Science
In the sciences (though not in fields like medicine, technology, and law, of which the principal raison d’être is an external social need), the formation of specialized journals, the foundation of specialists’ societies, and the claim for a special place in the curriculum have usually been associated with a group’s first reception of a single paradigm. At least this was the case between the time, a century and a half ago, when the institutional pattern of scientific specialization first developed and the very recent time when the paraphernalia of specialization acquired a prestige of their own.
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, page 19
Part of this book’s claim is that it’s not falsifiability that makes something science. While so far Kuhn hasn’t mentioned them, creationists are actually right when they say that evolution is not falsifiable, because “normal” scientific work is the process of tweaking the theory to make it fit the world, not testing a theory with an eye to throwing it out if it doesn’t fit. If a theory doesn’t fit the world, scientists still won’t give it up until another theory comes along to replace it. And yet creationism can’t claim to be the successor to evolution because it doesn’t provide a foundation for future scientific work. To be scientific, a theory has to propose useful experiments or studies that can elaborate the theory, and I’ve never seen any kind of creationism do that.
