Talk:Protoscience

message: How young does a science need be to be described as a 'protoscience'? Exobiology is at least forty years old, the same age as the study of DNA! Surely that's too old/well-established to be a protoscience? --Dan100 17:35, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)
:It is easy to define a protoscience.  Take a random sample of professional scientists, and a control group, preferably in a double blind tests.  Ask them about any topic with no great level of consensus between scientists, philosophers and religious leaders.  The protoscientists are the ones that the professional scientists will talk with positive voices about in great detail for a longer length of time.  Everything they talk down on, is a pseudoscience. - --mugwumpjism 12:13am, Aug 12, 2005 (NZST)
:Exobiology (or astrobiology) is a verifiable hypothesis that has not been verified, according to its own article.  Are other similar hypotheses considered true science or protoscience?  The only ones I can think of are protoscience.  I don't think it has anything to do with how old they are...  - --Omegatron 21:56, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)
:I don't think it has to do with how old it is either, maybe this article should be rewritten to get away from a time-based definition. As I understand it, a protoscience is usually used to define the time of a historically developing field before it had developed its methodologies and modes of thought which later defined it as a discipline. For example, early psychology was an offshoot of 19th century philosophy of the mind, and looks very little like the modern variations of it (or even the variations which came 50 years later). The initial ideas were all present but the sensibility of how to set up an experiment, what could/should be tested for, what could/should be quantified, what valid hypotheses were, etc. had not developed. We can compare this with string theory now, which has not yet developed (m)any testable options, but may in the future (or may not). The "proto" in protoscience would thus refer not necessarily to chronological duration but to epistemic space: a protoscience has not yet developed the conceptual tools for becoming a full-fledged science. The demarcation between a protoscience and a pseudoscience might then be that a pseudoscience has claimed to develop said tools, but they are not recognized as valid, or something like that. The question of "establishment" is another one alltogether -- how much does investment by traditional forms of authentication designate the philosophical value of a field of inquiry? Does research on parapsychology done by the CIA/KGB make it any less pseudoscientific? If they practiced iridology at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory would it make it any less suspicious? How much is "status" determined by the spaces in which a field is advocated, communicated with, and practiced? How much is it the other way around (is iridology non-science because scientists don't study it, or do scientists not study it because it is non-science), or both? Anyway obviously these are large questions, my point is just that time and establishment may not necessarily bear down on such things. --Fastfission 02:40, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Let me just add to Fastfission: A protoscience grows up when it gets solid evidence that modifies the theory considerably; ex. evolution grew up when it moved beyond Darwin and started adding things like kin selection and genes, which Darwin had only inklings of (if that.)  So exobiology seems to me to be largely where it started, with some changes based solely on advances in other fields; it hasn't really changed much. So on that basis I'd classify it as 'proto-'. --maru 18:17, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: How to define a Protoscience?

message: Paragraph one: "not yet been tested adequately by the scientific method"
Paragraph two: "its adherence to the scientific method"
Hello? Which is it? 
--User:Stevenkrivit  2100 PST, 24 Apr 2005
:Doesn't seem contradictory to me: One refers to how much it has been tested, and the other graf refers to whether it would be testable.  Ex: Theology is not testable, but alchemy is, and so on. One could become a protoscience (though with hindsight we can see that alchemy would not be able to- it would be disproven when it tried), and the other couldn't. --maru 18:17, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Alchemy = turn lead into gold or make an immortality syrup. You can't disprove either. Maybe one day it will be possible to do one of these.... The beliefs of Alchemy are untestable just like Theology. Just like you can't disprove that watermellons can't fly, sure they can, they just don't want to. Is that a protoscience? hmmm...
Agree. Quite often someone comes up with a thought experiment that could prove some hypothesis (or at least discriminate which of two hypotheses is closer to reality). But the experiment isn't actually conducted until years later. To me, the hypothesis becomes "scientific" as soon as the experiment is devised (see falsifiability). Protosciences are ones where people still haven't actually done the experiments, for one reason or another.
--DavidCary 08:37, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scientific Method: Yes or No?

