| Throughout history, there has been an ongoing debate concerning which theories and practices should, in principle, be identified as science as opposed to being demarcated as either non-science or pseudoscience. The first part of my thesis will investigate the positions held by Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Larry Laudan and Imre Lakatos in regards to drawing the line of demarcation between science and non-science. An analysis of their positions will buttress my final conclusion that there should not be a definitive line drawn amongst the two. Rather, we should accept that the demarcating line between science and pseudoscience is fuzzy at best. If a definitive line is to be drawn, dire medical and ethical consequences would result.;Part 2 of my thesis addresses facts and values in science. Because the argument concerning the description of science is as old as science itself, I found it imperative to distinguish between facts and values. This debate, of course, intensifies when scientists are accused of the value-ladeness of their theories. Making a claim such as this invokes controversy, as science is typified by objective methods. I argue that to claim that science is value-laden is to reduce it to a subjective enterprise. My aim is to demonstrate that historically, scientific objectivity has increasingly influenced value--not the adverse. |
