demarcation philosophy of science

7/29/2019 Demarcation Philosophy of science

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PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

DEMARCATION

Philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods, implications ofscience, and

with the use and merit of science. This discipline sometimes overlaps, when it explores whether scientific

results comprise a study oftruth.

DemarcationThe demarcation problem in the philosophy of science is about how to distinguish between science and

nonscience, and more specifically, between science and pseudoscience (a theory or method doubtfully or

mistakenly held to be scientific). The debate continues after over a century of dialogue among philosophers of

science and scientists in various fields, and despite broad agreement on the basics ofscientific method.

The demarcation problem is the philosophical problem of determining what types of hypotheses should be

considered scientific and what types should be considered pseudoscientific or non-scientific. It also concerns

itself with the ongoing struggle between science and religion, in particular the question about which elements of

religious doctrine can and should be subjected to scientific scrutiny. This is one of the central topics of the

philosophy of science, and it has never been fully resolved.

Ancient Greek ScienceAn 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.

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

(passionate argument) for science was an insistence on a clear and definite presentation of arguments, rejecting

the imagery, analogy, and myth of the old wisdom. 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 logicaldemonstration, and one must identify the universals which 'inhere' in the particulars of sense.

Criteria for Demarcation:

Logical Positivismalso known as Verificationism

Held that only statements about empirical observations and formal logical propositions are meaningful

and that statements which are not derived in this manner (including religious

and metaphysical statements) are by nature meaningless.

The Viennese philosophers who introduced the positivist paradigm effectively laid the groundwork forthe modern philosophy of science and one of its most important strands of thought. The early Positivists

favored a rather strict approach to the demarcation and strongly affirmed the empirical nature of science,

meaning that questions that cannot be empirically verified or falsified are irrelevant to scientific thought

By the late 1970s, its ideas were so generally recognized to be seriously defective.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_methodhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sciencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_sciencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sciencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudosciencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_sciencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_sciencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientisthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sciencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_methodhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Corpus#Epistemology_and_the_scientific_status_of_medicinehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotlehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterior_Analyticshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterior_Analyticshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verificationismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verificationismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_knowledgehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysicshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysicshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_knowledgehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verificationismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterior_Analyticshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotlehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Corpus#Epistemology_and_the_scientific_status_of_medicinehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_methodhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sciencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientisthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_sciencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_sciencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudosciencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sciencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_sciencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sciencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method


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Falsifiability

Proposed by Karl Popper. In his monumental book, The Logic of Scientific Discovery Karl Popper

proposed the idea that scientific hypotheses must be falsifiable; unfalsifiable hypotheses should be

considered pseudoscience. Popper's emphasis on falsifiability changed the way scientists viewed the

demarcation problem, and his impact on philosophy of science was enormous.

Popper's demarcation criterion has been criticized both for excluding legitimate science and for giving

some pseudosciences the status of being scientific.

Postpositivism Thomas Kuhn, an American historian and philosopher of science, is often connected with what has been

called postpositivism.

In 1962, Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which depicted the development of the

basic natural sciences in an innovative way. According to Kuhn, the sciences do not uniformly progress

strictly by scientific method. Rather, there are two fundamentally different phases of scientific

development in the sciences. In the first phase, scientists work within a paradigm (set of accepted

beliefs). When the foundation of the paradigm weakens and new theories and scientific methods begin to

replace it, the next phase of scientific discovery takes place. Kuhn believes that scientific progressthais, progress from one paradigm to anotherhas no logical reasoning. He undermines science as a whole

by arguing that what is considered science changes throughout history in such a way that there is noobjective way (outside of time or place) to demarcate a scientific belief from a pseudoscientific belief.

Science, Kuhn argues, is like politics: institutions believe that certain ways are better than others at

different points throughout history; however, it is impossible to be more or less certain of our basic

assumptions about the world. Within a democracy (a specific political paradigm) there can be progress

an economy can grow, schools can be built, and people can be given healthcare. However, if a

revolution occurs and the country becomes socialist, the government is not inherently better or worse

than before, but simply begins to follow a different set of assumptions.

Paradigm shift

A paradigm shift is a phenomenon described by philosopher Thomas

Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn posited a process to explain the persistence of incorrect ideas, and

the seemingly rapid and sudden abandonment of these ideas when they finally

are rejected.

People tend to believe in what they know, and science is basically

conservative. A current "paradigm" or theory is difficult to dislodge. It takes

either a large volume of evidence, or a particularly powerful single piece of

evidence to overturn major scientific theories (scientific revolution). When this

occurs, it is called a "paradigm shift".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhnhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sciencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_sciencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postpositivismhttp://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Philosopherhttp://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhnhttp://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhnhttp://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Theoryhttp://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Theoryhttp://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhnhttp://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhnhttp://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Philosopherhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postpositivismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_sciencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sciencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn


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Lakatos' research programs

Imre Lakatos combined elements of Popper and Kuhn's philosophies with his concept of research

programs. Programs that succeed at predicting novel facts are scientific, while ones that fail

ultimately lapse into pseudoscience.

NOMA

The concept of Non-overlapping Magisteria is a relatively recent attempt at proposing a cleardemarcation between science and religion. It explicitly restricts science to its naturalistic foundations,

meaning that no conclusions about supernatural phenomena like gods may be drawn from within the

confines of science.

Rejection of the Problem

Some philosophers have rejected the idea of the demarcation problem, such as Larry Laudan. Others like

Susan Haack, while not rejecting the problem wholesale, argue that a misleading emphasis has been

placed on the problem that results in getting stuck in arguments over definitions rather than evidence.

Laudan Larry Laudanconcluded, after examining various historical attempts to establish a demarcation criterion

that "philosophy has failed to deliver the goods" in its attempts to distinguish science from non-

scienceto distinguish science from pseudoscience. None of the past attempts would be accepted by a

majority of philosophers nor, in his view, should they be accepted by them or by anyone else. He stated

that many well-founded beliefs are not scientific and, conversely, many scientific conjectures are not

well-founded.

3 Major Reasons why Demarcation is sometimes difficult:

science changes over time,

science is heterogeneous and;

established science itself is not free of the defects characteristic of pseudoscience

Criteria based on scientific progress

The purpose of demarcations

To be continued.

As to the supposed 'conflict'...between science and religion, no such conflict should

exist because each subject has a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching

authorit and these ma isteria do not overla .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Laudanhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Laudanhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Laudan

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