Post on 2024/6/16

By Richard Quan

Science fiction is divided into soft science fiction and hard science fiction. Of these, hard science fiction is fairly easy to identify: the plot is entirely or largely consistent with real-world scientific theories. Soft science fiction, on the other hand, encompasses all science fiction other than hard science fiction. However, soft science fiction is often criticized for being so inclusive that it often includes non-scientific or pseudoscientific fantasy.

To cite an example, Mr. YE Yonglie wrote a novel called Miracle on the World's Highest Peak. The plot is to the effect that a Chinese scientific expedition found dinosaur fossils on Mount Everest, one of which actually had a complete yolk. The Chinese Academy of Sciences then formed a team of researchers who successfully hatched the dinosaur and eventually fed it into a 100-ton behemoth. After the publication of the novel, a dinosaur expert wrote an article, pointing out that the novel is a "specimen" of "pseudoscience". According to Ye Wen quoted the original text as follows: "Dinosaur eggs, at least more than 70 million years ago, a long time. Highly calcified, the pores on the eggshell have long been unable to breathe, as an egg cell, has lost all the characteristics of life, how can be compared with the ancient lotus seed? Fantasies designed on the basis of such windy inferences have deviated from the minimum scientific facts. Such a fantasy can only be a trick under the magician's hand, contrary to the requirements of scientific fantasy, and therefore not thought-provoking." This and a number of other science fiction novels written by Ye Yonglie were thus criticized, but by 1993, Li Guangling, a dinosaur egg collector, did discover a dinosaur egg with a moist and resilient inner cavity. By 1994, scholars from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Peking University organized a team of researchers who finally discovered dinosaur DNA fragments from the egg. Thus, Ye Wen believes that his novel is not a "pseudo-scientific" "specimen", but rather a scientific prophecy. I don't know what the dinosaur expert will think when he sees Ye Wen. If I were that dinosaur expert. I will again write an article to refute: the use of DNA to copy dinosaurs is based on scientific evidence, while the original novel as directly hatching dinosaur eggs is not based on scientific evidence. It is still pseudo-science. Even if we take a step back, what if Ye Yonglie wrote about DNA just like Clayton did? The point is, a work of literature but to be pulled to the "scientific court" to "pass", scientific theory is used to adjudicate the gains and losses of literary works, this practice is not science? The answer is obviously no.

But can all fiction that differs from the mainstream scientific viewpoint fit into the big bag of soft sci-fi? I think the answer is also no. There are people who write science fiction in order to contradict so-called mainstream science - Charles Hoy Ford, the famous "pseudoscientific science fiction writer". He has made his mark on the history of science fiction in his own unique way.Part 1 The Lifelong Enemy of Modern ScienceBorn in Albany, New York in 1874, Charles Hoy Ford started out as a short story writer. He got his start by writing short stories, which are sadly lost to this day, with the exception of The Outcast Manufacturers (1909), which was once published. But what made him special was not so much a few masterpieces as his keen interest in science - or, to be precise, his extraordinary hostility to it. Ford's bibliography focuses on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a time when scientists were supremely self-important and claimed to know everything. But Ford was having none of it. Where did his skepticism about science breed? Was it an instinctive distrust of the overconfident? We don't know. What we do know is that he hated the confident and proud discourse of scientific supremacy of his day, and assembled his skepticism into two novels - well known for their titles, which have only one letter, X, and one letter, Y, respectively. Damon Knight, the science fiction writer who wrote his biography, said of him that he believed there were only believers and cranks in the scientific community. Because he didn't want to become a believer, he had to become a geek ...... He wrote himself a geeky book called X. Then he wrote another book, named Y. Neither book was ever published, and these manuscripts, like almost all of Ford's, were destroyed; but it's a good thing we still have his letters to Dreiser, about these books. X revolves around the idea that our civilization is invisibly controlled by beings from Mars. And in "Y," Ford imagines another sinister civilization lurking near the South Pole. -- Damon Knight Neither X nor Y was ultimately published. Perhaps because of his frustration with fiction, Ford's next book, still with a staunchly anti-science theme, was nonfiction. He called it The Book of the Damned, and explained the title in detail in the first chapter: "The Damned" - by which I mean "the outcasts! ". It is that series of materials that have been discarded by science that we are concerned with ...... In this book, I have collected what I believe to be erroneously and arbitrarily discarded materials - some of the so-called "Damned " information. In order to be able to give Ford a categorization for these novels that don't conform, nor have the will to conform, to mainstream science, pseudo-scientific fantasy fiction was born.

