SCIENCE AND OTHER COMMON NOUNS: FURTHER IMPLICATIONS OF ANTI-ESSENTIALISM with Paul Allen, "Critical Realism Redux: A Response to Josh Reeves"; JB Stump, "Science and Other Common Nouns: Further Implications of Anti-Essentialism"; Peter N. Jordan, "Legitimacy and the Field of Science and Religion"; Jaime Wright, "Making Space for the Methodological Mosaic: The Future of the Field of Science and Religion"; Victoria Lorrimar, "Science and Religion: Moving beyond the Credibility Strategy"; and Josh Reeves, "Methodology in Science and Religion: A Reply to Critics"

The term "science" is a common noun that is used to designate a whole range of activities. If Reeves is right-and I think he is-that there is no essence to these activities that allows them to be objectively identified and demarcated from nonscience, then what qualifies as science is determined by communities. It becomes much more difficult on this antiessentialism position to identify and dismiss pseudo-science. I suggest we might find a way forward, though, by engaging a philosophical tradition that has largely been neglected in English-speaking science and religion studies, and by articulating a theory of consensus along the lines of Oreskes (2019).