demarcation criteria

Look here: A physicist who seems to understand the demarcation problem proceeds to demarcate “pseudoscience” on his own authority. Alex Wellerstein reviewed a book on pseudoscience that explicitly warns about the challenge of differentiating between science and pseudoscience. Wellerstein, of the Center for the History of Physics, American Institute of Physics in Maryland, wrote in the Oct. 12 issue of Science this summary of what Michael D. Gordin said about the “demarcation problem” in his new book, The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe. Velikovsky’s cosmic catastrophism is, for Gordin, also a case study on the famously intractable demarcation problem, the difficulty of coming up with firm criteria for what separates science from nonscience, or Read More ›

If you’ll give me the Mic, I won’t Rob much of your time while Penning this short Ruse. In the Dover trial, Robert Pennock is the Plaintiffs’ expert on the philosophy of science, and Pennock pushed hard for a definition of science which is essentially “methodological naturalism.” This is eerily similar to the 1982 case, McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, 529 F.Supp. 1255 (E.D. Ark) over the teaching of young earth creationism, where Darwinist Philosopher of Science Michael Ruse testified that science was defined as follows: Ruse’s definition incorporates the precise methodological naturalism advocated by Pennock in Ruse’s requirements (1) and (2). Ruse’s definition was also subsequently accepted by Judge Overton and etched into Eastern Arkansas law. But we Read More ›