Philosophy of Science
There has been some decrease in interest in the demarcation problem in recent years. Part of the problem is that many suspect that it is an intractable problem, since so many previous attempts have come up short. For example, many obvious examples of pseudoscience have been shown to be falsifiable, or verifiable, or revisable. Therefore many of the previously proposed demarcation criteria have not been judged as particularly reliable.
Thagard has proposed another set of principles to try to overcome these difficulties. According to Thagard's method, a theory is not scientific if:
- It has been less progressive than alternative theories over a long period of time, and faces many unsolved problems; but
- The community of practitioners makes little attempt to develop the theory towards solutions of the problems, shows no concern for attempts to evaluate the theory in relation to others, and is selective in considering confirmations and disconfirmations.
Read more about this topic: Paul Thagard
Famous quotes containing the words philosophy of, philosophy and/or science:
“The philosophy of action for action, power for the sake of power, had become an established orthodoxy. “Thou has conquered, O go-getting Babbitt.””
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“A philosophy can and must be worked out with the greatest rigour and discipline in the details, but can ultimately be founded on nothing but faith: and this is the reason, I suspect, why the novelties in philosophy are only in elaboration, and never in fundamentals.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)