If you ask me to choose just one
topic of all the interesting topics in
the history and philosophy of science,
I say the problem of demarcation between
science and non-science will be my
favorite topic. And just like last week
we're going to come across a case when
philosophers not only debate the right
answer but also debate as to which
questions to be addressed!
This is what happens quite often in
philosophy when you have different
schools of philosophy. They differ not
only in their answers but also in
questions which they intend to tackle.
First thing's first, the general question is
"What is the difference between science
and non-science?" If you analyze the
available literature on the topic,
you'll see that more often than not the
question that they actually discuss is
the one concerning scientific theories.
So the question they actually
discuss is "What are the characteristics
of a scientific theory?" Let's take a
bunch of theories: general 
relativity, and witchcraft -
the idea of witchcraft is that allied with
the Devil, witches employ their magical
powers and spells to harm innocent
people - and here on this medieval drawing
we see a witch here is being
treated in an orderly fashion
- being burned I mean! Here
we also have history, alchemy,
genetics and ... What's this? 
Yes, homeopathy -
The key idea of homeopathy is that a substance that causes a disease in healthy people can
cure the disease in sick people (like cures
like). We also have neurophysiology and
these tarot cards ... what do they 
do? Fortunate telling
or more generally, divination, which says that
insight into a question can be gained by
means of reading signs and omens - all
through contact with supernatural agency. 
The good thing about this whole
enterprise of divination is that you actually
get to choose your medium - you can choose
a crystal ball or you can choose a set
of runes or tarot cards - well as long as
you pay the money, who cares, right? 
Now we have creationism, Newtonian physics,
Superstring theory and astrology. 
Which of these theories are scientific?
Which are not scientific? The first thing I
want to ask you to do is to listen to
your gut feeling. At this stage we don't have any openly stated criteria. We don't have
anything written down.
What I wanted to do is that
one-by-one you are going to tell me
which one is scientific and which one is not
scientific. Let's have this experiment!
These on the left side are scientific 
theories and on the right hand side are
unscientific theories. What about
general relativity? Science? Yes!
What about witchcraft? No,
clearly not  a science. History? Yes.
Some people say "what kind of science is 
it?!" Yes, it is a science. It doesn't
formulate any general theory.
The task of history is to understand how
things happen. It could be natural
history when you say the earth was
created or was formed  4.5 billion
years ago. This would be a proposition
from natural history. Or it can be social history when you say Augustus was the first emperor of
the Roman Empire. We believe that this is
true as much as we believe that the
Earth is an oblate spheroid, isn't it? So
we believe that history provides us with
trustworthy knowledge, or more or less.
So it is science. What about alchemy?
You think it is science?
Of course it is not. Genetics? Yes.
What about homeopathy? No.
Neural physiology? Yes.
Divination? No. Creationism? No.
Newtonian physics? Yes. Superstring 
theory? Yes. And finally
astrology? No. OK, well be safe to say when we trust our intuitions we seem to arrive
at the same conclusion, roughly.
We may debate at this or that but
in general I think we have a clear idea
as to what's science and what's not science.
Will this be safe to assume? You see it.
If you look at this theory here, you are
going to notice that some scientific
theories are part of our
contemporary scientific mosaic.
Others such as Newtonian physics and
Superstring theory are scientific but
unaccepted. Newtonian physics is no longer accepted and Superstring theory is not yet
accepted - maybe one day it will. So we
have not two but three categories
of theories. We have accepted scientific
theories, unaccepted scientific theories
and we have unscientific theories.
Unscientific should not be confused with
unaccepted which can be scientific but not
accepted. Clear? Very good. Now if you understand
this and the question
immediately becomes "How do we
distinguish between the two sets. What
are the criteria of demarcation that
allow us to draw the line between
scientific and non-scientific theories?
I'm going to give you different versions -
different attempts - to explicate our
intuitions, because we all seem to have
intuition. The task is to
write it down and make it
explicit. I'm going to try to formulate
our implicit criteria demarcation explicitly.
This is what I'm trying to do. OK?
Attempt #1:
An empirical theory is scientific if it is based on experience. Is this a correct explication
of what we have in mind? What do you
think? (Student) "Lot of people had
experience with tarot cards and say that
it worked for them, and that's experience
that's not scientific." (Hakob) That's very good. 
So in fact there can be many theories which
seemingly based on experience have
nothing to do with science whatsoever.
I'm going to give you an example.
This one is my favorite:
astrology and comets.