Now we can finally explore in depth what is pseudoscience versus science.

The term pseudoscience dates back to 1796, when historian James Andrews referred to alchemy as a "fantastic pseudoscience". Subsequently, the term gained widespread acceptance and became popular after the 1880s. However, throughout its history, it is clear that the term "pseudoscience" does have a distinctly pejorative connotation. The concept is often used to describe theories and ideas that have not been scientifically validated and are not supported by reliable evidence. These ideas are often attracted and mesmerized by their glamorous packaging, mysterious appearance and novel claims. However, they lack empirical validation and the scientific method, and therefore do not have credibility or scientific value.

Many scholars of pseudoscience emphasize that pseudoscience is a non-scientific activity masquerading as science.According to Brian Baigrie, "What is objectionable about these beliefs is that they masquerade as genuine scientific beliefs." He, as well as other scientists, believe that in order to call an activity or teaching pseudoscience, both of the following two criteria must be met:

(1) The activity or teaching itself is not consistent with scientific theory and lacks scientific validation and rigor.

(2) Its main proponents try to convince people that it is scientific, masking its unscientific nature through careful packaging and propaganda.

（The overly broad definitions of (1) and (2) create problems because there are some phenomena that may meet both criteria but are not usually referred to as pseudoscience. An obvious example is scientific fraud, although it is highly disguised as science and does not meet scientific criteria. However, fraud in the general branch of science is rarely characterized as "pseudoscience".

The following three cases will help us understand:

(a): A biochemist conducts a sloppy experiment that turns out to be an experimental error rather than a correct experimental result.

(b): the same biochemist who conducted sloppy experiments but insisted on interpreting them as conclusions that ran counter to the prevailing view.

(c): this biochemist conducted several experiments, including the one in (a), but she did not promote any particular unorthodox theory.

According to common parlance, (a) and (c) are considered bad science, and only case 2 is considered pseudoscience. This is because of the presence of heretical doctrines in (b), i.e., adherence to theories that differ from the views that had scientific legitimacy at the time. Whereas a simple violation of scientific requirements would not normally be considered pseudoscience.

Pseudoscience is the antithesis of science in the sense of individualization, and there is no unified pseudoscientific corpus that corresponds to a scientific corpus. For a pseudoscientific phenomenon, it must belong to one or another specific pseudoscience. To satisfy this characterization, the above definition can be modified by replacing (2) with the following:

(2′) It is part of a non-scientific doctrine whose main proponents try to give the impression that it is science.

Most scientists prefer to think of science as consisting of methods of inquiry rather than particular doctrines. (2′) There is a clear conflict with this traditional view of science. This is because pseudoscience often describes science as a closed, completed doctrine rather than a methodology of open-ended inquiry.

Sometimes the term "pseudoscience" is used in a broader sense than that contained in the definition consisting of (1) and (2'). In this sense, pseudoscience is considered to include not only what is presented in the name of science as contrary to science, but also what is contrary to science, even if it is not presented in the name of science. In order to cover pseudoscience in this broader sense, (2′) could be modified as follows:

(2′′) It is part of a doctrine whose chief proponents seek to give the impression that it represents the most reliable knowledge on its subject.

Common usage seems to hesitate between defining (1)+(2′) and (1)+(2″); this is an interesting phenomenon: in comments on the meaning of the term, pseudoscientific critics tend to endorse definitions close to (1)+(2′), but they tend to be closer to (1)+(2″) when they actually use it.

The following example illustrates the difference between these two definitions:

(a) A creationist book correctly describes the structure of DNA.

(b) A reliable chemistry book misrepresents the structure of DNA.

(c) A creationist book denies that humans have a common ancestor with other primates.

(d) A preacher who denies that science is credible also denies that humans share a common ancestor with other primates.

(a) does not satisfy (1) (because the DNA structure is correct) and is therefore not pseudoscience by either definition. (b) satisfies (1) but not (2′) and not (2″) and therefore is not pseudoscience by either definition. (c) satisfies all three criteria, (1), (2') and (2''), and is therefore pseudoscientific by both criteria. Finally, (d) satisfies (1) and (2"), and is therefore pseudoscientific according to (1) + (2"), but not according to (1) + (2'). As the last two examples show, pseudoscience and anti-science are sometimes difficult to distinguish. Some advocates of pseudoscience (especially homeopathy) tend to drift between opposing science and claiming to represent the best science.