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This chapter attempts to clarify the confusion between genuine demarcation (the science/pseudoscience boundaries) and the “territorial” demarcation between science and other epistemic fields (philosophy, mathematics). It argues that only the former is pressing and worth pursuing. The territorial problem has little epistemic import, suffers from additional categorization problems, and consequently neither calls nor allows for anything more than a pragmatic and rough-and-ready solution. The normative demarcation project, by contrast is eminently worthy of philosophical attention, not only because it carries real epistemic import and practical urgency, but also because it happens to be a tractable problem.

This chapter begins with a historical background of the demarcation problem. It then reviews some twentieth-century developments; considers demarcation as a social problem; and offers a summary of philosophical difficulties with demarcation. It concludes that demarcation should proceed on several fronts, not one which is intellectually decisive but which, together, provide sufficient purchase for practical purposes on neutral playing fields.

Overview. Genesis of the work in attempt to solve Popper's Demarcation Problem, separation of sense from nonsense, by considering beliefs and verifications instead of propositions and verifiability. I go at this historically, showing what beliefs are and how they arise in animals in the course of coping with their environments, and how language makes possible unverified (“high”) beliefs, conflatable into grand theories. Thales of Miletus invented science with the first grand theory based on everyday (“low”) beliefs. I identify the main characteristics of science as monism, immanence, and rationalism and trace their vicissitudes until their displacement by the Christian world view of the old type. Philosophy, I contend, has still not recovered from being handmaiden to theology. Medieval notions hang on unnoticed in the notions of logical possibility, possible worlds, and, in ethics, commandments. I conclude with sketches of renaturalized ethical and political theories, and rather unhappy prognostications.

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to offer a lively and constructive discussion about demarcationism among philosophers, sociologists, historians, and professional skeptics. By proposing something of a new philosophical subdiscipline, the Philosophy of Pseudoscience, it attempts to convince those following in Larry Laudan's footsteps that the term “pseudoscience” does single out something real that merits attention. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter recasts the demarcation problem in terms of epistemic warrant. It proposes a definition of pseudoscience that differs from most previous proposals by operating on a higher level of epistemic generality. It defends that feature of the definition and explains how it contributes to avoiding some of the problems besetting previously proposed definitions.

This chapter examines the demographics of pseudoscientific and the problems in finding agreement among scientists, philosophers, and historians of science on how best to demarcate science from pseudoscience. It examines how science is defined as a way of distinguishing it from pseudoscience; some examples of science, pseudoscience, and in-between claims; as well as how the legal system deals with the demarcation problem in court cases that require such a determination to adjudicate a legal dispute.

This chapter discusses the history of evolutionary thinking when evolution was treated as pseudoscience and then popular science, before blossoming into a professional science, thus challenging a conception of demarcation in terms of timeless and purely formal principles. For the first one hundred and fifty years evolution was—and was seen to be—a pseudoscience. It was a vision of the organic world that emerged simply because living things were viewed through the lens of an ideology about the cultural and social world. The second major change in the status of evolutionary thinking came around 1930 when Darwinian selection was brought together fruitfully with the newly developed Mendelian (later molecular) genetics.

In this chapter, the author considers philosophical questions about methodological naturalism (MN). Among intelligent design (ID) supporters “science” is commonly understood to refer to the totality of all that is true about nature. That God created the world is certainly part of that truth. Philosophers of science have long discussed the “demarcation problem,” by which they refer to the attempt to draw a clear line between science and other sorts of inquiry. In this regard it has been suggested that science must adhere to the MN principle. It is claimed that although the line between science and nonscience is sometimes blurry, an invocation of supernatural entities nonetheless places you automatically on the wrong side of it. The term “methodological” indicates that naturalistic presumptions are a matter of scientific practice only. The author discusses the arguments of Robert Pennock in defense of MN. He also comments on the conflict between the empirical realities of nature and deeply held notions about God.

