The problem of demarcating science from nonscience remains unsolved. This article executes an analytical process of elimination of different demarcation proposals put forward since the professionalization of the philosophy of science, explaining why each of those proposals is unsatisfactory or incomplete. Then, it elaborates on how to execute an alternative multicriterial scientific demarcation project put forward by Mahner (2007, 521–522; 2013, 29–43). This project allows for the demarcation not only of science from non-science and from pseudoscience, but also of different types of sciences and of scientific fields (e.g., formal sciences, natural sciences, social sciences) from each other. This article also offers arguments in favor of accepting two types of scientific demarcations, namely epistemic-warrant scientific demarcations and territorial scientific demarcations, and argues in favor of accepting a territorially broad scientific demarcation.

The vast majority of well-informed philosophers of science and scientists who are clearly (uncontroversially) scientists are able to extensionally differentiate between almost all scientific and non-scientific practices, disciplines, theories, attitudes, modes of procedure, etc., and do so or would do so in much the same way. This legitimately leads to the conclusion that the main problem of scientific demarcation has already, in a sense, been solved, although an explicative integrated account of that solution has not yet been given. Doing so is the goal of the project proposed in Fernandez-Beanato (Journal for General Philosophy of Science 51(3):375–391, 2020b). To advance toward the solution of the scientific demarcation problem, this article executes part of that project: a first step for scientific demarcation is the composition of a broad “list” (set) of accepted characteristics, conditions, or properties of science, or indicators of scientificity (most of them, by themselves, unnecessary and insufficient) which might be collectively used to establish a demarcation between those theories, cognitive fields, practices, etc. which are scientific and those which are not. This article deals with feng shui as a clear case of a non-science. It defines feng shui and then lists properties of science that feng shui possesses and properties of science that it lacks. This article then shows that the proposed demarcatory list demarcates feng shui as non-scientific, in agreement with the current philosophical and scientific consensus.

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