History of pseudoscience - Misplaced Pages

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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

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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).

After the fall of the pagan Roman Empire

See also