During one of my Coffee Breaks at work, my colleagues and I stumbled upon the topic of science and non science. Couple of them were for science and against non science which they liked to term it as pseudo science. I, however, was not against science but argued that ignoring non science is not fair, just because it does not have a solid explanation, yet!
Science as I understand starts with observations, making hypothesis, testing them and eventually forming theories about some aspect of the physical world. Many theories contain references about things that are not directly observable. Science uses methods to study the relationship among things in the physical world. A scientific theory is a broad explanation that puts together various observations and turns them into a comprehensible meaning. i.e. theories explain facts.
Whereas non science on the other hand is a belief which is projected as scientific, but does not follow a valid scientific method and lacks enough evidence. The reason why they are usually termed as Pseudo science is because they cannot be reliably tested. Although, my argument would be not all of non-science's can be termed pseudo science.
For e.g., superstitious beliefs often inspired by religion is what I would like to call pseudo science.
Astrology, parapsychology, faith healing, water divining etc. fall in the category of non science.
Although, these cannot be subjected to the rigors of scientific investigation, this does not make then less valid to many people. It can be called arrogance to dismiss such phenomena's because they cannot be explained by science or cannot be a subject to scientific analysis. By keeping an eye open on such things and an open mind on the observations in these areas some day, we might just begin to understand the nature and behavior of what are classified by many to be non-sciences.
After all science was not evolved in a day. It has taken numerous years, innumerous arguments and debates, hordes of thesis and antithesis and hypothesis, large and small evidences to call what is science today. But even then, science has failed miserably to answer a lot of questions, it is amazed by the wonders of the nature, and can't seem to provide a decent explanation for many of the mysteries of the universe.
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