I think that if a field of inquiry, or a theory if you will, is to be called "pseudoscience," then it has to be explained by what criteria it is distinct from "real" science or protoscience. And then the rebuttal from those who believe it is real science must be presented as well.
The argument for creationism (which I don't buy) is that the fossil record and other physical evidence leaves unanswered questions in the "theory" of evolution. Hence, they argue, you can't reject creationism as a valid form of scientific inquiry. The fallacy is that if one explanation doesn't explain everything, then all other explanations are equally valid.
I think it is important to have an article about pseudoscience, but it would be more interesting and readable, and less contentious, if we omitted examples altogether. Tom Cruise recently characterized psychiatry as a "pseudoscience" and would undoubtedly list it as an example here. There'd be a big argument, and the article wouldn't improve much.
On Fri, Jul 01, 2005 at 05:24:49AM -0400, Leif Knutsen wrote:
The argument for creationism (which I don't buy) is that the fossil record and other physical evidence leaves unanswered questions in the "theory" of evolution. Hence, they argue, you can't reject creationism as a valid form of scientific inquiry. The fallacy is that if one explanation doesn't explain everything, then all other explanations are equally valid.
The argument for (Christian) creationism is "The Bible says so." That is where creationists ground their beliefs -- not in the fossils; not in radiocarbon dating; not in taxonomy; not in molecular biology; but first and foremost in the Bible. Creationism is a profoundly and centrally religious belief; trying to understand it as an attempt at scientific explanation is not going to get you very far.
I do not think you will find a creationist who says, "I believe in creationism _because_ the fossil record leaves unanswered questions in the theory of evolution." After all, if someone merely doubted evolution they would have no particular reason to jump on the bandwagon of creationism. They could instead believe in a steady-state Earth (uncreated and eternal), or simply say, "I don't know how the species of Earth came to be."
Creationism cannot be understood as simply "doubting evolution", as if there were only two possibilities. Creationism is not simply an absence of belief in evolution; it is, rather, an asserted belief in creation. It is also not a belief rooted in science, in evidence or observation, but rather in faith. It is a fundamentally religious belief; that is, it is directly tied up in the believer's belief in and concept of the divine.
For these reasons, I do not think that we can accurately describe creationism itself as "a form of scientific inquiry" of any sort -- neither scientific nor pseudoscientific. The religious beliefs themselves are no more an attempt at science than are religious beliefs in karma, angels, salvation, or miracles.
However, it sometimes happens that people who have particular beliefs make up "science-ish" arguments in favor of them. This is not unique to religious beliefs -- political and nationalistic beliefs sometimes attract this very same behavior. This is where pseudoscience comes in. The pseudoscientific arguments conjured up to defend creationism are usually called "creation science" or "intelligent design"; and they are every bit as pseudoscientific as Lysenkoism.
On Jul 1, 2005, at 10:24 AM, Karl A. Krueger wrote:
Creationism cannot be understood as simply "doubting evolution", as if there were only two possibilities. Creationism is not simply an absence of belief in evolution; it is, rather, an asserted belief in creation. It is also not a belief rooted in science, in evidence or observation, but rather in faith. It is a fundamentally religious belief; that is, it is directly tied up in the believer's belief in and concept of the divine.
For these reasons, I do not think that we can accurately describe creationism itself as "a form of scientific inquiry" of any sort -- neither scientific nor pseudoscientific. The religious beliefs themselves are no more an attempt at science than are religious beliefs in karma, angels, salvation, or miracles.
However, it sometimes happens that people who have particular beliefs make up "science-ish" arguments in favor of them. This is not unique to religious beliefs -- political and nationalistic beliefs sometimes attract this very same behavior. This is where pseudoscience comes in. The pseudoscientific arguments conjured up to defend creationism are usually called "creation science" or "intelligent design"; and they are every bit as pseudoscientific as Lysenkoism.
Yes, exactly. Creationism in and of itself is not science or pseudoscience, but Creation Science is pseudoscience because it tries to sound like science without producing any testable predictions by which to disprove it. It is fundamentally faith masquerading as science.
Laurascudder
Leif Knutsen wrote:
I think that if a field of inquiry, or a theory if you will, is to be called "pseudoscience," then it has to be explained by what criteria it is distinct from "real" science or protoscience. And then the rebuttal from those who believe it is real science must be presented as well.
The argument for creationism (which I don't buy) is that the fossil record and other physical evidence leaves unanswered questions in the "theory" of evolution. Hence, they argue, you can't reject creationism as a valid form of scientific inquiry. The fallacy is that if one explanation doesn't explain everything, then all other explanations are equally valid.
"God created the universe," and "Creationism is a pseudoscience" are both hypotheses, and as such both should be subject to hypothesis testing. For a "sciense" to be a pseudoscience it must fall rigorously within a formal definition of the term. More simply put the fallacy is "If A implies B, then not A implies not B".
I think it is important to have an article about pseudoscience, but it would be more interesting and readable, and less contentious, if we omitted examples altogether.
Possibly. It's a reasonable suggestion, but avoids the problem that people put all manner of material under this heading. A strictly correct article based on the philosophy would satisfy the purists among us, and chase away everybody else on both sides of these arguments.
Ec
I don't think it's our place to debate the merits of such classification. Then it will be Creation biologists say, "Look, we can falsify this! Now can we not be pseudoscience?" and then someone over here saying, "Nyaahh, I don't buy it."
That's original research in my book. Hence I think it is better to say, "The majority of the mainstream scientific community considers creation science to be pseudoscience." And perhaps explain why.
That way, we don't have to rely on individual Wikipedian assessments of evidence, philosophy, etc. And it's also not *our* problem. Somebody complains, "But I don't think it is pseudoscience!" then we carefully say, "Well, that's great, but as you can see, it's not about what you and I think, it's about the scientific community writ at large."
As for Tom Cruise, he's not part of the mainstream scientific community. It can easily be noted on the [[Scientology]] page that they consider psychiatry to be pseudoscientific, but this is not a view shared by the mainstream medical community at all.
By making this about large community opinions -- which are not so impossible to source as one might at first think -- rather than individual evaluations, we punt the entire problem into a different domain of expertise. Which is where it should be in the first place.
How, you might ask, do we measure these things? For creation science, it is easy to cite large numbers of influential and well-regarded scientists who have classified as such (Stephen J. Gould is an easy one -- an expert in his field, universally regarded by scientists as a good spokesman for science on this question, etc.). For psychiatry, the fact that many major universities offer programs in psychiatry is a pretty good indication of its status in the academic medical community.
It only becomes contentious if we try to debate *why* Harvard and MIT have programs in evolutionary biology and not creationism and programs in psychiatry and debate whether or not *we think* they have such for good reasons.
FF
On 7/1/05, Leif Knutsen vyer@earthlink.net wrote:
I think that if a field of inquiry, or a theory if you will, is to be called "pseudoscience," then it has to be explained by what criteria it is distinct from "real" science or protoscience. And then the rebuttal from those who believe it is real science must be presented as well.
The argument for creationism (which I don't buy) is that the fossil record and other physical evidence leaves unanswered questions in the "theory" of evolution. Hence, they argue, you can't reject creationism as a valid form of scientific inquiry. The fallacy is that if one explanation doesn't explain everything, then all other explanations are equally valid.
I think it is important to have an article about pseudoscience, but it would be more interesting and readable, and less contentious, if we omitted examples altogether. Tom Cruise recently characterized psychiatry as a "pseudoscience" and would undoubtedly list it as an example here. There'd be a big argument, and the article wouldn't improve much. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l