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l over outcomes to belong to find the world benevolent and to maintain one s self esteem are often more easily fulfilled by pseudoscience than by scientific information furthermore pseudoscientific explanations are generally not analyzed rationally but instead experientially operating within a different set of rules compared to rational thinking experiential thinking regards an explanation as valid if the explanation is personally functional satisfying and sufficient offering a description of the world that may be more personal than can be provided by science and reducing the amount of potential work involved in understanding complex events and outcomes 105 anyone searching for psychological help that is based in science should seek a licensed therapist whose techniques are not based in pseudoscience hupp and santa maria provide a complete explanation of what that person should look for 106 education and scientific literacy there is a trend to believe in pseudoscience more than scientific evidence 107 some people believe the prevalence of pseudoscientific beliefs is due to widespread scientific illiteracy 108 individuals lacking scientific literacy are more susceptible to wishful thinking since they are likely to turn to immediate gratification powered by system 1 our default operating system which requires little to no effort this system encourages one to accept the conclusions they believe and reject the ones they do not further analysis of complex pseudoscientific phenomena require system 2 which follows rules compares objects along multiple dimensions and weighs options these two systems have several other differences which are further discussed in the dual process theory 109 the scientific and secular systems of morality and meaning are generally unsatisfying to most people humans are by nature a forward minded species pursuing greater avenues of happiness and satisfaction but we are all too frequently willing to grasp at unrealistic promises of a better life 110 psychology has much to discuss about pseudoscience thinking as it is the illusory perceptions of causality and effectiveness of numerous individuals that needs to be illuminated research suggests that illusionary thinking happens in most people when exposed to certain circumstances such as reading a book an advertisement or the testimony of others are the basis of pseudoscience beliefs it is assumed that illusions are not unusual and given the right conditions illusions are able to occur systematically even in normal emotional situations one of the things pseudoscience believers quibble most about is that academic science usually treats them as fools minimizing these illusions in the real world is not simple 111 to this aim designing evidence based educational programs can be effective to help people identify and reduce their own illusions 111 boundaries with science classification philosophers classify types of knowledge in english the word science is used to indicate specifically the natural sciences and related fields which are called the social sciences 112 different philosophers of science may disagree on the exact limits for example is mathematics a formal science that is closer to the empirical ones or is pure mathematics closer to the philosophical study of logic and therefore not a science 113 but all agree that all of the ideas that are not scientific are non scientific the large category of non science includes all matters outside the natural and social sciences such as the study of history metaphysics religion art and the humanities 112 dividing the category again unscientific claims are a subset of the large category of non scientific claims this category specifically includes all matters that are directly opposed to good science 112 un science includes both bad science such as an error made in a good faith attempt at learning something about the natural world and pseudoscience 112 thus pseudoscience is a subset of un science and un science in turn is subset of non science science is also distinguishable from revelation theology or spirituality in that it offers insight into the physical world obtained by empirical research and testing 114 115 the most notable disputes concern the evolution of living organisms the idea of common descent the geologic history of the earth the formation of the solar system and the origin of the universe 116 systems of belief that derive from divine or inspired knowledge are not considered pseudoscience if they do not claim either to be scientific or to overturn well established science moreover some specific religious claims such as the power of intercessory prayer to heal the sick although they may be based on untestable beliefs can be tested by the scientific method some statements and common beliefs of popular science may not meet the criteria of science pop science may blur the divide between science and pseudoscience among the general public and may also involve science fiction 117 indeed pop science is disseminated to and can also easily emanate from persons not accountable to scientific methodology and expert peer review if claims of a given field can be tested experimentally and standards are upheld it is not pseudoscience regardless of how odd astonishing or counterintuitive those claims are if claims made are inconsistent with existing experimental results or established theory but the method is sound caution should be used since science consists of testing hypotheses which may turn out to be false in such a case the work may be better described as ideas that are not yet generally accepted protoscience is a term sometimes used to describe a hypothesis that has not yet been tested adequately by the scientific method but which is otherwise consistent with existing science or which where inconsistent offers reasonable account of the inconsistency it may also describe the transition from a body of practical knowledge into a scientific field 30 philosophy main article demarcation problem karl popper stated it is insufficient to distinguish science from pseudoscience or from metaphysics such as the philosophical question of what existence means by the criterion of rigorous adherence to the empirical method which is essentially inductive based on observation or experimentation 48 he proposed a method to distinguish between genuine empirical nonempirical or even pseudoempirical methods the latter case was exemplified by astrology which appeals to observation and experimentation while it had empirical evidence based on observation on horoscopes and biographies it crucially failed to use acceptable scientific standards 48 popper proposed falsifiability as an important criterion in distinguishing science from pseudoscience to demonstrate this point popper 48 gave two cases of human behavior and typical explanations from sigmund freud and alfred adler s theories that of a man who pushes a child into the water with the intention of drowning it and that of a man who sacrifices his life in an attempt to save the child 48 from freud s perspective the first man would have suffered from psychological repression probably originating from an oedipus complex whereas the second man had attained sublimation from adler s perspective the first and second man suffered from feelings of inferiority and had to prove himself which drove him to commit the crime or in the second case drove him to rescue the child popper was not able to find any counterexamples of human behavior