message: It remains up in the air whether memetics is protoscience or a pseudo-science.
On many other pages I have argued that any memetic terminology violates the NPoV as memetics is still hotly debated as both it's accuracy and usefullness is still yet to be seen.
For a perfect example of such an exchange see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Meme
For a philosophical discussion regarding meme theory see:
http://www.ephilosopher.com/phpBB_14-action-viewforum-forum-4.html
In fact, even Wikipedias page of a list of alternative, speculative and disputed theories correctly places memetics alongside other controversial subjects such as Intelligent Design and Bible codes.
Therefore, as I have argued, any memetic terminology used unnecessarily on pages not directly concerned with memetics contstitute a violation of the NPoV, not to mention the idea of saying memetics is definitely a protoscience.
Wikipedia's theoretically objective articles shouldn't be tainted by this ideological slant which favors one side of a controversial issue.
Maprovonsha172 12:50, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Incidentally, that link doesn't even go to a discussion of memes. And you *may* have a point w/r/t to terminology, but that is irrelevant here.  --maru 18:04, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Another thing: 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.  Memetics is indeed consistent with known science, and offers explanations that fills gaps.  Seems like an excellent protoscience candidate to me. --maru 18:19, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

text: Maprovonsha, you yourself said at the top of this discussion "It remains up in the air whether memetics is protoscience or a pseudo-science." Now you're unilaterally declaring it's not.  So which is it? Is it up in the air or isn't it? You're contradicting yourself. Reverted, again. --FCYTravis 04:49, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Bizarre, why would anyone think there is a science (or protoscience) called memetics? Memetics is an excited cafe topic between high IQ people who  have jobs at Kinko's or just sold their own startup. It's one more breathless cultural contribution. It's financial mathematics applies to water waves in a bag of psychohistory. It's a meme, a meme... 84.227.250.171 (talk) 10:12, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Memetics, a protoscience? 

message: ===List items that contain unverified claims===
List items please J. D. Redding 19:09, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Article or section may contain original research or unverified claims?

message: List items please J. D. Redding 19:09, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: List items that contain unverified claims

message: List items please J. D. Redding 19:09, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: List items that may contain original research

message: Wasn't Darwin's theory actually called The Theory of Natural Selection, with Evolution MUCH more commonly used to refer to observed instances of speciation? 71.233.230.223 16:32, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Theory" of Evolution 

message: I can't help but feel that the recent edits have somewhat distorted the definition of protoscience based on the editor's POV. The references at the end suggest the term was correctly used before the edits. And now the historical emphasis has no citation. HomeJames 16:46, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent edits 

message: There is just a few examples of modern protoscience on this article. Is there more protosciences out there? I have heard that some study of will of the wisps (light sources that are sometimes visible at swamps, for example) is protoscience, because the phenomena has a natural explanation, but the explanation is not fully understood. Is this true? Tuohirulla puhu 08:54, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: More examples of modern protoscience

message: This article appears to be nothing more than a pair of quotes and a mass of links. Unless some substantive, sourced, non-copy-pasted content can be found, then article should probably be merged/redirected/deleted. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 09:06, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quotes & links 

message: Given that the only part of the article that isn't either a quote or a bare-link is the single lead sentence:
… I would question why the article requires seven general references. I am therefore placing  in its headers. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 09:10, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ref-spam 

message: A few years back someone surmised that Kuhn may have coined the term. Now with Google Books it's easy to put that to rest. The term was often spelled 'proto-science'. For example from Leonard Trelawney Hobhouse in 1915 (as far back as I got)  : "The use of writing is thus the best rough and ready mark to distinguish civilized peoples as a class. With its aid the first Asiatic civilizations in Babylonia, Egypt and Ancient China built up the first elements of systematic knowledge.... If we used a name, we may call this the stage of proto-science — of systematic knowledge in its germinal elements." Another, 1922 article  in AAAS The Scientific monthly uses, roughly, the phrase 'the proto-science of savages' twice in two pages. That kind of attitude sheds no light on the subject, and no respect either.This article would need to be put together by someone broadly familiar with the period Hobhouse describes. As someone has already noted, there was a LOT more to alchemy than chemical manipulations ... and I'll add, there was a LOT more to (observational) astrology than the cotton-candy in the newspaper. This article is a FAIL until that someone comes along. Twang (talk) 23:52, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: About the term

