文档介绍：Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 34:3
0021–8308
TBlackwellOxford,JTSBJournal0021-8308©343OriginalTheArthur The Social ExecutiveStill UKforArticle Publishing, andthePsychologyhe TheoryWindy Management Ltd. Drydenof of Social “Pseudoscience” Committee/Blackwell BehaviourSocial Publishing Ltd. 2004 Psychology of “Pseudoscience”:
A Brief History
ARTHUR STILL AND WINDY DRYDEN
INTRODUCTION
This paper is about the social and cultural settings of the word “pseudoscience”.
Like “paedophile” and “terrorist” it has an etymologically transparent sense, and
during the twentieth century, it was used rhetorically to refer to an activity falsely
claiming scientific status. Thus: “The government is using a pseudo-scientific
justification of GM to conceal its acquiescence to global, corporate control of key
food supplies”(Letter to The Guardian, Thursday, Mar 4, 2004). But from time to
time such words have occurred in a more formal, technical sense around a per-
ceived threat to individual and institutional security. It is these foci of activity in
the use of “pseudoscience” that we are interested in.
Twenty years ago the philosopher Larry Laudan (1983) announced “The demise
of the demarcation problem”. This problem was to demarcate between science
and pseudoscience, and Laudan showed that it is impossible to arrive at a defini-
tion of science which will distinguish all scientific from all pseudoscientific or
nonscientific statements. There is no scientific essence whose presence or absence
can distinguish the two. If he and others1 who shared his view were right, then a
decline in serious discussions of the problem would be expected. But the reverse
has recently occurred in applied areas of human and biological sciences, such as
psychology, psychotherapy, and medicine. However insoluble by philosophical
standards, demarcation remains troublesome, generating passion amongst those
who speak on the side of science, and feel the need to separate it clearly