Misplaced Pages

History of pseudoscience

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Fokion (talk | contribs) at 21:37, 9 June 2008 (proposed deletion). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 21:37, 9 June 2008 by Fokion (talk | contribs) (proposed deletion)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

This template must be substituted.

This article does not cite any sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "History of pseudoscience" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
Note: The contents of this page are expected to change as consensus is reached.
History of science
Background
By era
By culture
Natural sciences
Mathematics
Social sciences
Technology
Medicine

A pseudoscience is any body of knowledge purported to be scientific or supported by science but which fails to comply with the scientific method. For more information about the complexities of drawing the boundaries of pseudoscience, see the articles pseudoscience. The history of protosciences, are covered in the main history of science.

Since pseudoscience is something that purports to be science, pseudoscience only emerged after the scientific revolution established science. Non-scientific studies that had some characteristics of science before the revolution that lead to the establishment of a scientific field are regarded as protoscience.

Since the advent of pseudoscience, numerous groups have presented non-scientific topics as science in order to gain the appearance of legitimacy through association with science. Pseudoscientific subjects widely vary, but include anything that purports to study the supernatural through science, and anything that breaks the laws of physics such as perpetual motion machines.

After the fall of the pagan Roman Empire

The neutrality of this section is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (May 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
This section may require cleanup to meet Misplaced Pages's quality standards. No cleanup reason has been specified. Please help improve this section if you can. (May 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

From the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it was the Christian initiative that helped maintain a civilization recovery plan. From the Roman Empire, Christians inherited the: 1) good - architecture, aqueducts, road management, logistics, distribution, communication, literature, engineering, mathematics that was passed on from Egypt and improved upon by the Greeks), and administrative processes. 2) questionable (morals, laws, court procedures, precedents, judgments, labor management – e.g., slavery - practices that were changed under new policies c) faulty sciences for example: geocentric view of the universe, which although faulty, still maintained centuries-old reliable body of calculations that have aided in navigations, calendar with its predictive movements of heavenly bodies and seasons; alchemy, which later developed into chemistry; astrology, horoscopes attributing erroneous interpretations to planetary alignments within the zodiac, also led to astronomy; application of medicine which developed into a more stable body of knowledge, processes and prevention.

The ancient pantheistic evolutionary and the creation views of origins and conditions became handy in filling the historical gaps. It is, however, under the creation model - its view of an ordered and lawful universe - that allowed for the emergence of and the pursuit of verifiable knowledge (science).

See also

Categories: