Pluralism and the Problems of Demarcation

In 1983, Larry Laudan proclaimed the “Demise of the Demarcation Problem” (Laudan 1983). I will argue that the ‘simple demarcation’ problem should indeed be abandoned. However, abandoning the quest for simple demarcation does not entail that demarcation problems are intractable. Though the dream of a single criterion to demarcate ‘science’ …