Humanities & Social Sciences, Vol 7, No 7 (2014)

Science And Parascience: a Literature Review of the Problem (from the End of XX till the Beginning of XXI Century)

Svetlana A. Iarovenko, Aleksandra S. Cherniaeva

Abstract


The article includes the review of the literature, mainly domestic, devoted to a problem of science and parascience relationship. Authors fixed the various points of view on the non-scientific knowledge’s structure and a place of parascience in it. This subject is actual because of its openness, lack of accurate classifications and definitions of parascientific knowledge, therefore its explication is necessary. The article summarizes the experience of teaching the topic «Science and Parascience» in the lecture course for post-graduate students on the «Philosophy of Science» discipline, therefore it investigates ways of systematization of non-scientific knowledge’s forms. The example of such systematization consists in identification forms of abnormal knowledge, anti-science, quasiscience. The result of study of theoretical positions on phenomena of parascience’s research consists in justification of mutually complementarity of science and non-scientific knowledge.