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The simple model for the classification of knowledge is suggested. The four types of knowledge are considered: customs, arts, religions and sciences. The strict definition of science is suggested to distinguish it from pseudoscience and religion. The model indicates the methodology of the scientific research that is aimed to avoid conflicts between science and other kinds of knowledge.

Preface

There are many confusions about science, and, in particular, about physics. I believe, many of them are caused by the misunderstanding of place of science in the human knowledge. Below, I list few examples:
The "quantum annihilation" of the optical soliton^[1]
The "statistical significance" of the peculiarity of the correlation function of the distribution of the matter in the Universe. ^[2]
Intents to find a value of a small parameter such that "the perturbation series converge".^[3][4]
Intent to quantize the magnetic flux in a free space.^[5]
Intents to promote a new laser medium, which looks so good that it would allow the "Perpetual Motion". ^[6]
Intent to scale up the power of a disk laser (active mirror) without to estimate the limits of the scaling. ^[7]
Claims to break the Laws of Newton (which is equivalent to a "perpetual motion machine") ^[8]
In the most of cases, the application of simple and pretty old dogmas (divergence of the perturbation series, Laws of Thermodynamics, conservation of Momentum, relativity of Motions) allows to reveal the errors, and in many cases even convince the colleagues. However, the efforts necessary to reveal the fault are huge in comparison to the efforts required to get some grant for some pseudo-science, while the benefits from such a revealing are very small compared to benefits from the spending of some pseudo-scientific grant. In such a way, I am physically unable to write an erratum with respect to every publication I consider to be wrong. In this article I formulate the basic tools that help to refute the non-scientific concepts.

Introduction

The science (and physics) should be correctly defined, in order to distinguish them from other kinds of knowledge. I suggest the simple model of the classification of the human knowledge is suggested. This model includes only four categories: customs, arts, religions and sciences. This is certain restriction, simplification and vulgarization, but even so simple classification is sometimes sufficient to identify the scientific knowledge from pseudo–science and other kinds of misinformation.

In this paper, knowledge means the ability to generalize the experience in a compact form and to transfer it to others, and also the tools for such generalization and transferring. Religions are important kind of knowledge, and they should be distinguished from sciences. So, this article deals with both sciences and religions; I mention also other kinds of knowledge.

Past century, Karl Popper had described some especially efficient kind of knowledge. He called it science. However, not only science iteself, but, perhaps, even term "science was in use even before Popper. But Popper seems to be first, who formulated the criterion of refutability as the essential property of ANY scientific concept. ^[9]. The results by Popper can be expressed in the following sentences:

1. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory -- if we look for confirmations.

2. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory — an event which would have refuted the theory.

3. Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.

4. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.

5. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.

6. Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of ``corroborating evidence.)

7. Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers — for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status.

In the Popper's terminology, the falsifiability and refutability are synonyms. This century, term "falsifivation" is ambiguous. First, may mean rejection, refuting of a concept on the base of its internal contradictions revealed, or for the reason of contradiction with some experimental results, observations. Second, the same term may mean the misinformation, fabrication, fraud, non–honest fabrication of something that pretends to be information or knowledge. For this reason, I do not use the term "falsification", using the terms "refutation" or "fraud" to distinguish the meanings.

The request of refutability does not allow any objectivity; science appears as a special tool to make the efficient predictions, rather than any kind of objective knowledge.^[10] Then, the principles of Science appear as pretty general (but still empiric) set of criteria that allow to qualify some knowledge as scientific and expect its efficiency.

The requirement of refutability opposes the {\em believe} in the ability to get some {\em objective} knowledge. The idea by Popper were not accepted by colleagues, as the growth of knowledge is believed to dominate over the refutation. ^[11]. The ignorance of refutability and believes into some objective knowledge leads to the growth of pseudo-science and suppression of really new branches of science. For example, in the USSR, in its time, even the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, cybernetics were suppressed as pseudo-sciences. ^{[12] [13]}.

it is vain to identify and classify the sciences and all the pseudosciences one by one. In order to identify a pseudoscience, this paper suggests to classify the human knowledge and indicate the place of science there.

Customs

The category of customs should include not only the commonly accepted behavior of humans, but also the habitual semantics of commonly used human languages. For example, the usual meaning of the Bible is custom, widely accepted in the Christian community. The the sentence {\em You shall love your neighbor as yourself} allows various interpretations, including the homosexual orientation of Jesus Christ \cite{jesus,jesusgay}, dependently on the meaning of the word {\em love} and its Hebrew and Aramaic equivalents. Similarly, the interpretations by Tim Rice and Michael Bulgakov should be qualified not as a custom but as an art.

The folklore also falls in the category of custom, if we define it as any knowledge that id difficult to investigate by the any systematic methods. However, if one collects the folklore texts or the records of country–music and publish, the folklor becomes literature, art.

The semantic of the human languages and their understanding, the meaning of words is the most important part of the human knowledge. Namely this kind of knowledge gives sense to other kinds of knowledges considered below.

