Classifying a Claim: Science, Social Science, Pseudo-Science

The idea

The exam's question is whether a claim of this period was science, social science or pseudo-science, and the anchor's test is method, not subject. Science starts from evidence and survives testing: Pasteur's microorganisms, Lyell's strata, Darwin's selection, Mendel's ratios. Social science applies method to people and institutions and admits it may not reach geology's certainty: Durkheim on ritual, Weber on bureaucracy, Ranke on documents. Pseudo-science starts from a conclusion and dresses it in the vocabulary of science: Spencer's fittest, the racial skull chains, eugenics, the "Jewish race". The trap is that pseudo-science quoted Darwin, so his name is no guide. Ask what the claim would accept as disproof. Darwin listed the difficulties for his theory in his own book; Spencer treated poverty as proof of unfitness, and any survival as proof of fitness. Practice on six claims: germ theory, deep time, the demographic transition, survival of the fittest, the Protocols, and the sterilization of the "unfit".