It’s altogether too easy to reduce all method in science to a simple algorithm. Hypothesize, deduce (or predict), test, evaluate, conclude. It seems like a handy formula for authority. “The” Scientific Method (expressed in this way) haunts the introductions of textbooks, lab report guidelines, and science fair standards. Yet it is a poor model for learning about method in science. One might endorse instead teaching about the scientist’s toolbox. Science draws on a suite of methods, not just one. The methods also include model building, analogy, pattern recognition, induction, blind search and selection, raw data harvesting, computer simulation, experimental tinkering, chance, and (yes) play, among others. The toolbox concept remedies two major problems in the conventional view. First, it credits the substantial work—scientific work—in developing concepts or hypotheses. Science is creative. Even to pursue the popular strategy of falsification, one must first have imaginative conjectures. We need to foster such creative thinking skills among students. Second, the toolbox view supports many means for finding evidence—some direct, some indirect, some experimental, some observational, some statistical, some based on controls, some on similarity relationships, some on elaborate thought experiments, and so on. Again, students should be encouraged to think about evidence and argument broadly. Consider just a few historical examples. First, note Watson and Crick’s landmark model of DNA. It was just that: a model. They drew on data already available. They also played with cardboard templates of nucleotide bases. Yes, their hypothesis of semiconservative replication was eventually tested by Meselson and Stahl—later. But even that involved enormous experimental creativity (essay 4). Consider, too, Mendel’s discoveries in inheritance (essay 22). Mendel did not test just seven traits of pea plants, cleverly chosen in advance (as the story is often told). Rather, he seems to have followed twenty-two varieties exhibiting fifteen traits, hoping for patterns to emerge. He ultimately abandoned those varieties whose results he called confusing. Nobelist Thomas Hunt Morgan, in Mendel’s wake, did not discover sex linkage through any formal hypothesis about inheritance.

A message of alarm arrives from your cousins: What do you know about the science of “fracking”? Fracking is a way to extract oil and gas. It could potentially generate lots of welcome income in their impoverished rural community—while supplying energy domestically. But possibly dangerous chemicals are injected into the earth and collect in waste ponds. Some residents are worrying about contaminated groundwater. It’s potentially quite frightening. But also confusing. Your cousins seek your perspective. Such a scenario seems to epitomize what “scientific literacy” is all about: being able to interpret scientific claims that inform personal and social decision-making (Figure 13.1). How would a typical citizen or consumer approach this case? Probably search online. Wikipedia. Google. Quick, informative, apparently authoritative answers. Maybe worth investing a half hour of effort, at most. Delving into the Internet, one can easily find many specialized websites describing how fracking works (energytomorrow.org; fracfocus.org; hydraulic­fracturing.com). They are apparently quite frank about safety issues, which they seem to address fully, including with an impressive quote from a former head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Yet from a more informed perspective, one may find that the genuine facts are also mixed with a lot of questionable claims and spurious “evidence.” A lot is left out. The incompleteness betrays bias. The take- home lesson? What the average citizen or consumer likely interprets as sound science, may not be. Ultimately, good science diverges from what counts as good science in the public realm. Here, the challenge is being able to distinguish trustworthy science from junk and industry propaganda. Ironically, knowledge of scientific concepts—the primary stuff one learns in school science classes—is of marginal value. One might thus doubt a pervasive principle (the sacred bovine on this occasion) that in fostering scientific literacy, one should focus primarily on the “raw” science itself, while remaining aloof to the cultural politics of science. Functional scientific literacy includes understanding the media contexts through which science is conveyed—and sometimes misconveyed.

This chapter surveys several possible versions of scientism and argues that most of them are false. It also suggests that its most obvious motivation, empiricism in either scientism’s classical or positivistic guise, has little to recommend itself. The chapter then homes in on a more moderate version of scientism: the idea that when any nonscientific belief comes into conflict with a scientific belief, it is always the scientific belief that should prevail. This form of scientism, too, fails, for it can be reasonable to hang on to Christian belief even when it fits ill with scientific orthodoxy. Moderate scientism doesn’t appear moderate on closer inspection, for it implies that Christian belief is false. The right way to think about things is that science is a wonderful institution and a wonderful source of knowledge or warranted belief, but it is not our only source of knowledge about ourselves and our world.