Russell McMahon wrote:

>> Like Gerhard mentioned, there isn't a hard and fast line dividing
>> science from non-science. It's a matter of degree for some topics,
>> things like SETI

> I say there is a hard and fast dividing line [:-)].
> Popper agrees (or, rather, of course, I agree with him).
> Science is where you can model/predict/test and repeat ad infinitum 
> (or nauseum) and refine your model.

That's what Popper calls science. That's also a pretty young definition. As
everything young, it still has the test of time in front of it. And
Popper's definition of science is not "scientific" by his own definition...
so what does that say about it?

The one obvious question here is that of meaning. What does it mean whether
something is "science" or not? Popper himself says that whether something
is science or not (in his sense) has no implication on anything else (for
example, on meaningfulness or significance); it's merely a matter of
whether or not to apply that term. 

So the question remains: what difference does it make whether you call
something "science"?

The differences I can see are in government funding, marketing, cheap
rhetoric tricks, ... -- stuff of this kind. I can't find much else to which
it would make a difference whether something is called "science" or not;
more specifically, I can't find anything among these that is important to
me. Are these things really important to you? Or is there something else to
which it makes a difference whether something is called "science"?

I think the more important question is not what is science, but why you
want to make that distinction. Without knowing that, it seems kind of
futile.

Gerhard
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