According to the “science” of astrology, a person has particular personality traits based on the month, day, time, and place of their birth. While astrologers may defend this ancient craft of divination as science, does astrology merit inclusion in the world of science, disciplines of knowledge that include astronomy, chemistry, biology, physics and many other fields that entail rigorous observation, experimentation, and prediction? Clearly, astrology is a pseudoscience, and Imre Lakatos explains the rationale for its exclusion as legitimate science better than scientific philosophers, Thomas S. Kuhn, or Sir Karl Popper.
In order to clarify the demarcation criteria between science and pseudoscience, all three philosophers set forth their unique definitions of what qualifies as science, and what is disqualified as mere pseudoscience. According to Kuhn, the most important part of scientific inquiry is what he calls “puzzle solving”. Kuhn argues that scientists do not perform tests, or experiments, with the explicit (or implicit) goal of toppling theoretical constraints which guide their conjectures (Kuhn). Instead, Kuhn points out, scientists operate within those theoretical constraints (Kuhn). After repeatedly testing a hypothesis by experiment, and the results do not square with accepted theory, such findings do not necessarily overthrow the theory. There are several factors that could explain why the results of a scientist’s puzzle do not jibe with theoretical constraints. Operator error is just one of those factors. For Kuhn, basic science is a very individual endeavor, and theories are extremely difficult to overturn, unless highly-trained experimenters, as a whole, obtain unanimity of results (Kuhn). Then, and only then, is the accepted canon of theory even considered inadequate in light of new experimental testing. However, Kuhn presents rather vague criteria for demarcation between science and pseudoscience. He even insists that demarcation criteria have religious overtones. According to Kuhn, once engaged “critical discourse” about a theory has ceased, the theory becomes entrenched as canonical belief (Kuhn). Thus, for Kuhn, testing is no longer crucial to keeping an uncontested theory anchored in the sciences, as it has become a quasi-religious dogma. Kuhn’s demarcation criteria are simply based on whether a theory is, in essence, open to critique (and therefore, testing), or closed to critique (and therefore, subject to irrefutable testing results).
Popper’s demarcation criteria are much simpler, yet even more inadequate. According to Kuhn, Popper ignores mundane puzzle solving (what Kuhn refers to as “normal science”), in favor of once-in-a-lifetime breakthroughs, such as the revolutionary theories of Newton, Lavoiser, and Einstein (Kuhn, 1970). Thus, Kuhn contends that Popper discards the ordinary in favor of the extraordinary, the evolutionary in favor of the revolutionary. Moreover, according to Lakatos (Lakatos, 1970), Popper confuses scientific method with demarcation criteria by insisting that a scientific theory need only be “falsifiable” (Lakatos, 1970). Thus, Popper’s only requirement for a theory to qualify as science, Lakatos argues, is whether it is irrefutable, factual evidence of experiments notwithstanding (Lakatos, 1970). Thus, for Popper, states Lakatos, the scientific method is, in actuality, erroneously substituted for sensible demarcation criteria. Popper’s demarcation criteria lack adequacy for many reasons, but their main shortcoming is that, by definition, they tend not to differentiate between pseudoscience and science – relying on matters of faith instead.
Fortunately, Lakatos, in his essay, “Science and Pseudoscience”, offers a more rational demarcation criteria than either Popper or Kuhn advance. Lakatos pares down the demarcation criteria by advancing the notion of a theory’s predictive value. Thus, if a theory scores low to nil on its ability to predict an event, it can be thought of as belonging to the realm of pseudoscience. On the other hand, if a theory is reliable and predicts events accurately, its facts support the theory, and it merits the label of true science. Lakatos contends that all theories are not as equally good (Lakatos, 1970). For his objective of weeding out so-called “scientific, progressive progranme” from “pseudoscientific decaying ones”, Lakatos has tried to determine which tests have predictive value, thereby upsetting the old paradigm, and establishing a new one – such as Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity (Lakatos, 1970).
According to Dictionary.com, astrology is defined as “A study of the positions and relationships of the sun, moon, stars, and planets in order to judge their influence on human actions. Astrology, unlike astronomy, is not a scientific study and has been much criticized by scientists” (Dictionary.com, 2016). The definition itself directly states that astrology is a pseudoscience. But, is it? Based on my daily horoscope, I have never been able to predict (with specificity) what my daily forecast will be. For example, never has a horoscope told me that I would meet a brunette named Diana who would fall in love with me. However, when I look back at the forecast, I might be able to link some event from the day with a very generalized prediction. Certainly, Lakatos would say that astrology has zero predictive value. Thus, it is a pseudoscience. I could not agree with him more in this respect.
Works Cited
Curd, Martin, & Cover, J.A. Philosophy of Science: 2nd Edition. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2013. Print.
Dictionary.com. 2016. Web. 03 Aug. 2016.
