A fringe theory is an idea or a collection of ideas that departs significantly from the prevailing or mainstream view. It can include work done to the appropriate level of scholarship in a field of study but only supported by a minority of practitioners, to more dubious work. Examples include pseudoscience (ideas that purport to be scientific theories but have little or no scientific support), conspiracy theories, unproven claims about alternative medicine, pseudohistory and so forth. Some fringe theories may in a stricter sense be hypotheses, conjectures, or speculations.
Read more about Fringe Theory: Fringe Science, Fringe History, Fringe Archaeology, Conspiracy Theories
Famous quotes containing the words fringe and/or theory:
“In the Japanese
tongue of the
mind’s eye one
two syllable word
tells of
the fringe of rain....”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)