Protoscience

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In the philosophy of science, a protoscience is an "area of science" which is in its formulative or speculative stages, and may in the future become established as a science, or be discarded as a falsified claim or unfruitful approach.

Protoscience is a term sometimes used to describe a hypothesis which has not yet been tested adequately by the scientific method, but which is otherwise consistent with existing science or which, where inconsistent, offers reasonable account of the inconsistency.

In some cases, hypotheses discarded (or disregarded) by mainstream science become embodied in a pseudoscience. But while protoscience is often speculative, certain claims may be distinguished from pseudoscience by at least a partial adherence to the scientific method —most notably an acceptance of falsifiability and an expectation of developing toward becoming an operant and predictive theory. Scientific skeptics may refer to unusual endeavors as pathological science.

1 Historical perspective
2 Examples of protosciences
3 Historical protosciences
4 See also
5 External links

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Historical perspective

Fields such as astrology and alchemy prior to the invention of the development of natural philosophy are sometimes regarded as protosciences. With the advent of the scientific method, natural philosophers rapidly produced the scientific fields of astronomy and chemistry respectively, leaving those who refused to adopt the scientific method to practice pseudoscience. Several sciences started as branches of philosophy, such as mathematics, physics and biology (see philosophy of nature); more arguably, due to the problem of defining science, economics, psychology and sociology.

Generally, a protoscientific field is one where the hypothesis presented is in accordance with the known evidence at that time, and a body of associated predictions have been made, but the predictions have not yet been tested (or cannot be tested, due to current technological limitations).

Some protosciences go on to become an accepted part of mainstream science. Others fail to become established, or become pseudoscientific, as their followers persist in the face of lack of scientific evidence for their views.

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Examples of protosciences

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The most famous modern example of protosciences might be the theory of continental drift as originally proposed by Alfred Wegener (which eventually became an accepted scientific model when the mechanisms of plate tectonics became understood). Other examples include:

The various string theories of physics.
The cognitive science of mathematics.
Astrobiology or Exobiology, the protoscientific study of extraterrestrial life forms, including speculation on alternative biochemistries.
Memetics, the study of hypothetical self-reproducing ideas called memes, and associated field of sociobiology.
The theory of sanity from the discipline of general semantics.
Neurotheology, the study that analyzes the biological basis of spirituality.

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Historical protosciences

Certain fields of work were once protoscientific, but have evolved into modern sciences. The continued practice of the protoscientific form of these fields verges on (or transgresses into) pseudoscience.