Tuboly, Adam Tamas (2025) Between science and fringe – The Vienna Circle on pseudoscience. [Preprint]
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Abstract
Anyone engaging with the history and philosophy of pseudoscience, particularly the demarcation problem, will quickly land on Karl Popper and the campaign of the Vienna Circle of logical positivists against irrational metaphysics. The demarcation problem – how to identify the hallmarks of a serious and universal science-pseudoscience distinction – began with demarcating science from metaphysical fraud and dilettantism. Not much is known, however, about the Circle’s attitude towards typical pseudoscientific activities like parapsychology and psychic phenomena, spiritualism, psychoanalysis, and the social role and responsibility of scientific philosophy with regard to fringe and pseudoscientific endeavors. This paper provides the first systematic approach to the early history of the demarcation problem, with a special focus on logical positivism, which is supposed to be the standard-bearer of a rational, socially engaged but fallible scientific philosophy in demented times. As it turns out, most logical positivists were not just interested in pseudoscience as skeptical experimenters, but viewed it as holding various values, merits, and promises that they even imagined to be compatible with their empiricist and scientific world conception.
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