The twentieth-century philosopher Karl Popper is most famous for his work on what is known as the demarcation problem, or the problem of how to distinguish truly scientific endeavors from those of pseudoscience. Most people think they can recognize science when they see it, but unless you’ve thought a lot about this issue, it can be pretty difficult to come up with a set of criteria that is satisfied by everything that we think of as science, while excluding things like astrology and moon landing conspiracy theories. Popper’s solution was to insist that in order for a theory to be considered
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