It is customary in astrology to think
that the appearance of a comet
foreshadows disaster. It can be anything
really. It can be fire, war, plague,
anything. And if you look at the history,
look at the track record, it turns out
that this is really true - or it appears
to be. Let's have some confirming
instances, shall we? A famous comet of
1066 foreshadowed a huge disaster in
history of England. Anyone knows why
this year is important, anyone?
(Student) "The Battle of Hastings."
(Hakob) Exactly. You can see
comet and it says "Istimirant stella"
which pretty much means that these guys
are staring at the comet or the star.
And here we have King Harold II
who was actually killed, you see - and
William the Conqueror, the first Norman King who
became the King of England.  So Harold II
was the last Anglo-Saxon king.
For 300 years after that, 
all of the English nobility
spoke French really.
The comet of 1066 was
followed by the Norman conquest of
England, you see - foreshadow the disaster!
The 1456 comet was followed by a series of deadly
earthquakes in Italy - central Italy and
southern Italy. And finally the comment
of 1664: what did this one foreshadow?
The year after the comet was
the Great Plague of London, and after that
1666, the Great Fire of London that destroyed the city
because of that we now have all this
nice architecture of Christopher Wren
if you go to London - all built after the 
fire. So the comet of 1664 preceded the
Great Plague and Great Fire of London.
We summarize the experience and we arrive
at this nice scientific theory that
appearance of a comet
foreshadows a disaster. Since it's safe
to say that even this nonsensical theory
is in a sense based on experience, all 
agree that any nonsense can be based on
experience? So the problem here is that the 
criterion of experiences is extremely vague.
It's so vague that it allows you to cherry-
pick your data. You have phenomenon A and
you have phenomenon B and you want 
to link phenomena A and B.
In proper science you have to show that the
two are linked at all times. And here you
find those cases when they appear to be
linked, they appeared to coincide,
and then you say "Oh, you see, there is a link
there" But what about those thousands and
thousands of other disasters weren't
foreshadowed by any comet whatsoever?
What about those disasters? That's why
based on experience is not really good.
How about this one:
An empirical theory is scientific if
it explains all the known facts of its domain.
Would this be a good explication?
This rings any bells? Does this fit your 
intuition? (Student) "Many people might say
that certain theistic theories aren't really
scientific but the thesis that God
exists, for example, could explain every 
fact in the world." (Hakob) That's a very
good point - we are going to get to that. But 
can you think of a scientific theory that
explains many but not all the facts of its domain? 
(Student) "Sure, evolutionary theory."
(Hakob) Exactly. It's safe to 
say there's not a single
scientific theory that explains all the
facts of its domain. We're going to
have a look at that now. And take a
timeline. 1740, this is the year when
Newton's theory became accepted on the
continent. It had been accepted before
that in Britain but this 
is the year when it
became accepted universally on the
continent. 1859: this is a very
important year in the history of
astronomy because that's the year when
astronomers discovered the anomaly of
Mercury's perihelion, the advancement of Mercury's
perihelion. This is what they discovered:
this is your planet Mercury and this
point here is the point of least
distance, Mercury from the sun,
the so-called Perihelion, and the opposite
will be Aphelion. It was expected,
according to the Newtonian theory, 
that the Perihelion must advance
with every revolution. It must slightly
advance. However, the problem was that
the actual rates of the advancement, the
speed of the advancement, the so-called
procession, disagreed from that predicted
by Newton's theory. So you took a Newton's
theory - that was the accepted theory -
you took the theory, made all the
calculations, and it turned out that the
actual rate of advancement is nothing
like the one predicted by the theory, you see?
So here we have a typical case of anomaly.
We have an anomaly, something that
contradicts the predictions of the
theory. We are going to zoom out of the precession
of Mercury's perihelion. Another fact
is the Elliptic trajectories of planets
and the third type of phenomena is
unidirectional revolution of planets, the
fact that all planets revolve in the
same direction. Of these three different
classes of phenomena, Newtonian physics
successfully explained why planets have to
revolve in eclipses. It did. This was
successfully explained. For
unidirectionality, for the phenomenon
that all planets revolve in the same
direction - not only elliptical but also
in the same direction ... for a very
long time there was no explanation.
It didn't contradict the theory. The theory
allowed for that arrangement to exist.
There was nothing in the theory, there
appeared to be nothing in the theory,
that really forced planets to 
move in the same direction.
For a very long time there was no
explanation for this, you see?
So it wasn't really an anomaly - it 
didn't contradict - yet it remained
unexplained. And then in addition you had
a serious anomaly. Yet it didn't refute
the theory. It didn't lead to refutation.
The theory was only rejected after it
was replaced by general relativity sixty
years later. So what do you do with this?
