ABSTRACT
This chapter explains exactly what constitutes genuine scientific endeavour, as opposed to non-scientific endeavours. It discusses epistemic relativism as the view that denies the existence of universal norms of reasoning and standards for justifying knowledge claims, and its implications for realism. The chapter considers Karl Popper's famous solution to the problem of demarcating science from pseudo-science in terms of falsification. It clarifies Popper's criticism of inductivism and his view of the scientific method as consisting of conjectures and refutations. The chapter pays attention to the Duhem-Quine thesis, which says that theory choice is underdetermined by the available evidence. It also considers how the problem of underdetermination of theory by evidence was further explored in a radically new way of thinking about science, due to Thomas Kuhn. On this proposal, scientific change that takes place when scientific revolutions occur is not to be thought of as an incremental, rational process from an old scientific theory to a new one.
