Volume 35, Number 4 · March 17, 1988
Bumps on the Head
By Martin Gardner
Pseudo-Science and Society in Nineteenth-Century America
edited by Arthur Wrobel
University Press of Kentucky, 245 pp., $24.00
How can good science be distinguished from bad? Philosophers of science call this the 'demarcation problem.' Like most problems about distinguishing parts of spectra, sharp definitions are impossible, but from hazy borders it doesn't follow that distinctions between extremes are useless. Twilight doesn't invalidate the contrast between day and night. The fact that top scientists disagree about many things doesn't mean that terms like pseudoscience, crank, and charlatan have no place in the history of science.
Review, 3188 words
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