Abstract

After a brief discussion of the various philosophical theories on the nature of scientific belief advanced in the last century, I present and defend my own view on the problem. Despite the fact that there are no necessary and sufficient criteria that demarcate scientific from non-scientific beliefs, there are nevertheless some guiding lines adopted by the scientific community that can be made explicit and that allow us to distinguish, say, both astrology from astronomy and, in a much more complex way, a physical theory from a metaphysical theory on physics.