Cicero's demarcation of science: A report of shared criteria

Abstract

The problem of establishing intensional criteria to demarcate science from non-science, and in particular science from pseudoscience, received a great amount of attention in the 20th century philosophy of science. It remains unsolved. This article compares demarcation criteria found in Marcus Tullius Cicero’s rejection of genethliac astrology and other pseudo-divinatory techniques in his De divinatione (44 BCE) with criteria advocated by a broad selection of modern philosophers of science and other specialists in science studies. Remarkable coincidences across two millennia are found on five basic criteria, which hints at a certain historical stability of some of the most fundamental features of a concept of “science” broadly construed.