---
title: "Protoscience"
chunk: 1/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protoscience"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:44:56.796921+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

In the philosophy of science, protoscience (adj. protoscientific) is a research field that has the characteristics of an undeveloped science that may ultimately develop into an established science.  Philosophers use protoscience to understand the history of science and distinguish protoscience from science and pseudoscience.
The word "protoscience" is a hybrid Greek-Latin compound of the roots proto- + scientia, meaning a first or primeval rational knowledge.
Examples of protoscience include alchemy, Wegener's original theory of continental drift and political economy (the predecessor to the modern economic sciences).

== History ==
Protoscience as a research field with the characteristics of an undeveloped science appeared in the early 20th century. In 1910, Jones described the field of political economy as it began the transition to the modern field of economics:

I confess to a personal predilection for some term such as proto-science, pre-science, or nas-science, to give expression to what I conceive to be the true state of affairs, which I take to be this, that economics and kindred subjects are not sciences, but are on the way to become sciences.
Thomas Kuhn later provided a more precise description, protoscience as a field that generates testable conclusions, faces "incessant criticism and continually strive for a fresh start," but currently, like art and philosophy, appears to have failed to progress in a way similar to the progress seen in the established sciences.  He applies protoscience to the fields of natural philosophy, medicine and the crafts in the past that ultimately became established sciences.  Philosophers later developed more precise criteria to identify protoscience using the cognitive field concept.
The historian Scott Hendrix argued that the English word "science" as it is used by 21st century English speakers means modern science and that the use of the word to describe pre-modern scholars is misleading. "[E]ven an astute reader is prompted to classify intellectual exercises of the past as 'scientific'...based upon how closely those activities appear to mirror the activities of a modern scientist." Noting that natural philosophy was a far more neutral term than "science", Hendrix recommended that term be used instead when discussing pre-modern scholars of the natural world. "[T]here are sound reasons for a return to the use of the term natural philosophy that, for all its imprecision, reveals rather than imposes meaning on the past."

== Thought collective ==

This material is from Ludwik Fleck § Thought collective
Thomas Kuhn later discovered that Fleck 1935 had voiced concepts that predated Kuhn's own work. That is, 
Fleck wrote that the development of truth in scientific research was an unattainable ideal as different researchers were locked into thought collectives (or thought-styles). This means "that a pure and direct observation cannot exist: in the act of perceiving objects the observer, i.e. the epistemological subject, is always influenced by the epoch and the environment to which he belongs, that is by what Fleck calls the thought style". Thought style throughout Fleck's work is closely associated with representational style. A "fact" was a relative value, expressed in the language or symbolism of the thought collective in which it belonged, and subject to the social and temporal structure of this collective. He argued, however, that within the active cultural style of a thought collective, knowledge claims or facts were constrained by passive elements arising from the observations and experience of the natural world. This passive resistance of natural experience represented within the stylized means of the thought collective could be verified by anyone adhering to the culture of the thought collective, and thus facts could be agreed upon within any particular thought style. Thus while a fact may be verifiable within its own collective, it may be unverifiable in others. He felt that the development of scientific facts and concepts was not unidirectional and does not consist of just accumulating new pieces of information, but at times required changing older concepts, methods of observations, and forms of representation. This changing of prior knowledge is difficult because a collective attains over time a specific way of investigating, bringing with it a blindness to alternative ways of observing and conceptualization. Change was especially possible when members of two thought collectives met and cooperated in observing, formulating hypothesis and ideas. He strongly advocated comparative epistemology. He also notes some features of the culture of modern natural sciences that recognize provisionality and evolution of knowledge along the value of pursuit of passive resistances. This approach anticipated later developments in social constructionism, and especially the development of critical science and technology studies.

== Conceptual framework ==

=== Cognitive field ===
Philosophers describe protoscience using the cognitive field concept.  In every society, there are fields of knowledge (cognitive fields).  The cognitive field consists of a community of individuals within a society with a domain of inquiry, a philosophical worldview, logical/mathematical tools, specific background knowledge from neighboring fields, a set of problems investigated, accumulated knowledge from the community, aims and methods.  Cognitive fields are either belief fields or research fields.  A cognitive research field invariably changes over time due to research; research fields include natural sciences, applied sciences, mathematics, technology, medicine, jurisprudence, social sciences and the humanities.  A belief field (faith field) is "a cognitive field which either does not change at all or changes due to factors other than research (such as economic interest, political or religious pressure, or brute violence)."  Belief fields include political ideology, religion, pseudodoctrines and pseudoscience.