in which the behavior could not be explained in the terms of adler s or freud s theory popper argued 48 it was that the observation always fitted or confirmed the theory which rather than being its strength was actually its weakness in contrast popper 48 gave the example of einstein s gravitational theory which predicted light must be attracted by heavy bodies such as the sun precisely as material bodies were attracted 48 following from this stars closer to the sun would appear to have moved a small distance away from the sun and away from each other this prediction was particularly striking to popper because it involved considerable risk the brightness of the sun prevented this effect from being observed under normal circumstances so photographs had to be taken during an eclipse and compared to photographs taken at night popper states if observation shows that the predicted effect is definitely absent then the theory is simply refuted 48 popper summed up his criterion for the scientific status of a theory as depending on its falsifiability refutability or testability paul r thagard used astrology as a case study to distinguish science from pseudoscience and proposed principles and criteria to delineate them 118 first astrology has not progressed in that it has not been updated nor added any explanatory power since ptolemy second it has ignored outstanding problems such as the precession of equinoxes in astronomy third alternative theories of personality and behavior have grown progressively to encompass explanations of phenomena which astrology statically attributes to heavenly forces fourth astrologers have remained uninterested in furthering the theory to deal with outstanding problems or in critically evaluating the theory in relation to other theories thagard intended this criterion to be extended to areas other than astrology he believed it would delineate as pseudoscientific such practices as witchcraft and pyramidology while leaving physics chemistry astronomy geoscience biology and archaeology in the realm of science 118 in the philosophy and history of science imre lakatos stresses the social and political importance of the demarcation problem the normative methodological problem of distinguishing between science and pseudoscience his distinctive historical analysis of scientific methodology based on research programmes suggests scientists regard the successful theoretical prediction of stunning novel facts such as the return of halley s comet or the gravitational bending of light rays as what demarcates good scientific theories from pseudo scientific and degenerate theories and in spite of all scientific theories being forever confronted by an ocean of counterexamples 8 lakatos offers a novel fallibilist analysis of the development of newton s celestial dynamics his favourite historical example of his methodology and argues in light of this historical turn that his account answers for certain inadequacies in those of karl popper and thomas kuhn 8 nonetheless lakatos did recognize the force of kuhn s historical criticism of popper all important theories have been surrounded by an ocean of anomalies which on a falsificationist view would require the rejection of the theory outright lakatos sought to reconcile the rationalism of popperian falsificationism with what seemed to be its own refutation by history 119 many philosophers have tried to solve the problem of demarcation in the following terms a statement constitutes knowledge if sufficiently many people believe it sufficiently strongly but the history of thought shows us that many people were totally committed to absurd beliefs if the strengths of beliefs were a hallmark of knowledge we should have to rank some tales about demons angels devils and of heaven and hell as knowledge scientists on the other hand are very sceptical even of their best theories newton s is the most powerful theory science has yet produced but newton himself never believed that bodies attract each other at a distance so no degree of commitment to beliefs makes them knowledge indeed the hallmark of scientific behaviour is a certain scepticism even towards one s most cherished theories blind commitment to a theory is not an intellectual virtue it is an intellectual crime thus a statement may be pseudoscientific even if it is eminently plausible and everybody believes in it and it may be scientifically valuable even if it is unbelievable and nobody believes in it a theory may even be of supreme scientific value even if no one understands it let alone believes in it 8 imre lakatos science and pseudoscience the boundary between science and pseudoscience is disputed and difficult to determine analytically even after more than a century of study by philosophers of science and scientists and despite some basic agreements on the fundamentals of the scientific method 45 120 121 the concept of pseudoscience rests on an understanding that the scientific method has been misrepresented or misapplied with respect to a given theory but many philosophers of science maintain that different kinds of methods are held as appropriate across different fields and different eras of human history according to lakatos the typical descriptive unit of great scientific achievements is not an isolated hypothesis but a powerful problem solving machinery which with the help of sophisticated mathematical techniques digests anomalies and even turns them into positive evidence 8 to popper pseudoscience uses induction to generate theories and only performs experiments to seek to verify them to popper falsifiability is what determines the scientific status of a theory taking a historical approach kuhn observed that scientists did not follow popper s rule and might ignore falsifying data unless overwhelming to kuhn puzzle solving within a paradigm is science lakatos attempted to resolve this debate by suggesting history shows that science occurs in research programmes competing according to how progressive they are the leading idea of a programme could evolve driven by its heuristic to make predictions that can be supported by evidence feyerabend claimed that lakatos was selective in his examples and the whole history of science shows there is no universal rule of scientific method and imposing one on the scientific community impedes progress 122 david newbold and julia roberts an analysis of the demarcation problem in science and its application to therapeutic touch theory in international journal of nursing practice vol 13 laudan maintained that the demarcation between science and non science was a pseudo problem preferring to focus on the more general distinction between reliable and unreliable knowledge 123 feyerabend regards lakatos s view as being closet anarchism disguised as methodological rationalism feyerabend s claim was not that standard methodological rules should never be obeyed but rather that sometimes progress is made by abandoning them in the absence of a generally accepted rule there is a need for alternative methods of persuasion according to feyerabend galileo employed stylistic and rhetorical techniques to convince his reader while he also wrote in italian rather than latin and directed his arguments to those already temperamentally inclined to accept them 119 alexander bird the historical turn in the philosophy of science in routledge companion to the philosophy of science politics health and education political implications the d...
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