Clearly if you apply this, then many
strictly scientific theories will
immediately become unscientific
therefore you can't really apply this
criterion. How did you modify this? There
is some rational content in this, yet
this needs to be modified. How about 
this suggestion, how about this one:
An empirical theory is scientific if it
explains by and large the known facts of
its domain. By and large! So we're
choosing essentially an intermediate
position between cherry-picking
and explain everything!
Explain everything is too idealistic and if you
allow cherry picking, the whole bunch of
nonsense is going to count as science. So we
choose an intermediate position. Is this
good? What do you think? I'm going go back 
to what suggested few minutes ago and
say "this is not good because there are
many unscientific theories that explain
everything, not by and large, just really
everything. Astrology is the best example.
How about we experiment a little bit?
Lets take this Cancer here,
famous Cancer Peter Griffin, and he
happens to become a teacher.
Well, this is very good because it is
common knowledge that cancers are born
teachers. They say we're very good explainers!
That's what they say about us.
See I don't say that. It would be extremely
immodest of me to say that. So this will be a
very good because astrology can explain
perfectly well why this cancer became a
teacher. Very good. But what if he becomes
a piano player? What about that? You think
astrology will be refuted? No! It will say:
“Some of them become teachers, but
not all of them, right? Because there are also
all these important influences by the
secondary planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars and
Jupiter, and Saturn. There are whole bunch of
things influencing the character. So
it's not really surprising that this
particular Cancer became the piano
player. Very good! And then what about
this one
who became a drunk. I suppose for the sake of
argument we are talking about three different
Cancers and not the same person! You 
think astrology would be refuted?
"Ah ... we couldn't really expect this!"
Is that what they would do?
They will probably say "upon further
scrutiny, it turns out that the position of
Mars was really disadvantageous. As a
result of that, there has no other choice than
to become a drunk, right?" So what's the
problem here. I think you know the
problem. The idea is that a posteriori
explanations are always possible.
Everyone can be smart after the fact, and
this is the classical example of that!
If you want to make sure that your theory
explains everything, there is a universal
recipe for that and the recipe is that
make your predictions so vague that the
theory will hold for any outcome. This is
the wise man's position you see?
I believe that tomorrow it 
will either rain or it won't.
Alternatively this is a position of a politician, 
saying things in such a way that no matter
what happens he will say: "I told you
exactly that. I said there is a 50%
probability that inflation will rise" Now,
therefore, I think we can all agree that
this is important but this is not really
sufficient because even scientific
theories managed to explain the known
facts. So, how do we amend this? I think we
can all agree that there must be
something else that characterizes a
proper scientific theory.
I think -  I might be wrong - but I
think it's the idea that the scientific
theory must be testable. Essentially
falsifiable. By falsifiable we
mean that the predictions of the theory
should be such that the opposition
should be at least conceivable, that
scientific theory should be able to see
such and such circumstances, such and
such things are possible and such and
such things are not possible. To take any
scientific theory, let's take a basic
scientific theory that says,  if you let
this go, it's going to go down, what does
it really say? It says that it's not
going to go your right it's not going to go
left it's not going to fly away, it's not going to
spontaneously combust. This is what the
theory says. It excludes options.
Therefor scientific theories must exclude
certain options. If your theory
doesn't exclude anything, it's
not really science. You see the point?
So what any good scientific theory
does is that it predicts certain things.
And by making this predictions precise it takes
risks. The moment you take a risk, you can
succeed or you can fail but you are taking a
risk. By taking that risk you are being
scientific. This is what I think we
nowadays have in mind when we evaluate
our scientific theories. I'm going to give
you a classical example, the Superstring
theory. Many philosophers have
argued that this is not really science
because it cannot be tested.
Yes they are right at the moment it
cannot be tested because there are
technological limitations. But I think we
can all agree that the theory is
testable in principle. There's an
important difference. It's one thing that
the theory hasn't been tested or cannot
be tested at the moment because we have
huge technological limitations. It's
another thing to say that the theory is
testable in principle, meaning that we
can conceive a situation where we are
contested. I'm going to give you few of
the predictions of the theory,
predictions of novel phenomenon,
phenomenon hitherto unobserved. One of
those phenomena is the so-called micro
black holes, very very very tiny, not just
like those huge black holes in the
centers of galaxies. They should be
extremely tiny, hasn't been observed yet,
hasn't been confirmed, but this is a
prediction that can in principle be
tested, you see? Another prediction is the
so-called SUSY particles, the ideas that
for every particle in the standard model
that must exist a supersymmetric partner
particle. Forget about supersymmetric
partner, whatever that means, as you can
imagine, none of these particles has
been observed so far. But again this is a
prediction. The theory takes risk.
