Folk Science and Belief Legend

Linda Oxley Milligan

UFOs, ESP, Bigfoot, often the subjects of folk science, are rarely investigated by normal science. Additionally, the methods of and rationale for folk science are neglected by folklorists perhaps because, as David Hufford writes in "Traditions of Disbelief," academics have presumed at the onset that the beliefs held by its proponents are in error. Whether or not the beliefs held by folk science are in error is less relevant to the study of folklore than an understanding of the import of those beliefs, the relationship between folk science and belief legend, and the conflict between folk science and normal science.