Demarcation problem

The demarcation problem in the philosophy of science and epistemology is about how to distinguish between science and non-science, including between science, pseudoscience, and other products of human activity, like art and literature, and beliefs. The debate continues after over two millennia of dialogue among philosophers of science and scientists in various fields, and despite a broad agreement on the basics of the scientific method.Aristotle described at length what was involved in having scientific knowledge of something. To be scientific, he said, one must deal with causes, one must use logical demonstration, and one must identify the universals which 'inhere' in the particulars of sense. But above all, to have science one must have apodictic certainty. It is the last feature which, for Aristotle, most clearly distinguished the scientific way of knowing.'The problem of finding a criterion which would enable us to distinguish between the empirical sciences on the one hand, and mathematics and logic as well as 'metaphysical' systems on the other, I call the problem of demarcation.'Popper's demarcation criterion has been criticized both for excluding legitimate science… and for giving some pseudosciences the status of being scientific… According to Larry Laudan (1983, 121), it 'has the untoward consequence of countenancing as 'scientific' every crank claim which makes ascertainably false assertions'. Astrology, rightly taken by Popper as an unusually clear example of a pseudoscience, has in fact been tested and thoroughly refuted… Similarly, the major threats to the scientific status of psychoanalysis, another of his major targets, do not come from claims that it is untestable but from claims that it has been tested and failed the tests.Kuhn's view of demarcation is most clearly expressed in his comparison of astronomy with astrology. Since antiquity, astronomy has been a puzzle-solving activity and therefore a science. If an astronomer's prediction failed, then this was a puzzle that he could hope to solve for instance with more measurements or with adjustments of the theory. In contrast, the astrologer had no such puzzles since in that discipline 'particular failures did not give rise to research puzzles, for no man, however skilled, could make use of them in a constructive attempt to revise the astrological tradition'… Therefore, according to Kuhn, astrology has never been a science.Every student in public or private takes several years of science, but only a small fraction of them pursue careers in the sciences. We teach the rest of them so much science so that they will appreciate what it means to be scientific – and, hopefully, become scientifically literate and apply some of those lessons in their lives. For such students, the myth of a bright line of demarcation is essential.Demarcation remains essential for the enormously high political stakes of climate-change denial and other anti-regulatory fringe doctrines.:225 The demarcation problem in the philosophy of science and epistemology is about how to distinguish between science and non-science, including between science, pseudoscience, and other products of human activity, like art and literature, and beliefs. The debate continues after over two millennia of dialogue among philosophers of science and scientists in various fields, and despite a broad agreement on the basics of the scientific method. An early attempt at demarcation can be seen in the efforts of Greek natural philosophers and medical practitioners to distinguish their methods and their accounts of nature from the mythological or mystical accounts of their predecessors and contemporaries. In Charmides Plato discusses a 'science of science'. Although the subject in the dialogue is epistemological, it is an early version of the demarcation problem. G. E. R. Lloyd notes that there was a sense in which the groups engaged in various forms of inquiry into nature set out to 'legitimate their own positions,' laying 'claim to a new kind of wisdom ... that purported to yield superior enlightenment, even superior practical effectiveness.' Medical writers in the Hippocratic tradition maintained that their discussions were based on necessary demonstrations, a theme developed by Aristotle in his Posterior Analytics. One element of this polemic for science was an insistence on a clear and unequivocal presentation of arguments, rejecting the imagery, analogy, and myth of the old wisdom. Some of their claimed naturalistic explanations of phenomena have been found to be quite fanciful, with little reliance on actual observations. Logical positivism, formulated in the 1920s, held that only statements about matters of fact or logical relations between concepts are meaningful. All other statements lack sense and are labelled 'metaphysics' (see the verifiability theory of meaning also known as verificationism). According to A.J. Ayer, metaphysicians make statements which claim to have 'knowledge of a reality which the phenomenal world.' Ayer, a member of the Vienna Circle and a noted English logical-positivist, argues that making any statements about the world beyond one's immediate sense-perception is impossible. This is because even metaphysician's first premises will necessarily begin with observations made through sense-perception. Ayer implies that the line of demarcation is characterized as the place at which statements become 'factually significant.' To be 'factually significant,' a statement must be verifiable. In order to be verifiable, the statement must be verifiable in the observable world, or facts that can be induced from 'derived experience.' This is referred to as the 'verifiability' criterion. This distinction between science, which in the view of the Vienna Circle possessed empirically verifiable statements, and what they pejoratively called 'metaphysics', which lacked such statements, can be seen as representing another aspect of the demarcation problem. Logical positivism is often discussed in the context of the demarcation between science and non-science or pseudoscience. However, 'The verificationist proposals had the aim of solving a distinctly different demarcation problem, namely that between science and metaphysics.'