What is science? What is science not? What does it matter? Well, most people probably think it doesn’t matter much. But these days it has become a hotly disputed issue. With the proposition of teaching creationsim alongside evolution in the classroom it is essential to distinguish what really should be taugh as science and what belongs elsewhere. I will examine what science is according to two influenntial people in the field: Imre Lakatos and Karl Popper. You decide who is right.

    Imre Lakatos discusses his ideas of demarcation of science and pseudoscience in his “Science and Pseudoscience.” He begins by pointing out that, contrary to popular belief, a theory is not scientific if an ample number of people believe in it. That is, a statement can be pseudoscientific even if the vast majority of scientists place their faith in it. Similarly, a statement may be enormously important to science even if no one believes it or understands it. Contrary to belief, Lakatos postulates that the value of a scientific theory rests on the support provided for it from objective facts. That is, regarding theories, no amount of subjectivity or belief, no matter how strong or justified, can qualify that theory as scientific. Rather, Lakatos holds that science is a kind of on going “research program.” In this proposal he distinguishes science from pseudo science in terms of “progressive” and “degenerative” programs. The basis for this distinction for Lakatos lies in a theory’s ability to make novel predictions and discoveries of novel objective facts. In other words, a theory is scientific if and only if it can accurately predict a phenomenon, or if it can genuinely discover a hitherto unknown objective fact. Programs of this type are dubbed progressive programs.  Degenerative programs, on the other hand are those programs which can only explain already know facts, or explain past fulfilled or unfulfilled predictions. In accordance with this, Lakatos holds that the everyday happenings of science are trivial in the demarcation of science and pseudoscience. That is, the perpetual trial and error method of science in general can be no basis for this demarcation. Neither, contrarily to Popper, can the many refutations that take place in science. According to Lakatos, these trivial refutations and verifications can have no bearing on a theory’s being scientific are pseudoscientific. Again, a scientific is expected to make unexpected predictions. Furthermore, a theory is scientific only when it can stay ahead of such predictions and current observations. in other words, a theory is pseudoscientific if it lags behind such predictions and facts. Such a theory is dubbed degenerative. In the end, Lakatos concedes that this process may take a very long time. A theory that is not at first progressive may eventually become so. There seems to be some inherent problems with Lakatos’ demarcation analysis. It would seem that all a theory would need to do in order to achieve scientific status is make an accurate prediction or discover a hitherto unknown fact. But there must certainly be examples of non-scientific theories make accurate predictions or discover new facts by luck or accident. It seems all too common for scientists to postulate a theory and in its testing they discover a phenomenon which was previously unobserved and totally unrelated to whatever it was they were experimenting. This accidental discovery seem to be as much a part of science as any legitimate intentional discovery or prediction. Lakatos seems to leave this completely out of his account.
    Karl Popper explains his conditions for the demarcation of science and pseudo science in two main ways: falsifiability and testability. According to Popper, any theory that retains excessive explanatory power is suspicious of being pseudoscientific. That is, the staple of a pseudoscientific theory for Popper is that verifications of the theory can be found everywhere. That is, every instance encompassed by the theory’s scope is a confirmation of the theory. This is because, regarding these pseudoscientific theories, each new experience is regarded in reference to past experiences. Rather, there must be some deal of risk against all possible observations involved when a theory makes a prediction. According to Popper, any and all confirmations should arise from such risky predictions. Furthermore, any theory that can make any prediction and explain it every time is non-refutable and thus pseudoscientific. Non-falsifiability is what puts the “pseudo” in pseudoscience. Any attempt to falsify a theory counts as a test of that theory, and the evidence in support of a given theory must necessarily come from these tests, or attempts to falsify the theory. Popper adds, any attempt to apply ad hoc explanations to a theory in order to explain it out of a situation that might otherwise refute it is the mark of  pseudoscience. Also, a scientific theory can not be so vague that it can be interpreted as always holding true, such as the sayings we find in Chinese fortune cookies. It seems that Popper’s qualifications for the demarcation of science and pseudoscience exclude the possibility of there ever being a genuine theory of science with the legitimate ability to explain everything. Although such a theory of everything (perhaps similar to that which Einstein was searching for at the end of his life) seems unlikely, it is possible that we will someday stumble upon such a theory. Furthermore, what is wrong with a theory that truly can explain everything in all circumstances? It seems that the more a theory purports to explain, even if it is legitimate in claiming so, the more likely it is to be refuted and called pseudoscience in the Popperian system. Popper’s system may someday face such a problem if ever such a theory is proved true.