Daring as it is to investigate the unknown, even more so it is to question the known. –Kaspar.
Exploring what we think we know can prove fruitful in reinforcing what we thought we knew and in dispelling discontinuities and errors. So, I believe this exercise has been in my case, especially with regard to the issue of Popper’s criteria of falsification. But, that is skipping a bit ahead. In compliance with Carroll, I will “Begin at the beginning,” but not necessarily “go on till [I] come to the end; then stop.” This topic is worthy of a report, if not a dissertation.
Perhaps because the question of “what is science” is a philosophical issue, complex, or, I think more likely, so much taken for granted that there are graduate research texts that do not even index the word (Creswell, 2002, Patton, 2001). Ironically, my copy of the Dictionary of Science (Mandel, 1969) offers no definition of "science."
A useful place to begin is with the history of the word “science.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary (O.E.D.) the etymology of “science” is as follows.
[a. F. science = Pr. sciensa, Sp. ciencia, Pg. sciencia, It. scienza, ad. L. scientia knowledge, f. scient-em, pr. pple. of scre to know.]
The selected O.E.D. definitions below map the evolution of the term “science” and distinguish between general and restricted uses.
“…2. a. Knowledge acquired by study; acquaintance with or mastery of any department of learning. Also pl. (a person's) various kinds of knowledge.
b. Trained skill. Now esp. (somewhat jocularly) with reference to pugilism (cf. 3c); also to horsemanship and other bodily exercises.
3. a. A particular branch of knowledge or study; a recognized department of learning.
In the Middle Ages, ‘the seven (liberal) sciences’ was often used synonymously with ‘the seven liberal arts’, for the group of studies comprised by the Trivium (Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric) and the Quadrivium (Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, Astronomy).
b. Contradistinguished from art: see ART n. 8. The distinction as commonly apprehended is that a science is concerned with theoretic truth, and an art with methods for effecting certain results. Sometimes, however, the term science is extended to denote a department of practical work which depends on the knowledge and conscious application of principles; an art, on the other hand, being understood to require merely knowledge of traditional rules and skill acquired by habit.
4. a. In a more restricted sense: A branch of study which is concerned either with a connected body of demonstrated truths or with observed facts systematically classified and more or less colligated by being brought under general laws, and which includes trustworthy methods for the discovery of new truth within its own domain.
b. with defining word. The many conflicting systems proposed in recent times for the classification of the sciences, and the need frequently arising (apart from any formal classification) for a common designation applicable to a group of sciences that are related by similarity of subject or method, have given currency to a large number of expressions in which the word science is qualified by an adj. The application of these collocations, so far as it is not obvious, is explained under the adjs. Among the most prominent of the adjs. designating particular classes of sciences are: abstract, concrete, biological, descriptive, exact, experimental, historical, mathematical, mechanical, moral, mixed, pure, natural, physical. Also with preceding n., as life science, and combined with a prefix, as bio-, geo-, neuroscience. (See under the first element.)
5. a. The kind of knowledge or of intellectual activity of which the various ‘sciences’ are examples. In early use, with reference to sense 3: What is taught in the schools or may be learned by study. In mod. use chiefly: The sciences (in sense 4) as distinguished from other departments of learning; scientific doctrine or investigation. Often with defining adj. as in 4b. In the 17th and 18th c. the notion now usually expressed by science was commonly expressed by philosophy.
b. In modern use, often treated as synonymous with ‘Natural and Physical Science’, and thus restricted to those branches of study that relate to the phenomena of the material universe and their laws, sometimes with implied exclusion of pure mathematics. This is now the dominant sense in ordinary use.”
Encyclopedia Britannica Online notes that, “Taken broadly as the progressive improvement of the understanding of nature, the intellectual enterprise of science originally formed an integral part of philosophy, and the two areas of inquiry have never finally separated. Little more than a hundred years ago, theoretical physics—concerned with the fundamental debate about physical nature—was still described as ‘natural philosophy,’ as distinguished from the two other chief divisions of abstract discussion, viz., moral philosophy and metaphysical philosophy—the latter including ontology, the study of the deepest nature of reality or being. In fact, only during the 20th century, following the professionalization and specialization of the natural sciences, did the philosophy of science become recognized as a separate discipline.”
While the O.E.D. definitions are interesting, they still do not get to the heart of the demarcation issue--what is not science? How does one distinguish between science and non-science? And, is this distinction a matter of perspective? Would a natural scientist disagree with a social scientist about the parameters of scientific inquiry?
The answer to the latter question seems to be “yes.” Maxwell (2004) in writing about qualitative inquiry addresses this very issue:
“The reemergence of a narrowly defined ‘scientifically based research’ that marginalizes qualitative approaches represents a major threat to qualitative research. A postmodern perspective not only challenges this essentialist definition of ‘science’ but also critiques tendencies of qualitative researchers to essentialize proponents of ‘science.’ These arguments raise the issue of dialogue across the differences between researchers working in different paradigms” (Maxwell, p. 35, 2004).
