SCIENCE. FALSIFICATION AND IDEOLOGY 23 to the realm of science. The criterion offalsifiability can be used to demarcate potential science from non science. However Popper proceeded to extend this further to demarcate between competing scientific theories. As was easily shown by Kuhn, this results in regarding the theories so falsified to be mistakes. Popper^ the non-relativist, implicitly accepted that progress in science consists of moving closer and closer to truth through successive falsifications of theories. The problem of course lies in relegating valid scientific theories practiced for hundreds of years to the same position as a theory proposed but found never to be valid [3j. In other words, while. falsification can be used to separate non science from potential science, the extension of this to do a rank ordering of this potential science has serious problems. Popper sought a way out by introducing a criteria of verisimilitude [4] by which one can do a rank ordering between two scientific theories. Even with this, the Popperian framework does not distinguish between a falsified scientific theory and a proposed theory which passes the test of falsifiability but was not found to be valid. The second problem of a Popperian position stems from its insistence of science being only a critical discourse. In Popper's view, science is in a state of permanent convulsions. In this process, it continuously replaces one theory by another, all the while critically examining its basic categories and theories. According to Popper, if science really did not behave this way, it was only because of poor education that scientists received. Historically speaking, it is not difficult to show that a picutre of science in a state of permanent revolution is not in consonance with facts. Further, no serious scientist ever practices the way Popper feels they should. If Popper acclaimed that dialectics was sterile in its application to science, there was very little to recommend his theories as a practical guidelines to science either. Here Popper is seeking of philosophy what is truly the domain of science. Ironically, the Popperian criterion of science has been used only rarely in debates on conflicting theories in science and never by the successful side. Scientists simply do not propose theories "whose empirical basis are the set of propositions which can refute this theory" [5]. And philosophical questions regarding the replacement of one theory by another can not be divorced from the actual practice of science. Popper's reconstruction of science then, proceeds not from within science but from outside. Having identified ideology or metaphysics as being non falsifiable, he proceeded to create science as its opposite. If ideology was always conformist, science was always seen to be critical. Ideology and science were viewed as mutually exclusive. In the process, the Popperian framework demands a continuous movement towards "truth" and more and more distance from ideology. A view that science has critical and noncritical components was antithetical to Proppefs central concern. Science as critical discourse was Popper's ideological need rather than an analysis of the logic of scientific discovery.