Talk:List of protosciences

Are Lyssenkoism and Lamarckism protosciences? Theology?

Don't know. I don't like this list, most of these are already recognized pseudosciences. But it's Reddi who is maintaining this, and he dogmatically reverts any honest changes to his work. - Lord Kenneth 14:29, Jan 27, 2004 (UTC)

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lets see what you, kenny, edited out ...

• Acupuncture is the practice of inserting very thin needles in particular points on the body to improve health and well-being, and is one component of traditional Chinese medicine.

• Applied kinesiology is a method of diagnosing malfunctioning organs and what the effect of substances on the body is or would be by testing whether certain muscles is weakened or not.

• Aromatherapy is the use of essential oils and other fragrances from plants to affect someone's mood or health, and is commonly associated with alternative medicine.

• Biorhythms is a cyclic pattern of alterations in physiology, emotions, and intellect. "Bio" pertains to life and "rhythm" pertains to the flow with regular movement.

• "'Crystal Healing"' is a type of alternative therapy mainly used to help with mental, spiritual, and physical health by helping prevent certain defects like ulcers, that can come from stress, aswell calming anxiety ect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CocoaGirll (talk • contribs) 03:53, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

• Chiropractic is a form of treatment that uses manipulative therapy to correct vertebral subluxation.

• Cryptozoology is the study of rumored or mythological animals that are presumed by many to exist, but for which proof does not yet exist.

• Dowsing is a method of divination which dowsers say empowers them to find water, metals and hidden objects by carrying some form of stick and watching its motion.

• Graphology is the study of handwriting and its connection to behavior, personal information and other human traits.

• Homeopathy is a controversial system of alternative medicine involving the use of remedies without chemically active ingredients.

• Intelligent Design theory holds that life and living things show signs of having been designed. ID's primary argument is that life is too complex to have simply "happened."

• Lucid dreaming is consciously perceiving and recognizing one is in a dream while he or she is asleep and having control over the faux-reality dream world within a dream, or "dreamscape".

• Remote viewing is a form of clairvoyance by which a viewer gathers information on a target which is hidden from physical view of the viewer and typically separated from the viewer in space by some distance.

• Repressed memory therapy recovers repressed memories through memory therapy.

• Scientific Socialism (Marxism)

• UFOs includes any airborne object whose nature is not known, but more often it is applied to those cases that are believed by some to be the spaceships of extraterrestrial aliens.

• Social Darwinism is a set of theories which proponents argue govern the natural sociological relations of humanity; these theories are derived from Darwin's theory of evolution.

Please list the reasons for the deletions [otherwise it seens as on par to vandalism; and will be readded]. Sincerely, JDR

Economics

ECONOMICS IS NOT A PROTOSCIENCE, IT IS ALMOST UNIVERSALLY ACCEPTED IN SOME FORM OR THE OTHER!!!

Religion is also almost universally accepted in some form or other. Your point?

Economics is a protoscience because economists don't yet have the tools to come up with verifiable results. Or, if you prefer, falsifiable results which are consistently not falsified.

There are many mutually exclusive economic theories. Saying that economics is almost universally accepted is like saying that a theory of the creation of life on Earth is almost universally accepted- almost everyone believes in either evolution or creationism.

Economics is a lot like philosophy, really. Almost nothing is universally accepted among economists, and different schools of economics emphasizing a different aspect of the human experience burst into existance and sputter out all the time.

You don't see different schools of chemists popping in and out of existance, sharing little but a general set of questions they seek to answer from their unique perspective. All chemists by now have a copy of Mendeleev's periodic table on their wall, because Mendeleev insightfully found a pattern in the elements which has turned out to have deep physical correlates and is highly useful to chemistry.

Furthermore, nobody has Mendeleev's original periodic table on their wall. Rather, they hang more modern versions of the periodic table which reveal more about the elements. Contrast this with people talking about what Marx or Smith really meant, whether the economic systems they proposed inevitably lead to injustice or the implementations were flawed.

So yes, economics is a protoscience. It will become a science when economists finally get together and produce a theory with falsifiable results which are not falsified.

I hope that happens soon, but wishing doesn't make it so.

more possibilities

Would these be considered protosciences?

• proteomics
• brain-computer interfaceing?
• The Oort cloud? (Is finding 1 object, Sedna, enough to confirm that millions of objects exist?)
• What about the various Interpretation of quantum mechanics ?
• Even computer science is not as well-understood as we would like. (Software bug, Usability).

--DavidCary 08:39, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps we could also add

• artificial intelligence
• quantum circuit design
• Santa Claus machine
• molecular assembler
• emotional intelligence

because no one seems to know how design one. (Even though many people believe it is possible, and most experts think that, once someone comes up with a design, current scientific understanding is more than enough to explain how that design works.) (Or would that be proto-engineering?)

Also

• hyperfocus
• cryptozoology
• nanobacterium

--DavidCary 01:11, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

• astrobiology

-- Dragice 21:53, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Fundamentally OR and POV

The point of this concept is that there is no consensus on whether something merits the definition, so how could we decide? A good reference for the very concept that this is a definable set would be in order, I doubt such exists.

Besides, what's here is all over the map. Psychoanalysis - "scientific" or not, has 100 years of history. Tech singularity - just a speculation, it predicts exactly 1 event and even there is pretty vague, not exactly enough to form a whole body of study. A few areas of theoretical speculation within physics - not sciences unto themselves, no practitioner would deny she's a physicist. Sociobiology - a paradigm in behavioral science, at least we're getting closer. True interdisciplinary sciences, such as cognitive science - not represented.

Addition to the list

I added neurocardiology to the list because it categorizes itself as protoscience and seems to fall within your list criteria. I am not an expert and only did this to help remedy the orphanage problem. If this does not fall into your category, please assist by editing the article as well so it is categorized properly. DLPanther 15:20, 27 July 2007 (UTC)