The problem with these predictions is that
testing of thess predictions requires
energies that are not really attainable
in current particle accelerators. We just
don't have those energies required to
test this prediction. So what do we have
here? We have a theory that makes
predictions. These predictions cannot be
tested at the moment. But are they testable
in principle? Yes, they are, given
certain development of technology, they
might become testable. And this is what's
important. Not the fact of actual tests:
they may or may not be available but the
fact that the theory makes bold
predictions such that they can be tested at
least in principle. Is this clear? Very
good. If we all agree on this, then
I think we can say that we have a more
or less correct explication of our
current criteria of demarcation. One
thing we have to keep in mind is that
these explications are just a
historical hypothesis. We may or may not
be correct, because essentially what
we're trying to do here
is to openly formulate our gut feelings,
our intuitions. And by doing that we are
formulating hypotheses concerning our
gut feelings. Essentially that's what
we're doing here. So we may 
or may not be correct.
Put this question aside, whether this is
correct or not, can we all agree that
regardless of whether this exploitation
of our criteria of demarcation is
correct, we must remember these are only
our contemporary demarcation criteria.
Let's not forget about that. These are only 
our demarcation criteria these days.
If you were to go back in time, 400
years ago, and had a look at the
Aristotelian criteria of demarcation,
you would immediately notice that their idea
of science has very little in common
with our idea of science. For those guys,
a theory was considered scientific if it
at least attempted to uncover the nature
of a thing. Thus, all accepted 
empirical theories of the time
they attempted to grasp are the nature of
things in their respective domains.
Let's say optics was supposed to grasp the nature
of vision and natural history of biology was
supposed to grasp the nature of
biological organism, so on and so forth.
Every empirical theory was supposed to
unearth the nature because they believe
that everything has a fundamental
quality, remember that? Things have their
natures. So it was to task of science to
unearth, to uncovered this nature. Mechanics,
on the other hand, mechanics the study of
mechanism, wasn't considered a science
for a very long time. They believed this
was not really science because there was
no attempt to understand the nature of
the object under scrutiny.
Mechanics, nowadays we consider it 
part of physics, right? Back in the
day it was considered something foreign to
physics. Physics was the study of
physical bodies and their natures. It was
the task of physicists to understand
why things are the way they are.
Mechanics on the other hand was a study
of artificial mechanism. The theory we have
on this picture is a typical diagram of an
escapement from the 13th century. They
believe that everything that is made by
human beings doesn't really have a
nature because it's just an artificial
tool. There was no nature to study: you
created the thing. So if you were say "well,
I have the science the task of which is to
unearth the nature of ships" They would say:
"Ships are built by human beings and they don't have
any nature. They're artificial instruments."
They are the tools; they are artifacts; they 
don't have nature so you cannot have science
about that, you see? And by doing that they turn
their enterprise into craft, not science.
You see the point? Now,
alchemy on the other hand was
attempting to grasp the nature of things.
It was attempting to understand why
things are the way they are.
Everyone knows about alchemy? What is alchemy? 
(Student) "Turning elements into gold."
(Hakob). Not elements really because there were 
four elements and they didn't believe that you can turn
elements into gold but they
certainly believe that you can turn
something into gold - base metals turning
to gold. Lead for instance you can turn it
into gold.
Another one of their goals was the
famous elixir of life, the potion or drink
that was supposed to cure people and
even ideally grant them eternal life.
Other ideas such as elixir of love,
potions you give the person and she falls
madly in love with you.
There is a famous opera, one of my favorites by
Gaetano Donizetti,  L'elisir d'amore,
"Elixir of Love". Very good opera! 
(starts humming) Anyways, I digress...
So although it wasn't accepted,
it wasn't taught in any other universities,
it was considered scientific, considered
science. So you ask people, say, "Well,
it's a science, a failed one. It hasn't been
able to come up with anything 
worthy of consideration but
it's a science - it's a scientific enterprise.
Now let's agree that many once accepted
theories are nowadays considered
unscientific or pseudo-scientific:
astrology, theology  ... How do you reconcile
this with the idea that we seem to have
some demarcation criteria and yet if we
apply this demarcation criteria to the
theories of the past, if we apply our
contemporary demarcation criteria to
the theories of the past, many of those
theories which were part of their
scientific mosaics will turn out to be
unscientific by all our current standard?
So what do you do here?
Up until the 1970s, it was 
very popular among philosophers
to say "Well, that is because the real
science originated in the 17th
century. The Aristotelian science was not real
science. It didn't really predict anything.
