Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn's Philosophy of Science. Indeed, to many North American philosophers of science, Hoyningen-Huene is known exclusively as a Kuhn scholar, explicating Kuhn's views and writing on Kuhnian themes, like incommensurability. Hoyningen-Huene's new book, Systematicity, is a departure from Kuhn scholarship, constituting a contribution to general philosophy of science. But this is not an altogether new project. In fact, Hoyningen-Huene reports that he has been working on this project off and on for decades. Systematicity deals with the issue of understanding what distinguishes scientific knowledge from everyday knowledge. This may sound like some version of the demarcation problem, a popular topic in philosophy of science from the 1930s to the 1970s, but the issue that concerns Hoyningen-Huene is different. The demarcation problem was concerned, principally, with distinguishing science from pseudoscience, the alleged bodies of belief that purport to be scientific but in fact are not. Karl Popper regarded the demarcation problem as a pressing issue when he wrote Logic of Scientific Discovery in the 1930s, regarding it as comparable in significance to the problem of induction. Just as the Vienna Circle logical positivists sought to undermine metaphysics with their verification principle, Popper sought to undermine Freudian and Adlerian psychology, and Marxist history by appeal to his demarcation criteria. But instead of accusing the proponents of these theories of indulging in metaphysical flights of fancy, and aspiring to have knowledge about things that exceed our capacity to know, Popper accused them of developing theories that were unfalsifiable, and thus unscientific. Pseudoscientific theories could be reconciled with any possible facts, and thus explained nothing.

In his book, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper deals with the often called "demarcation problem", which consists in the question: what criterion (or criteria) differentiates scientific and unscientific knowledge? Popper answers by providing a logical criterion for demarcating proper scientific knowledge from pseudo-science: falsificationism.

The metaphysical basis of science 9

Andreanský, E.: Chapters on the Contemporary Philosophy of Science. Košice: UPJŠ, 2015

The book deals with the demarcation problem (differences between scientific and non-scientific approach), characteristic features of holism and its critics, the problem of realism in science and philosophy, essentialism in scientific exploration and finally the problem of reductionism and the idea of unified science.