(2017-10-15, 03:41 AM)Laird Wrote: The most interesting part of it for me was that with which I engaged with Linda above: the question of whether science can be adequately demarcated from other intellectual activity, and if so, how. Henry Bauer's suggestion that "there is no workable process or reasoning by which science can be distinguished from non-science" is extremely challenging and provocative.
He does quote that view with approval, and he ends by saying "there is no satisfactory definition of science and no objective way to distinguish it from other things".
But he also says there is an empirical way of demarcating science from non-science and pseudo science:
The scientific consensus at any given time determines what is science and what is not. There are three things science deals in: methods, facts, theories. The scientific consensus accepts as science anything that is orthodox in all three aspects. When one of them is unorthodox but eventually becomes accepted, that counts as a “scientific revolution”: say, new facts or phenomena (X-rays, radioactivity) or a new theory (relativity; continental drift). When TWO aspects are unorthodox, it is what Gunther Stent called “premature” and the scientific consensus leaves it in limbo, sometimes for a long time (Mendel's laws of heredity; Wegener's continental drift, both in limbo for several decades. When all THREE aspects are unorthodox, the scientific consensus says it's wrong, pseudo-science, say the Loch Ness Monster.
However, I'm afraid the more I look at that paragraph the less I understand it.