It didn't do experiments. What sort of
science was that? It wasn't science.
Science, real science, originated in the
seventeenth-century. Some philosophers made one
step further and they said that the real
science began only with the acceptance of
Newton's theory. So even the Cartesian
science wouldn't really can't science.
Real science only would begin sometime
towards the end of a 17th century, early
18th century. Is this a good solution?
What do you think? We have 
contemporary criteria of demarcation.
We apply them. That's fine. Who
cares about the science of the past?
Is this a good solution? If we dismiss the
past science as not really scientific then
we have to be prepared that 200 years
maybe 500 years from now
the scientists of the future will
dismiss our contemporary science as not
really scientific. So if we decide to
dismiss all the past science, the moment we
switch our method, the moment something
happens to our scientific method ...
This is a very silly thing to do! Think
about this possible scenario: suppose
someone came up with the idea that
somewhere in the faraway corner of the
universe there exist so-called 
"orange holes" as opposed
to black holes ... let's call them orange for the
sake of argument. And these orange holes
contain all the information about
everything in the universe that somehow
the information gathers there and gets collected.
Now suppose for the sake of argument the
theory says that these orange holes allow
investigators to ask questions in such a
way that no matter what is asked the
answer is always 100% correct
because essentially what you get is a
portal of knowledge. That's what they are:
the orange holes. So as a scientist the
only thing you are really supposed to do is
to build a spaceship going find 
one and to ask all the questions about
life, the universe, and everything and
then just get the answers, write them
down, end of the story. Why would you need
confirmed or predictions? Now you say
"Well, that's a rubbish theory." Yes, it is a
rubbish theory, but what if one of the
predictions of this theory became
confirmed? Our method of the time is
hypothetical-deductive and this theory
in order to become accepted would need
some confirmed novel predictions, wouldn't it?
Suppose for the sake of argument that
there were confirmed novel predictions... 
let's say ten of them, to be safe! The moment
this theory becomes established, what's
going to happen to our scientific method?
By the third law, the scientific method will
change. You understand that! From then on,
experimenting with confirmed novel
predictions ... we will still be OK,
just a waste of time, wouldn't it? Just go
to the portal of knowledge and ask!
Why do you need a particle
accelerator?  Why so much money?
What's the point? Just go there and
ask. You go and ask everything about
future, about the past, and it actually works.
It knows everything that we know
and everything that we don't know. It knows
everything. Without method of scientific
change, it would put the hypothetical-
deductive method aside because we would
have something infallible,
something that gives us secure knowledge
and scientists of that time would look
back and say "Einstein, Newton,
those weren't scientists! Science begins now!
That's when it begins really! You see the
risk here? So we should understand that the
science of the past is not to be
dismissed. So what do you do? You have to
concede that the criteria of demarcation
are changeable. They are
changeable. There are two reasons.
It's a historical fact that they have changed. 
We've seen this. You analyze the history.
You see that! In addition to the
historical argument, there is also a
theoretical reason why we believe that
the criteria of demarcation are
changeable. There is a theoretical reason!
Recall this diagram. Method, any method,
consists of three different components:
acceptance criteria which are employed
to tell whether theories acceptable or
not. And then we also had the compatibility
criteria. These criteria here were
employed to tell whether any two
theories are compatible within the same mosaic.
You remember what was the third component?
Demarcation criteria! These are the
criteria that scientists employ to
tell whether the theory scientific or
not. Therefore we have to concede that
since methods of science are changeable,
demarcation criteria are also changeable.
Can we all agree on this? Just by virtue
of the fact that demarcation
criteria is part of the method of the
time. Is it clear? Can we all agree on this?
Now that's a confirmation!
Now there are no universal and fixed
criteria for demarcation of scientific
theories from non-scientific theories. The
criteria of demarcation employed 400 years
ago have little in common with the
criteria that we employ today and that
is the reason why the theory may be
considered scientific at one period of
history, like theology, and
unscientific at another period of
history. So if the criteria of
demarcation between scientific and
non-scientific theories are changeable,
the question becomes: Is there really
anything that characterizes sciences of
different time periods?  It certainly
cannot be anything that has to do with
theories. The moment you think about
theories, you realize that the same theory
can be considered scientific in one time
period and non-scientific in another time
period. So the question remains open what
distinguishes science from
non-science! I know you are puzzled.
You have to be at this stage. I want 
you to be puzzled! So what is it that
distinguishes science from non-science?