message: Describing proto-science as 
:a fringe science that has limited acceptance in the mainstream scientific community
seems to be a POV view and to be factually wrong when examined in detail. In real reality proto-science is tolerated by mainstream scientific community despite not fulfilling scientific quality, because the scientific community think is reasonable to believe it might develop into a regular science. The source provided is only supporting the citation, not that proto-science is "fringe science", which is "bad science" frowned upon, unlikely to deliver real science results. 
Remove the first para in the intro. The following paragraphs is enough. Rursus dixit. (mbork3!) 15:08, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes Rursus, it’s easy to agree if you have a Scandinavian usage behind. There a concept like “fringe science” has only recently entered in the everyday language, where protoscience has denoted the budding process applying the scientific method. Here it has even become a WP-tag for bad science. So, IP 128.59.169.46 blanking a relevant contribution and the following sock-puppet allegations seem to have hit the wrong target. Är du bra på sånt? [Are you knowledgeable at things like that?] Jag är helt säker på  att den IPn plus minst tre ytterligare användts av en långtidsblockerad [I'm pretty sure that that IP plus three others have been used by a long term blocked person], tidigare bla med eget namn mycket wp-aktiv astrofysik-forskarstuderande [earlier using his(her) own name, and a very active astrophysics research student], för att under juni städa bort protovetenskapliga bidrag till ett flertal artiklar inom området non-standard cosmologies. [who during june have cleaned away proto-scientific contributions to considerable part of the articles about non-standard cosmologies] Man borde påtala ofoget, men jag är alltför sporadiskt här för att ha skaffat den färdigheten, tyvärr. :) [one ought to warn against the misuse, but I'm too sporadically here to have acquired that skill, sorry to say :)] Mr Gearloose (talk) 13:52, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Translation added by me into the Swedish text for all editors to partake. (English WP english text, please!) Please, Mr Gearloose, if you happenstance know which long term blocked user, and any other IP:s that you might know, we would appreciate if you mentioned it here, so that any editor may partake as their time allow them. I'll be back later, when I've got a little pause in my private studies... Rursus dixit. (mbork3!) 08:47, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, but it seems to be a tricky matter to do it without invoking serious "outing" as can be seen from this unresolved blocking, probably caused by the same intention from a not yet granted request here. His name appears under the nick jps when he initiated an afd and elsewhere and it seems he is still finding other IPs, latest edit here. Mr Gearloose (talk) 10:49, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Wrong first para

message: The difference between these two concepts is unclear. 
* The figure is nice and colourful, but ultimately does not add much value in distinguishing protoscience & fringe.
* The examples, e.g. GUT, TOE and M-Theory could just as well be considered fringe theories.
If there is no better differentiation posisble, then I suggest merge the two articles. John Pons (talk) 04:01, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I like the table a lot, but the table and the articles for "protoscience" and "fringe science" don't really make it clear what the difference is between the two terms. I'd like to see the two terms distinguished better in the articles. If they are indistinguishable from each other, then I would support merging the two articles. I've been trying to figure out the difference between the two terms, but I'm having troubles finding information on "protoscience" and how (or whether) it's different from "fringe science." I'd be grateful if anyone can clarify the difference.Dustinlull (talk) 04:16, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: This article is pretty much a disaster, there are only two inline citations in the whole article. It has highly dubius statements like "Some protosciences go on to become an accepted part of mainstream science, e.g., astrology and alchemy". This article also appears to confuse hypothesis which are awaiting information with protoscience, the definition of which is unclear. IRWolfie- (talk) 16:27, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

text: I've removed some of the OR. I've also marked a number of issues with the lede. Pretty much the entire article is original research. IRWolfie- (talk) 16:44, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confounded concepts: protoscience & fringe 

message: It appears the article pseudoscience actually covers the term protoscience in better detail than this topic, I propose this article just be redirected to pseudoscience. IRWolfie- (talk) 11:22, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Given that the article seems to lack any relevant sources whatsoever, that seems entirely reasonable. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:59, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I was bold and performed the redirect. IRWolfie- (talk) 14:39, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  redirect to pseudoscience 

message: Protoscience is a legitimate term used in the history of science that refers to investigations in the early stages of the development of the scientific method - stuff like parts of ancient Greek philosophy, alchemy, and such like.  Supporters of "fringe" concepts might like to label their modern concepts as protoscience and hope that they will develop into a new science, but this is wishful thinking.  Note the difference between "woo-woo" concepts and developing new areas of research; for example molecular genetics has really only been possible since the discovery of DNA and its function - yet no-one would describe the early advances in molecular genetics as being protoscientific because they were clearly part of a wider ongoing research programme into biochemistry and genetics.  Basically, the article as it stands is completely nuts. We have a well developed scientific method already, so there should be no modern protoscience. I am not a dog (talk) 22:48, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: If you have specific parts of the article in mind you can be WP:BOLD and make the edits. IRWolfie- (talk) 23:26, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  THere should be an article on protoscience, but it's a history of science article not a woowoo concepts article 