Fisher (2003) critically evaluates what he claims is “the often repeated maxim that fields of study are only as scientific as they are mathematical,” an idea which would seem to dismiss any science in qualitative research. While Möller (2003), a sociologist, merely emphasizes the systematic nature of the scientific method in what seems to be a very loose definition of the concept of science: “Science points to the application of systematic methods to obtain knowledge and the knowledge obtained by those methods (Henslin, 1999)…The term scientific research implies that a disciplined method of thinking is followed about social phenomena (e.g., order, change, poverty, etc.) in order to arrive at a better understanding of the world in which live…The term scientific method refers to ‘the building of a body of scientific knowledge through observation, experimentation, generalization, and verification” (Möller, Vurm, and Petr, p. 29-30, 2003).
Still and Dryden (2004) provide welcomed insight, elucidating the conundrum. They identify the philosopher Larry Laudan (1983), who “showed that it is impossible to arrive at a definition of science which will distinguish all scientific from all pseudosicientific or non-scientific statements” (Still & Dryden, 2004, p. 265). Still and Dryden rightly note that despite Laudan’s claim, serious discussions of the problem continue in psychology, psychotherapy, and medicine, however more impassioned than the discussions in the 1980’s, which were dominated by philosophers and sociologists. They link the effort to define science as something distinct from other activities to the goal of granting epistemic authority to science. “Inclusion or exclusion can determine the future of a discipline, and even its survival” (Still & Dryden, 2003, p. 267).
Still and Dryden trace the history of the demarcation effort, and in doing so, distinguish between what they call “two overlapping traditions of big and little pseudoscience” (p. 269). “Little pseudoscience” entails claims and ideas that may have a following for a period of time, but that are seen as bizarre and easily identified as non-scientific in retrospect (e.g., flying saucers, Lysenkoism, Orgonomy, Dianetics, ESP, medical quacks). Conversely, “big pseudoscience” is associated with the philosophical issue of demarcation, and includes Psychoanalysis, Marxism, Psychometrics and Biological Psychiatry, and historically, Astrology and Phrenology. Of note, among Martin Gardner's (1952) list of characteristics of pseudo-scientists is their isolation. "Most pseudo-scientists have a number of characteristics in common...; they work in almost total isolation from their colleagues" (Gardner, 1952, pp. 8 and 10).
Still and Dryden attribute the common use of the word “science” and an “implicit, [folk] belief in some form of unity” (p. 270) to the Unity of Science Movement that was associated with the Vienna Circle during the 1920’s and 1930’s.
“The word ‘pseudoscience’ emerged from the Vienna Circle and logical positivism associated with it. In English the prefix ‘pseudo’ was used to demarcate genuinely empirical statements from others. A pseudo-question was one to which there can be no clear answer, like ‘What is the meaning of life?’ (Passmore, 1966, p. 373). The intention behind the prefix was not always pejorative. Wittgenstein (1922, p. 169) referred to the propositions of mathematics as ‘pseudo-propositions’ without wishing to diminish them…This technical use of ‘pseudo’ was the background to the use of ‘pseudoscience’ in work by…Karl Popper..[to which has been] linked his criterion of falsifiability…” (Still & Dryden, 2003, p. 270-271).
Imre Lakatos (1970), who proposed a theory of scientific research programs, and like Popper, dismissed Marxism and Freudism as pseudosciences since, according to Lakatos, they do not predict new facts or lead to the discovery of new facts, and so are not progressive. Lakatos also questioned the benefit of statistics in the social sciences: he "wonders whether the function of statistical techniques in the social sciences is not primarily to provide a machinery for producing phoney collaboration and thereby a semblance of 'scientific progress' where, in fact, there is nothing but an increase in pseudo-intellectual garbage" (Lakatos, 1970, p. 176, cited by Still & Dryden, 2004, p. 274). Lakatos went as far as recommending legislation to control such "intellectual pollution" (Lakatos, 1970, p. 176).
The physict and philosoper Mario Blunge (1967) characterized pseudoscience as aiming to influence people rather than discovering reality and as lacking a self-correction mechanism. He described the doctrines of pseudoscience as being deficient in grounding in science and untested by experiment proper (Still & Dryden, 2004, p. 274). Still and Dryden note that these criteria are "general enough to include both psychoanalysis and dowsing" (ibid, p. 274).
References
Fisher, W. P., Jr. (2003, December 1). Mathematics, measurement, metaphor and metaphysics I. Implications for Method in Postmodern Science. Theory and Psychology, 13(6), 753-790. Abstract accessed online March 19, 2005 at http://tap.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/6/753
Mandel, S. (1969). Dictionary of science. New York: Dell.
Maxwell, J. A. (2004, February). Scientism, postmodernism, and dialogue across differences. Qualitative Inquiry, 10(1), 35-41.
Oxford English Dictionary Online. Accessed March 17, 2005.
Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research & evaluation methods, 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Still, A. and Dryden, W. (2004). The social psychology of "pseudoscience": A brief history. Journal of the Theory of Social Behavior, 34(3), 266-290.