To answer this question, we have to
switch from theories to the process of
changes in the mosaic, to the process
itself. So if your question is what makes
a theory scientific? I'm afraid I cannot
give you a universal answer because the
criteria of demarcation change through
time. I cannot give a universal answer. If
you want to get a universal answer, you
have to change the question itself. And
the question is going to become "what are
the characteristics of the process of
scientific change." So it's the changes -
transitions from one state of a mosaic
to the next, from one theory to the next,
from one method to the next, that may or may
not be scientific. And here I believe we
have a universal tool that tells us
which changes are scientific and which
ones are not. What is the tool? You can guess 
my answer: the laws of scientific change.
The 1st Law, the 2nd Law, the 3rd Law, 
the Zeroth law. My idea is that any
actual or potential violation of the
laws of scientific change is usually
qualified as unscientific. When there is
a potential of a violation of any of
these laws, we intuitively say that
would be a non-scientific step to take.
Of if we analyze the history of science
and we come across an episode that
actually violated any one of those laws,
we normally say "that wasn't a scientific
thing to do, was it? I'm going to give you
four examples, one for each of the four laws.
Imagine a mosaic some parts of which are
only preserved in a hefty manuscript and
none of the living members of the
community knows them by heart. I do not
argue that we've ever had such a mosaic. It's a
weird mosaic: you have astrology, Tychonic astronomy,
homeopathy, divination, witchcraft.
platonic physics, physics of five
Platonic solids and platonic metaphysics ...
I cannot think of any community that
ever subscribed to these, but that's not
important!
Imagine the mosaic is only preserved in this
manuscript and suppose also that there
exists exactly one copy of this
manuscript because for whatever mysterious
reason the members of the community are
not really allowed to make copies of
this manuscript. Can you imagine? Very good. 
Now what would happen if the manuscript
were stolen or destroyed or lost? What
would happen? The consequences would be
disastrous
in a sense then at least some parts of
the mosaic would be lost forever. There is nobody
who knows them by heart, nobody knows
everything as we said in the beginning.
So the consequences would be disastrous.
They would lose their astronomy, more
importantly, divination and witchcraft.
By the first law,
we know that theories stay in the mosaic until 
replaced by some others. This is what the
first law told us. Yet in this case you
would have a typical example of theories
being replaced by nothing, lost forever.
Would this be an unscientific thing?
This would be. This would violate the First
Law of scientific change, for many
theories will be rejected without any
replacement and essentially this will be
a violation of the First Law . Forget
about this imaginary community, you can
imagine a contemporary community! Suppose
a huge asteroid - God forbid but
suppose for the sake of argument - hits
the earth and most of the knowledge is
preserved in one way or the other gets
lost. Scientists died and whole
communities of people died. That would
be a violation of the First Law. You had
the scientific community and then
something happened and knowledge no
longer preserved. So this would be a
violation of the principle of scientific
inertia. Is it clear?
Let's take another example, 1940s ... 
normally when I choose years you have to
be extremely cautious ... sometimes it
indicates an exact year but most of the
time it indicates a decade or years
around ...  so the 1940s, 30s and
40s ... these were the years of Stalinist 
prosecutions of the members of the
scientific community. And these
prosecutions, for political reasons
mostly, reshaped the scientific mosaic
in the Soviet Union. I'm going to give you a
very famous example of theories and methods.
At the time there was a contender theory,
the so-called "soft inheritance theory"
which says the physiological changes
acquired over the life of an organism
can be transmitted to offspring so those
changes that you require during your
lifetime ... say you work out really hard ...
the changes can be transmitted to
offspring. This was the theory available
on the market but this wasn't the accepted 
theory. The accepted theory of heredity
was the so-called hard inheritance
theory. And this theory says the
physiological changes acquired over the
life of an organism cannot be
transmitted to offspring. So no matter
how hard and how much you work out, the
result may still be like that. There is still a
chance that you are going to have a son of whom
they say that he curves the space-time
continuum around him, right? Now, this theory
luckily for the champions of this theory,
was supported by Stalin's regime. It was the
important thing in the theory ...  the idea
that if you work hard, if you change
yourself, you can thus change the future
generation. Very Marxist idea. Very
progressive idea. For what's the point of
working hard,  making yourself a
better man if it's not going to transmit to 
your offspring? What's the point? So
it was for the ideological reasons, it was
important to somehow squeeze this
theory into the mosaic. The main champion
of this theory was Lysenko. He was
supported by Stalin's regime. The method
of the time was hypothetical-deductive,
as we can all imagine. So by the 2nd Law,
in order to get into the mosaic a theory
of such boldness would be expected to
have at least some confirmed novel
predictions, wouldn't it? Right? It didn't have
any. It didn't have a single confirmed
novel prediction and yet it was squeezed
into the mosaic, pushed in with a
hammer. How did they to it? Simple, 
you just prosecute people who disagree.
