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ScientismThe term scientism is a relatively newly coined word that refers to certain epistemologies based on science. The word has several different meanings: - Scientism usually means the acceptance of scientific theory and scientific methods as applicable in all fields of inquiry about the world, including morality, ethics, art, and religion. Here, science is held to be the ultimate recourse in questions of public policy and even religion. However, contemporary usage is usually in a pejorative sense, implying that this acceptance of the universality of the scientific method is a dogmatic and uncritical assumption analogous to the dogmatic and uncritical attitudes of religious True Believers.
- This viewpoint is typified by comments, such as "Science demonstrates that it is useless (or useful) to use seatbelts in cars" or "Science has shown that religion is wrong" or "Science shows that capitalism (or communism or socialism) is correct". In the case of such views as Marxism and many other political philosophies, such views are also called historicism, relying on what is claimed to be a scientific analysis of inevitable historical patterns.
- Scientism can mean the acceptance of scientific theory and scientific methods as applicable in all fields of inquiry about the physical, natural world. This definition is functionally equivalent to scientific naturalism.
- Scientism can mean the values of humanism and Enlightenment informed by science. In this context, scientism is "a scientific worldview that encompasses natural explanations for all phenomena, eschews supernatural and paranormal speculations, and embraces empiricism and reason as the twin pillars of a philosophy of life appropriate for an Age of Science". (Source: Michael Shermer, The Shamans of Scientism, Scientific American, 2002)
Scientism is typically seen, when used in its pejorative sense, as being a term deployed from an anti-science standpoint, although those who have used it in this way include some who in fact claim to be supporters of science who are merely proposing a less reductionist view of science (although the term 'reductionism' is also often used in the same pejorative way as scientism in this context). 'Scientism' may be used to imply an ignorance (or denial) of a relationship/disjunction between metaphysical and natural phenomena. This sense of the term comes close to Hannah Arendt's use of it in The Origins of Totalitarianism; in her view, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had made the human condition a matter of scientific exactitude, and thus otherwise impossible moral or ethical questions (such as, "Can a man be worthless? And if so, can we euthanize him?") are easily resolved within the internally-consistent "scientific" methods of the state. - This viewpoint is typified by comments, such as "there is one and only one method of science" or "there is one and only one way to conduct valid scientific research" as well as by attempts to limit intellectual debate to the hegemony of the established position of the scientific community. Medical scientism defines the term scientism in this sense of how valid medical research is supposed to be conducted.
See also References - "Science, Scientism, and Anti-Science in the Age of Preposterism", Susan Haack, Skeptical Inquier Magazine, 1997.
- Sandra Harding, "Who Knows? Identities and Feminist Epistemology", in Joan E. Hartman and Ellen Messer-Davidow, eds., (En)gendering Knowledge, University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1991, p. 109.
- F.A. Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason, Glencoe: The Free Press, 1952.
External links - "Is Science Killing the soul?" Time Out New York (Edge Foundation, Inc.). 1999.
- A discussion between Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins
- Dawkins, Richard, "Is Science a Religion?" The Humanist. January/February 1997.
- Newman, Nathan, "Big Pharma, Bad Science". The Nation. July 25, 2002.
- "The Shamans of Scientism" by Michael Shermer, Scientific American, June, 2002
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