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Pseudoscience (Greek pseudo, ‘false’, Latin scientia, ‘knowledge’) is a controversial term. It is applied to all those disciplines and belief-systems which are not rational science, and thus takes in, at one end of the spectrum, alchemy, astrology, divination, myth, spiritualism and some would argue religion, and at the other such practices as alternative medicine and meditation. While it is convenient to lump together in a kind of lunatic fringe anything which hardly fits the ‘rules’ of rational science, and while some activities and beliefs (for example, research into the Bermuda triangle, or the notion that our human belief in the gods arose because we were once visited, and taught all skills, by benevolent astronauts from other galaxies) do seem more eccentric than others, it remains uncomfortably true that practices once condemned as irrational or fraudulent (for example, acupuncture or hypnotism) do seem to work, and that many of the ideas of ‘real’ science once seemed just as far beyond the pale. KMcL |
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