The Demarcation Problem

What is the demarcation problem?

I want to discuss an acute problem which philosophers of science have to face. The question it self is quite simple. You don't have to be genius to understand the question, but the answer to this question is far from simple.

The question put simply would read something like this:

What is the difference between science and non-science?

Or

What is science?

If you ask this question perhaps to a school going kid, you will probably get a good and clear cut answer, Physics, Chemistry and Biology are sciences, [also perhaps mathematics also?]. Also the

perhaps this is the view not only school going kids but their teachers also feel and so do practicing scientists.

Most of the lay people are afraid of science and scientists. The very idea of science is mystical and scientists are seen as the worshippers of the nature itself. This is the common image which is also portrayed in the media, [so it is popular or it is the other way round?]. In the movies scientists are [if they are not the protagonists] shown as causing almost the end of the world, or having no hearts but for the subject of their study. This is the label of evil genius which has been put on them. The list of examples would be endless. But to give a few of my own favorite ones are as under:

Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy in Batman and Robin

And Mike Myers as Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers series

This can be easily seen that the public opinion about science is not what can be called good. Another thing to add here, if we in general see that there is an attribute scientific to any thing then the thing is has to be rational, logical and something that can be relied upon. Take for example the warning which every cigarette smoker reads but ignores, this warning is supposed to be `scientific' so that you have to take it seriously, no bullshit here, this is what scientists say. This is The Truth, with a capital T. All these concepts are what I call the traditional concepts in Philosophy of Science [PoS hereafter], have a root in the beginning of the 20th century.

What is the point of bringing all this up in an philosophical discussion? Wait, what we will see is the fact that the things just mentioned have a very deep root in philosophy. What we want to do is to explicate this root.

We start our discussion with the so called modern era of the philosophy, which was mostly in the last century. In this era a group of philosophers known as the Vienna Circle presented the first dominant view point, which persisted till the first half of the century.

But this will be in another post....