Demarcation Problem

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The demarcation problem is the question of what distinguishes science from non-science. It asks whether there is a criterion — a line, a test, a set of necessary conditions — that separates scientific knowledge from metaphysics, pseudoscience, ideology, and common sense. The problem is foundational to philosophy of science. It is also unresolved.

Karl Popper (1934) proposed falsifiability: a theory is scientific if and only if it makes predictions that could, in principle, be shown false by observation. Psychoanalysis and Marxism fail because they accommodate any evidence; Einstein’s relativity succeeds because it risks refutation. The criterion is elegant but too narrow — it excludes legitimate scientific practices like taxonomy and historical geology that do not generate falsifiable predictions in Popper’s strict sense.

Disciplinary Matrix

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The disciplinary matrix is Thomas Kuhn’s specification, introduced in the 1969 postscript to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, of what he had loosely called a “paradigm.” Critics (notably Margaret Masterman) had identified over twenty distinct senses of “paradigm” in the original 1962 text. Kuhn responded by replacing the single term with a structured concept: a discipline is its disciplinary matrix.

The matrix has four components:

Symbolic generalizations — the formal or quasi-formal expressions shared by the group without question. In physics: F=ma, I=V/R. These function partly as laws, partly as definitions. They are the mathematical or logical skeleton of the discipline.

PhilosophyOfScience on emsenn.net

Demarcation Problem

Disciplinary Matrix