DEFINITION: “PSEUDOSCIENCE”
pseu·do·sci·ence ?so?od??s??ns
noun: pseudoscience; plural noun: pseudosciences; noun: pseudo-science; plural noun: pseudo-sciences
- is a claim, belief or practice which is presented as scientific, but does not adhere to the scientific method.
I use the following criteria to determine whether something is a pseudoscience:
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One must claim it is scientific
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Yet the method does not adhere to the scientific method.
That is the minimum criteria.
The following criteria serve to further falsify claims:
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(optional) Method does not produce results it claims to.
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(optional) Is not or cannot be stated in operational language.
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(optional) Is not or cannot be constrained by testable correspondence with reality.
By these criteria Praxeology fails as a science, as all axiomatic systems must fail as sciences.
However, it is possible to state that we can study the science of cooperation (economics) and as such produce theories that for deductive purposes we may treat axiomatically, although the results of that deduction must still be tested by correspondence with reality, and falsified.
Emergent properties must be tested empirically, and experiential properties can be tested experientially, if articulated as human actions.
For these reasons human cooperation can be termed a science, and we can construct a formal grammar of cooperation.
Something akin to praxeology can be constructed as a formal logic of cooperation, but it will, as all axiomatic systems must be, constrained by correspondence with reality.