Arts

Art is knowledge that is free from internal rules and is realized in a reproducible form that allow its systematic investigation. Such a definition corresponds to a goal formulated in the introduction, although it slightly reduces the set of things which could be called art. Usually a product of art has the following properties:

A0. Internationality. The music, images, movies, sculptures can be recognized as art independently on the nationality of the spectators; even the text files often allow the translation to other languages.

A1. Beauty: Here, the beauty is the extensive ability of any unexpected use.

A2. Structureless. Intents to bring into the arts rules are not efficient. The arts use all other knowledges; the same product may have both artistic and scientific value.

A3. Wisdom. Artists with their works say more, than they planned to say, and more, than they understand by themselves. In this sense, the product of art may be wiser than the author.

A4. Entirety. Intents to correct, to improve a product of art destroy it.

A5. Amoralism. Creatures that have goal to bring some moral to the society, have low artistic value if at all; the creature may violate any taboo.

Aiming the specific application of the classification, the topics of customs and arts are presented here only declaratively.

Religions

Religion is kind of the human knowledge based on some (specific for each religion) set of irrefutable concepts, believes, texts, symbols and performances.

Usually, any religion is characterized in the most of following:

R0. Difficulty of translation. Some of religions are strongly entangled with the ethnicity and language; there are opinions that neither Koran, nor Torah can be translated in a fully correct way. (Although some other religions like christianity are more international.)

R1. The existence of at least one God is presumed.

R2. There exist canonical sacred text, that allow the humans to guess the will of God(s) and follow it.

R3. God like some actions of human, these actions are called Good.

R4. God dislike some actions of human, these actions are called Evil.

R5. The suggested set of concepts pretends to play an organizing role in the society: The following to namely this religion provides abilities for the kindness, prudence and wisdom significantly wider, than any other religions.

It this article, God is generic term denoting any intelligent subject that in some way (that is not available for humans) has abilities that greatly exceed those of a human. Actions related to these abilities are called miracles.

God may look like a human (Jesus Christ, Buddha, Lenin), but also can be ``non-material (God - Holy Spirit, World Revolution, Marxism). God may be omnipotent (almighty), invincible, immortal and predicts future:
The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true ^[14]
Long live invincible marxism - leninism - mao tsetung. ^[15]
The generation of those who are now fifteen will see a communist society, and will itself build this society. ^[16]
The immortal beacon of Comrade Stalin will forever illuminate the path on which the Chinese people march forward. ^[17]
And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years.

World religions, each in their own way, offer a unique set of moral values and rules to guide humans. Often, such rules are presumed to be truth without limits and alternatives:
The law of the LORD is perfect, restoring the soul; The testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.
... he who chooses a religion other than islam, it will not be accepted from him, and in the everlasting life he will be among the losers.

Some religions do not identify themselves as religions, pretending to be sciences. ^[18][19]. The adepts consider their own belief as the only true concept, denying the dogmatic character of their believes, and treat any deviant behavior as crime, heresy and mental illness; the wrong-believers are punished or undergo the forced medical treatment. Some religions justify lies, sacrifices, betrays, massacre, murdering and wars, if they serve the needs or preferences of their God(s).

Most of religions avoid any refutable concepts. The concept is called refutable, if (and only if) in terms if this concept, some specific observation can be described that negates the concept. For example, the statement
The Party officially declares: The current generation of the soviet people will live in communism
is refutable: based of such a declaration, the next generation may shame the adepts of that religion as liars, impostors and frauders. Within few generations after creation of a new religion, it abandons and forgets all its refutable concepts and becomes more stable. Here are the examples of irrefutable concepts:
God blesses America
Imperialism is evil
God gives the immortal soul to everyone
The righteous will be at Heaven

The canonic texts describe the marvels, miracles that are specific for each religion. The miracle may refer to the magic conversion of water into vine, to the drastic increase of the efficiency of the production by the inspiration of the fuhrer, catching of the spies by children, destruction of an army of the enemy tanks by several heroic soldiers launching grenades, etc.

The definition in the beginning of the section does not specify features R1-R5 as necessary; so, many kinds of knowledge falls into the definition of religion. In particular, it includes the shintoism and the civil religions, although these religions do not pretend to be the "only true knowledge and Gods in these religions are not omnipotent.

Religions form significant part of the human knowledge and play important role in the human history. While a religion is tolerant with respect to other kinds of knowledge (and in particular, to other religions), it may assist the prosper development of the society. No one religion can substitute other kinds of knowledge, end even other religions, as one specific science cannot substitute all other sciences. The society, where any religion dominates in an aggressive way, becomes barbarian compared to other countries within few generations; the people of such a society loss the ability to analyze the information.

Sciences

As it was mentioned in the second section, the term ``science may have different meanings. Following K.Popper, in this article, this term applies only to a refutable knowledge. In order to distinguish science at the background of pseudoscience and religion, the term science should be defined in the most restrictive way:

Science is kind of knowledge, activity and notations, based on concepts that have all the six properties below:

S0. Applicability: Each concept has the limited range of validity, distinguishable from the empty set.

