Abstract
The word ‘pseudoscience’ has been used loosely in many texts about the history of science, but it has been little discussed by philosophers of science. In this paper I attempt to draw the lines between pseudoscience and what I call ‘bad science’—which at times have been conflated into pseudoscientific literature. In discussing the definitions of pseudoscience that have been suggested by J.W. Grove and Mario Bunge, I attempt to develop criteria for drawing the lines between science and pseudoscience. According to such criteria, we should consider pseudoscientific several theories that until now have not been considered as such, like the Aristotelian theory of motion and Lamarckism. In conclusion, I speak to two cases of pseudoscience which I consider paradigmatic: Social Darwinism or Spencerianism, and eugenics.
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