Just eliminate those members of 
the scientific community who
dare to say no. That's exactly what they
did. They prosecuted the main geneticist
named Vavilov and he wasn't alone.
It became accepted because many members
of the scientific community were
physically eliminated. They went. 
Consider this case unscientific
and also immoral really but also 
unscientific because here
a theory gets into them also without
having actually satisfied the
requirements of the method of the time. 
So you had a community. What do you do?
You just eliminate some of the members, convince
those who are clever, really, who understand
that they have to collaborate with the
regime otherwise the destiny of this.
And there you have it! You all know that
this wasn't the first time things like
this happen. Now when you look back at
this case. Yes, it's morally revolting, but
also it's not really scientific, think
about it! Even if you don't kill people,
even if you just force them to
change their beliefs, that still would
be a non-scientific thing to do, wouldn't it? 
Do you have that the intuition?
You all believe that this is not really a
scientific thing to do? Can we all agree on
this now?
Scientifically speaking, from the
viewpoint of the theory of scientific
change, this transition was not
scientific because it violated the
the 2nd Law. Is this clear?
(jokes) Another confirmation there!
(Students laugh)
So this case was a violation of the 2nd
Law. Consider another case: homeopathy,
another one of my favorites. If you go 
to all these different websites on
homeopathy, how is it that they 
try to convince the future clients
or patients? By the testimonials of the
former patients. Let's analyze this case.
Homeopathy is not part of the scientific
mosaic, merely a contender, strictly speaking.
All agree? Not part of the scientific mosaic.
The idea is that a substance that causes
disease in healthy people can cure that
disease in a sick people if properly
applied - there are techniques, "like cures
like". According to our current methods,
we are supposed to be assessing those
things, evaluating those things by
the double-blind trial method. The acceptance 
of homeopathic medicine must be tested in
double-blind trials. Thus, you need two
groups of patients suffering from the
condition.
They are statistically equivalent, more or less, 
such that the patients don't know which
group they belong to and in addition 
to that the researchers are
in immediate contact with patients
should also not know which group is
which so this gives you double blind. All agree?
This is how we think these things must
be tested these days. Very good! 
But if you ask
homeopathic practitioners, almost all the
time, the answer is something along those
lines: look at the testimonials! And you
read and read and read all the people
support. So basically what they do - they
try to convince us to rely on the method
of testimonials.
This is what they're trying to do. They 
try to change the method. They are not trying to
squeeze the theory into the mosaic. They
try to convince us the method of testimony
is something to deal with, that it's 
a good method of assessment of this!
This is what they're trying to do.
So what is the method of testimonials?
we explicate it. it would be something along
those lines: the hypothesis about the drug's
efficacy is acceptable if the drug's effect
has been confirmed by patient
testimonials. More or less this is what
the method is. For the homeopathic
strategy to work, the method of
testimonials would have to replace 
in the mosaic the double-blind trial
method. But in order to be adopted,  
by the 3rd Law it has to be
deductively follow from the theories that
we accept. But does it? Does it follow from
the theories that we accept? What 
would happen in the situation?
(Student) "If we use the matter of testimonials 
the result will be quite skewed due to
a bunch of exogenous factors such as 
the placebo effect where the patient
just thinks he is getting better because he's
getting treatment." (Hakob) Exactly. This method
not only does it not follow from our
accepted theories, it clearly contradicts
some of our accepted belief, in
particular the idea of placebo effect - we
know nowadays that the improvement in
medical condition can have nothing to do
with the therapeutic efficacy of the
drug itself but can be due to
physio-psychological factors. It
contradicts that and it also contradicts
the idea of unaccounted affects. What if
the improvement had nothing to do with the
drug itself but had to do with improved
nutrition or improvement climate or
body's natural healing ability, right? So
essentially if we were to employ this
method. it would be a violation of the
3rd Law. It would be a method that became
employed without being a deductive
consequence of the accepted theories and
other methods, you see? It would violate
the 3rd Law. The case of homeopathy is
qualified as unscientific because among
other things it defies the 3rd Law.
A case can be made that it also defines
the 2nd Law or it defies the Zeroth Law.
So this is a multidimensional case in this
case. A case can be made that you have multiple
violations here. An questions about this situation?
(Student) "Perhaps the method of
testimonials is also unscientific
because it could cherry-pick
certain evidence from certain
testimonials to support the claim that
homeopathy works." (Hakob) Exactly. If we try to
create a list of things that are wrong
with this approach, it will go on forever.
