Protoscience

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Protoscience is a field of study that conforms to the initial phase of the scientific method, with information gathering and formulation of a hypothesis that strives to remain coherent with all relevant fields of scientific research. But, it involves speculation that is either not experimentally falsifiable or not verified or accepted by a consensus of scientists. The term is often used to classify historically philosophical disciplines such as alchemy, which later became chemistry, or astrology, part of which later became astronomy.

History of the term

The philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn first used the word in an essay first published in 1970:

In any case, there are many fields — I shall call them proto-sciences — in which practice does generate testable conclusions but which nevertheless resemble philosophy and the arts rather than the established sciences in their developmental patterns. I think, for example, of fields like chemistry and electricity before the mid-eighteenth century, of the study of heredity and phylogeny before the mid-nineteenth, or of many of the social sciences today. In these fields, too, though they satisfy Sir Karl's [ Popper's] demarcation criterion, incessant criticism and continual striving for a fresh start are primary forces, and need to be. No more than in philosophy and the arts, however, do they result in clear-cut progress.

I conclude, in short, that the proto-sciences, like the arts and philosophy, lack some element which, in the mature sciences, permits the more obvious forms of progress. It is not, however, anything that a methodological prescription can provide. Unlike my present critics, Lakatos at this point included, I claim no therapy to assist the transformation of a proto-science to a science, nor do I suppose anything of this sort is to be had.

— Thomas Kuhn, Criticism and the growth of knowledge

Examples

Scientific intuition is protoscience, being the detection of new patterns — the eureka moment that allows the breakthrough in problem solving — which initiates a new line of fruitful scientific inquiry.

• Isaac Newton developed his theory of gravitation by assuming that the gravity we experience here on Earth continues out to the moon, the planets, the sun and other celestial objects. This theory was a protoscience for only a short period. When he tentatively assumed the force to diminish by the square of the distance, the theory became falsifiable, but it was verified when Newton himself found Kepler's laws (based upon observations by Tycho Brahe) to agree with his theory. Only support from the rest of the scientific society remained to be obtained before this protoscience became a science. The anecdote about Newton being hit in the head by an apple, is certainly apocryphal. That he conceived an idea when he saw an apple fall, may be true, but it is important to state what kind of idea he conceived: He did of course not discover gravity, but how it computably continues out through the universe.

• Charles Darwin conceived his concept of evolution when, on his journey in the ship Beagle to the Galápagos Islands, he noticed that finches differed from one island to another. He strongly suspected that the different species of finches must have descended from a single species that was their common ancestor. The protoscientific hypothesis continued to prove useful when other forms of animals, including apes and humans, could be explained as sharing common descent. Only recently, with other scientific fields — especially DNA analysis which verified many of his speculations — did the concept move from protoscience to science with the Theory of Evolution accepted by the consensus of the scientific community today.

It is common to classify old fields of study like astrology and alchemy as falling within either protoscience or pseudoscience, but such an assessment is very difficult, because the fields can't be fully assessed by modern astronomers or chemists who fail to consider the element of psychology in these fields, as well as the use of such a field as a technique for personal development.