message: I've removed the examples list, if a new article is being built it is better to start without uncited or poorly sourced claims in it. Specifically if protoscience is used within the Philosophy of science we should be adding examples based on mentions either in 1. the scientific literature, 2. sources within the philosophy of science. All entries should be covered in a significant manner in reliable sources to establish some sort of due weight. IRWolfie- (talk) 23:41, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples 

message: This section is the same section as on pseudoscience. If it is good enough to describe the difference in that context it is good enough here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Protoscience&diff=470115414&oldid=470113304
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience#Boundaries_between_protoscience.2C_science.2C_and_pseudoscience
84.106.26.81 (talk) 02:33, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The section makes no explicit reference to protoscience. Also, why would you dublicate a section that exists in another article? IRWolfie- (talk) 02:50, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: bublikate? WHAT?84.106.26.81 (talk) 12:14, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  deletion of "boundaries between protoscience, science, and pseudoscience" 

message: I claim WP:REDFLAG on this claim, and suggest that we need a considerably better source than a newsletter from the Center for Frontier Sciences for it. Parapsychology is a grab-bag of serious research, anecdotal claims and outright bunkum. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 10:13, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: It's poorly sourced and also not consistent with the definition of protoscience which is given in the lede as; a protoscience is a new science trying to establish its legitimacy. Parapsychology is not new but actually quite old. IRWolfie- (talk) 15:21, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: It isn't considered pathological so it is still in prototype stage. The source merely indicates professional affiliation which is something you can check.84.106.26.81 (talk) 12:46, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: (i) You have presented no evidence that Parapsychology "isn't considered pathological". (ii) You have presented no evidence that something 'not considered pathological' must be a protoscience. (iii) Even if you had, your claim is WP:OR so inadmissible. (iv) Please reread WP:REDFLAG -- this is not an 'extraordinary source'. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 13:32, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Parapsychology 

message: Is protoscience:
#A label applied to nascent scientific fields (Kuhn)?
#Or alternately the field within the philsophy of science of studying (and presumably developing) "normative criteria for the use of experimental technology in science." (Brakel)?
We have clearly contradictory definitions. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 08:33, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: No. In such a situation, we tend to disambiguate, and cover each definition in a different article. A consequence of WP:NOTDICTIONARY is that we write articles on a topic (with a single definition), not on a word (with potentially multiple definitions). HrafnTalkStalk(P) 12:01, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

text: Shorten that to you "don't see", and I might agree with you. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 13:35, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm seeing it now. SYNTH seems a lot more strict than I thought it was. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 15:55, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Protoscience: label or field? 

message: Raimo Tuomela's essay 'Science, Protoscience, and Pseudoscience', in , may prove informative. It gives a very rigorous, and also more restrictive, definition of protoscience. It also lists social sciences as an extant example of protoscience. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 15:09, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Raimo Tuomela 

message: From the article:
In the philosophy of science, there are several definitions of protoscience. Protoscience is sometimes distinguished from pseudoscience by a willingness to be disproven by new evidence, or to be replaced by a more predictive theory.[citation needed] Compare fringe science, which is considered highly speculative or even strongly refuted.[1] Some protosciences go on to become an accepted part of mainstream science.[2]
Philosopher of chemistry Jaap Brakel defines protoscience as "the study of normative criteria for the use of experimental technology in science."[3]
1. The first paragraph does not tell us the definition of protoscience. Instead, it tells us that there are several definitions, and proceeds to compare the missing definition to other concepts.
2. The definition by Brakel is a distraction. A protoscience is a field of inquiry with a specific subject matter, such as psychology, chemistry, or whatever.  It is not the study of normative criteria. 
(In Bartel's defense, his remark might be a valid comment about protoscience in the context of his book -- I can't tell -- but it doesn't play well as a primary characterization in an encyclopedia article.)
I find the Popper and Kuhn quotes illuminating. But again, they are not definitions, but commentary and evaluation. You have to work backward to infer the definition. A Wikipedia editor should do this or find a quote that does it. But I can see that there is a huge talk debate on this short article... 84.227.250.171 (talk) 10:03, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, but this is one of many problems in this article, and I will work on a rewrite.  For example, in every established science, scientists introduce unproven hypotheses as the first step in the scientific method.  Einstein's theory of relativity is a perfect example of what occurs in every established science and absolutely never was a protoscience as this article states. 
TMM53 (talk) 20:56, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article is badly structured