PHIL 2240 Chapter Notes - Chapter 11: Pseudoscience, Falsifiability
29 Oct 2018
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Astrology is not a science, but astronomy is. But not all people who do science are scientists, some are amateurs. Creationism qua a putative scientific theory, is incompatible with evolutionary theory, as they cannot both be true. So is creationism science or pseudo-science: science vs pseudo science. Natural law simply refers to the laws of nature, creationism is not empirically testable. To say that a scientific theory must be fallible means not just that there could be empirical evidence which decisively shows that the view must be wrong. There is no such thing as the final word in science. Proponents of evolutionary theory endorse this view because it is the view that the scientific evidence supports. Epistemic sin of dogmatism is not confined to creationism. Good science incorporates all or most of the claims above, bad science is missing at least two of these claims and pseudo- science does not satisfy any of them.
