> That's right, I was laying down a very liberal criteria > but the answer is going to sound pretty silly. Yes, I was trying to illustrate that the line betwe

> That's right, I was laying down a very liberal criteria > but the answer is going to sound pretty silly. Yes, I was trying to illustrate that the line between 'science' and 'metaphysics' is necessarily a blurry one, and the choice of (and justification for) where to draw it itself lies in the realm of metaphysics. The broader the universe of claims you admit as scientific, the more 'testability' and 'falsifiability' lie closer to the realm of theory. However, even theories (and paradigms) that can't be directly placed on the experimenter's bench today can point towards fruitful lines of investigation. On the flip side, we can't but to make metaphysical (and therefore non-scientific) claims and hold them as true, despite our best efforts ... the strong version of 'scientism' (that only scientific claims can have meaning) is a self-defeating one.