S1. Verifiability: In the terms of the already accepted concepts, some specific experiment with some specific result, that confirms the concept, can be described.

S2. Refutability: In the terms of the concept, some specific experiment with some specific result, that negates the concept, can be described.

S3. Self-consostency: No internal contradictions of the concept are known.

S4. Principle of correspondence: It the range of validity of a new concept intersects the range of validity of another already accepted concept, then, the new concept either reproduced the results of the old concept, or indicated the way to refute it. (For example, the estimate of the range of validity of the old concept may be wrong.)

S5. Pluralism: Mutually-contradictive concepts may coexist; if two concepts satisfying S1-S5 have some common range of validity, then, in this range, the simplest of them has priority.

All the six properties aboveare compulsory. For example, if the range of validity of a concept is the full set (id est, the concept is valid every time and everywhere), then it does not satisfy S0, and there is no need to check properties S1-S5 to qualify such a concept as non-scientific.

Scientific concepts are built on the base of observations, experiments, axioms, hypothesis, theorems and theories.

Observation means identification of some phenomena which are in some sense similar.

Axioms are statements that are considered as initial at the building-up of some concept. Concept with commonly accepted axioms is called "paradigm.

Theorems are statements that are proven on the base of axioms and definitions. Sometimes this term is used even in those cases then the proof of the statement is not yet constructed but is expected to be constructed in future. In such cases the term "hypothesis or "Conjecture is more suitable.

If the hypothesis is deduced from the postulates and other, already proven theorems, it becomes theorem. If a hypothesis had predicted some non-trivial results of observations or experiments, it becomes theory.

Activity, related with development of new concepts is called research. The most important classification of sciences is based on the subject of the research, the goal and the methods, that dominate in the research: humanitarian --- natural, fundamental --- applied and theoretic --- experimenal.

Not all sciences are developed sufficiently to allow the use of the full scheme above. Before Hooke and Newton, the deduction was prerogative of mathematics and not so often in physics, if at all. Before the quantum mechanics, the deduction in chemistry was not possible. Until now, many concepts in biology and the humanitarian sciences are built up on the base of guesses and the verification rather than on the base of the deduction.

Mathematics makes the basis of other sciences. No one science dare to contradict mathematics. The computational mathematics and cybernetics provides a bridge between mathematics and other knowledge. The general physics and theoretical physics relates mathematics with other sciences, although some sciences (even humanitarian ones) may use, for example, the statistical methods without to refer to physics.

If some science, concept contradicts the basic paradigms of mathematics of physics, then, according to S5, there should be indicated a way to see that they are wrong.

To avoid the confusions, the term {\em science} should be used only in the sense of the definition above. In all other cases, the terms pseudoscience, sovietscience, christianscience, quasiscience may be used to specify that an activity or a knowledge may look similar to science or similar to the scientific research.

Sciences and the society

Usually the sciences, and especially the fundamental ones do not give a fast benefit. The spending of the budget funding to support the satisfaction of the personal curiosity of researchers requires justification. There were intents to submit the development of science to other goals (creation of facilities of the modernization of the industry, or increasing of the military power of a country, etc.). Some researches, especially applied ones, can be motivated in such a way; and the results may be scientific.

During the human history, there was not developed more efficient motivation for science, than curiosity of researchers who do it. Yet, there is no other way to make the deep science. However, the needs of industry can be mentioned as motivation for the financial support of the curiosity of researchers.

The distribution of funds assigned for the development of science is serious problem. Administrators of funds cannot drill deeply into the research they finance. The funds are distributed on the base of the formal criteria: publications, citation, participation in the conferences. The ability to write the grant applications and good relations with colleagues and the distributors of funds become important, if not dominant, factor in the success in the getting of the financial support. For the same reason, the spectacularity of the new effects is important for their promotion.

Especially non-efficiently the funds are sent in the countries with corrupted bureaucracy; and not only because the significant part of foundation is spent for bribes and the private security. The government being unable to keep the growth of the technology of the country at the international level begins to secret the scientific achievements in order to enable the monopolistic use in the military industry. Often, the results are fake: the secrecy protects them from critics and opens wide field for both wanted and unwanted errors.

In a totalitaristic country, some sciences may be not only left without foundation, but crashed by the physical repression of researchers, as it happened in the USSR with the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, cybernetics and genetics. Previously, in Europe, in the epoch of the Holly Inquisition, the similar phenomena took place with respect to astronomy.

The properties S0-S5 allow to separate scientific concepts from others without fighting the pseudosciences.

Conclusions

The strict definition of science with criteria S0-S5 is suggested. These criteria are based on the idea of falisibiability developed by K. Popper By itself the term falisification causes confusions. The term [[refutability[[ is better. According the definition, the scientific results should include all the properties S0-S5. Recognition of these six conditions as compulsory is necessary to save physics and other sciences from profanation. I suggest that the editorials of the scientific books and journals and the chairs of the scientific seminars accept S0-S5 as the main requirements for the scientific results.

References

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