THE PHILOSOPHY OF PSEUDOSCIENCE: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem

Edited by Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry

ISBN 10: 022605196X / ISBN 13: 9780226051963

Published by University of Chicago Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 2014

About this Item

Trade paperback is like new -- clean, no spine crease; internally fine, unmarked.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: THE PHILOSOPHY OF PSEUDOSCIENCE: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press, Chapel Hill, NC
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022605196X
• ISBN 13: 9780226051963
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Like New
• Seller catalogs:
  • Luther Martin

About this title

Synopsis

What sets the practice of rigorously tested, sound science apart from pseudoscience? In this volume, the contributors seek to answer this question, known to philosophers of science as “the demarcation problem.” This issue has a long history in philosophy, stretching as far back as the early twentieth century and the work of Karl Popper. But by the late 1980s, scholars in the field began to treat the demarcation problem as impossible to solve and futile to ponder. However, the essays that Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry have assembled in this volume make a rousing case for the unequivocal importance of reflecting on the separation between pseudoscience and sound science.
            Moreover, the demarcation problem is not a purely theoretical dilemma of mere academic interest: it affects parents’ decisions to vaccinate children and governments’ willingness to adopt policies that prevent climate change. Pseudoscience often mimics science, using the superficial language and trappings of actual scientific research to seem more respectable. Even a well-informed public can be taken in by such questionable theories dressed up as science. Pseudoscientific beliefs compete with sound science on the health pages of newspapers for media coverage and in laboratories for research funding. Now more than ever the ability to separate genuine scientific findings from spurious ones is vital, and The Philosophy of Pseudoscience provides ground for philosophers, sociologists, historians, and laypeople to make decisions about what science is or isn’t.  

About the Author

Massimo Pigliucci is professor of philosophy at the City University of New York. He has written many books, including Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk and, most recently, Answers for Aristotle: How Science and Philosophy Can Lead Us to a More Meaningful Life. Maarten Boudry is a postdoctoral fellow of the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research at Ghent University and wrote a dissertation on pseudoscience, Here Be Dragons: Exploring the Hinterland of Science.