That's one of them, because this method
really allows you to cherry pick. You go
on a website,
and you have twenty people who
sincerely confessed that it helped them.
What about those 20,000
who didn't confess anything or who did
confess but whose confessions were quite
consciously removed by the moderator?
This is clear I hope -  that we deal with an
unscientific case here? And you understand the
reason? Very good. Case #4,  my
favorite astrology. Astrologists even
to this day still insist that the
celestial configuration is somehow
influencing territorial affairs. It has to be
said that not many practicing astrology
is actually believe in this. There are many of
them just say, "Ah, it's useful! It makes
money, you know? Yet there are some of them
who still insist that the configuration of
celestial bodies somehow influences terrestrial affairs.
What would happen if astrology 
becomes accepted? What do you
think? What would happen? Forget about the
method of the time. Suppose it's somehow
became accepted. I don't want you to
focus on the 2nd Law or the 3rd Law.
If it becomes accepted it would
introduce incompatibility into the mosaic.
This is how. Here is the key
premise of astrology, the idea that
planets and stars have significant
influence on human mentality and
behavior. If quantum physics and general relativity
are the accepted theories, the two fundamental
theories of physics. it follows from these
theories, the measured from the earth's
gravitational magnetic and other effects
of distant planets and stars are almost
negligible, almost negligible, in a sense
that even our electronics, household electronics,
have far more significant effect on the
human body and brain than distant
planets and stars. So if we're to take
into account the magnetic levitation and
other effects at the time of birth, we would
have to study the arrangement of
electronics at the place of birth.
That would make more sense really. You
know you are a Cancer because the fridge
was removed from the TV a given distance,
right? This would make more sense given
our current theories unless there 
is some unknown force which
unless we understand we cannot give you
100% guarantee. But it
doesn't happen. But as far as the
contemporary science is concerned,
I think we can all agree, that just doesn't
make any sense. Therefore the planets and
stars cannot exert any significant
influence on human mentality and
behavior. This proposition is implicit in
our contemporary mosaic. We may or may
not openly formulate it and yet we can all
agree that this is something we take for
granted because that's what follows from
our physics. So here you see a clear case
of incompatibility. If astrology somehow
became accepted, there would be
incompatibilities in the mosaic. All agree? 
The acceptance of astrology would be
an unscientific move for among other
things it would violate the Zeroth Law.
Let's sum it up. The case of lost manuscript was 
a violation of the First Law. The case of Lysenkoism
was a violation of the 2nd Law.
Homeopaths' reliance on individual
testimonials is a violation of the Third
Law and finally if we were to squeeze
astrology into the current mosaic, it 
would lead to the violation of the Zeroth Law.
Essentially the idea is that any actual or
potential violation of the laws of
scientific change is usually qualified
as unscientific. So if you're a historian,
you delve into the history of science,
you find a case which your gut feeling
tells you that this is not really
science. I think it is possible to
reconstruct their case in such a way
that anytime you see something 
unscientific it is because at least one of
the laws of scientific 
change was violated.
Alright? This is the idea. Now let's
sum it up. We started with a general
question. It is very general and it is
very vague. Anything general can be
specified. It can be specified differently.
Traditionally it is specified by
philosophers along these lines: what are
the characteristics of a scientific
theory. So if you ask philosophers, on
the one hand they seem to realize that if the
question is how you demarcate scientific
theories from unscientific theories, the
answer cannot be universal but they don't
really know what to do. My suggestion is
to specify the question differently, 
change our focus from theories - because
you cannot have anything universal there - 
to changes in a mosaic. It's when you
evaluate the changes, you can say that
these changes are scientific and those
changes are unscientific. These criteria
are timeless and universal. They apply
to a science of the 21st century and
to the science of 11th century equally.
You see? Because the laws of scientific
change are universal. Now this is the
symbol of specification. It is normally used
in UML when you have an interface and
the class that implements the interface
 - forget about those technicalities -
the idea is that these two questions are
special cases of a more general question,
meaning that the moment you answer this
question you also answer the more
general question. It is just a way to
specify that, make something vague more
specific. Now as we have established, the
answer to the question on your left
depends on the method employed at the
time. There are no timeless criteria of
demarcation of scientific and
non-scientific theories and thus this
question doesn't have a universal trans-
historical answer. If you're looking for
one, you have to refer to this question.
it is this question that has a trans-historical
answer. And the answer is the
modification of the mosaic is
scientific if it is in accord with the
laws of scientific change. Is it clear?
Good? Have we solved the 
problem? I think we have!
Very good ! Next time we can focus on the
history of science. And we are going to start
with the Aristotelian-medieval 
worldview. Thank you!
