About The Term and Its Scope
Scientific skepticism is also called rational skepticism, and it is sometimes referred to as skeptical inquiry.
The term scientific skepticism appears to have originated in the work of Carl Sagan, first in Contact (p. 306), and then in Billions and Billions (p. 135).
Scientific skepticism is different from philosophical skepticism, which questions our ability to claim any knowledge about the nature of the world and how we perceive it. Scientific skepticism primarily uses deductive arguments to evaluate claims which lack a suitable evidential basis. The New Skepticism described by Paul Kurtz is scientific skepticism.
Read more about this topic: Scientific Skepticism
Famous quotes containing the words term and/or scope:
“When “reality” is sought for at large, it is without intellectual import; at most the term carries the connotation of an agreeable emotional state.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“For it is not the bare words but the scope of the writer that gives the true light, by which any writing is to be interpreted; and they that insist upon single texts, without considering the main design, can derive no thing from them clearly.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)