ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the difficulty of explaining exactly what constitutes genuine scientific endeavour, as opposed to non-scientific endeavours. Scientific inquiry is widely considered to be a paradigmatic way of acquiring knowledge about the world around us, and hence it is natural to begin by focusing on the nature of specifically scientific knowledge. Creationists have argued that, far from being the best available scientific account of the complexity found in nature, evolutionary theory struggles to explain some key types of natural complexity, such as the adaptive immune system. One of the most important scientific debates of modern times concerns climate change. In the climate change debate, as with most scientific views, there are some scientists who explore, and perhaps even advance, perspectives which are at odds with the prevailing consensus. The historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them.
