In a couple of pieces I've looked at lately, one from Panda's Thumb and one from the Discovery Inst., I've seen it mentioned in passing that contemporary philosophy of science no longer holds as closely to Popper's thought as it once did.
For instance, from
The Scientific Status of ID,
Stephen C. Meyer writes:
The use of demarcation arguments to settle the origins controversy is also problematic because the whole enterprise of demarcation has now fallen into disrepute. Attempts to locate methodological invariants that provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for distinguishing true science from pseudoscience have failed.10 Most philosophers of science now recognize that neither verifiability, nor testability (nor falsifiability), nor the use of lawlike explanation (nor any other criterion) can suffice to define scientific practice. As Laudan puts it, If we could stand up on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like ‘pseudo-science’they do only emotive work for us.
In college I found Popper's thinking very counterintuitive, but when I go back and read his very lucid explication of
falsification, I find it reflects very well my conception of the scientific process. I want very much to be able to stick with Sir Karl and not feel behind the times. Is there a Contemporary PhilSci for Knuckleheads , or some such? Because I think there was never a time when we needed to be able to invoke demarcation as much as we do now.
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