The List

As the battle lines over science and pseudoscience are being drawn, one can’t help but notice that the problem is multidimensional. By that, I mean that human endeavors designed to claim knowledge use such a variety of techniques that one cannot draw a picture of the situation on a piece of paper.  I would like to simply say that intellectual pursuits run gamut from rigorous testing to wild speculation, and many have, but that is just one dimension. And that’s my point. We can’t simply draw an image of a thermometer using PowerPoint, and place all fields of claimed knowledge somewhere on the scale ranging from hot (evolution theory) to cold (astrology). The problem is messier than that.

This is not to say that we can’t handle the problem. Economists, engineers and physicists, especially those trained in math, often use multidimensional space to get their hands around a problem like this, even if we can’t get our heads around it. Massimo Pigliucci suggests this approach in a response to Laudan’s three metaphilosophical questions concerning demarcation:

Demarcation should not be attempted on the basis of a small set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions, because “science” and “pseudoscience” are inherently Wittgensteinian family resemblance concepts.

A better approach is to understand them via a multidimensional continuous classification based on degrees of theoretical soundness and empirical support, an approach that can in principle be made rigorous by the use of fuzzy logic and similar instruments.

That last part about fuzzy logic is a little weird, but Pigliucci’s suggestion to classify truth claims or theories using multiple degrees of theoretical soundness is right on the money. And here is where the fun begins.

What should these dimensions be? Clearly some activities, like salsa dance or bowling don’t even try to make truth claims about our physical world. Others like science fiction or art deco may represent or abstract some aspects of our world but are under no obligation to correlate with “reality”. This should be a dimension. 

Then we get to activities professing to make truth claims, and here is where the problem gets muddled. This problem is so huge that I plan to stop philosophizing and just present a list that I have compiled. One could write a book on each listed item, and opinions are manifold. The list is in no particular order. I have selected these items based on how familiar I expect they will be to people, how well they represent a particular genre, and how provocative. 

While pondering the list, think about how fruitful this activity has been, how rigorous, how good the methods are, how aligned with the evidence, how well accepted, how refuted, how superstitious, how biased or how riddled with fraud. And now, the list:

Astrology, Journalism, General Relativity, Clairvoyance, Holocaust Denial, UFO-logy,
Divine Intervention, N-Rays, Hubble's Law, Intelligent Design, Evolutionary Psychology, Psychoanalysis (Freud), Bacterial Theory of Disease, Eugenics, Christianity,
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, Acupuncture, Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion,

Bible Archeology, Social Science, Numerology, Islam, String Theory, Moon Landing Conspiracy,
Organic Foods, Dowsing, Magnet Therapy, Marxism, Telekinesis, Vitalism, Telepathy,
Perturbation Theory, Homeopathy, Quantum Field Theory, Remote Viewing, Massotherapy
Newton's Laws of Motion, Channeling, Ancient astronaut, Homosexual Conversion Therapy

Hypnosis, Polygraphy, Heliocentrism, Geocentrism, Classical Mechanics, Phlogiston

Quantum Mechanics, Big Bang Cosmology, Economics, Expansion Cosmology,

Voodoo, Precognition, Continental Drift, Crop Circles, Evolution Theory, Cold Fusion, 
Free Energy, Gravitational Shielding, Roswell UFO incident, Electromagnetic radiation and health, Thermodynamics, Standard Model of Particle Physics, Spontaneous Generation (of life)

Climate change Denial, Psychic Surgery, Ghost Hunting, Biorhythms, Chiropractic, Faith Healing

Aristotelian physics, Luminiferous aether, Hollow Earth theory, Metaphysics,
Consciousness Studies, Mathematics, Ganzfeld Experiment, Bible Prophesy, Bible Archeology,
Spoon Bending, Vaccine Denial, Criminal Science, Steady State Theory, Alchemy