December 18, 2012
the new scientism
In contrast to reason, a defining characteristic of superstition is the stubborn insistence that something — a fetish, an amulet, a pack of Tarot cards — has powers which no evidence supports. From this perspective, scientism appears to have as much in common with superstition as it does with properly conducted scientific research. Scientism claims that science has already resolved questions that are inherently beyond its ability to answer. Of all the fads and foibles in the long history of human credulity, scientism in all its varied guises — from fanciful cosmology to evolutionary epistemology and ethics — seems among the more dangerous, both because it pretends to be something very different from what it really is and because it has been accorded widespread and uncritical adherence. Continued insistence on the universal competence of science will serve only to undermine the credibility of science as a whole. The ultimate outcome will be an increase of radical skepticism that questions the ability of science to address even the questions legitimately within its sphere of competence. One longs for a new Enlightenment to puncture the pretensions of this latest superstition.more from Austin L. Hughes at The New Atlantis here.
Posted by Morgan Meis at 10:42 AM | Permalink
Comments
I am mystified as to why the professor did not mention math-rich String Theory.
Or abiotic evolution (evolutionary cosmology), the big dog of the evolutionary timescale.
Is his piece a bit of political science?
Posted by: Dredd | Dec 18, 2012 10:59:39 AM
"did not mention math-rich String Theory"
His mention of "fanciful cosmology" may have been an indirect reference.
Posted by: DAS | Dec 18, 2012 12:46:25 PM
DAS,
Could be.
I would have hoped for more specificity in a piece that is disparaging about vagaries.
Posted by: Dredd | Dec 18, 2012 1:50:00 PM
To me it is a superbly written piece about scientism and its relevance as a philosophical spin-off from science.
Posted by: Félix E. F. Larocca, MD | Dec 18, 2012 4:24:01 PM
out of curiosity: the term "scientism" gets thrown around a lot, but how much of it is just sensationalist riff-raff in the media, and how much of it actually represents what researchers from scientists to philosophers to the humanities think?
Posted by: smh | Dec 18, 2012 6:19:22 PM
An enjoyable essay. Much to praise and much to challenge.
Posted by: Ken Pidcock | Dec 18, 2012 8:54:14 PM
"but how much of it is just sensationalist riff-raff in the media"
However much the 'scientism' debate rages on places like 3QD, it will never rise to the level where the media could ever hope to sensationalize it.
There are a group of atheistic scientists who are justifiably annoyed by having their atheism declared a religion by their religious debating opponents.
They are equally annoyed, but not justifiably so in my opinion, at having their scientistic views declared religious.
To my mind atheism is not a religion, but scientism is.
Some scientists who are consciously or unconsciously scientistic are trying to get scientism labeled as a non-issue, but they are only doing themselves a disservice.
Philosophers are trying to be helpful in getting them off the quack religion path of scientism and back on the useful path of scientific research, but like most cultists they refuse to give up their heresies.
And like most cultists they are trying to undermine the commonsensical views of their intellectual and spiritual opponents: the philosophers.
Posted by: DAS | Dec 18, 2012 10:48:38 PM
My dictionary defines "Scientism" as the butthurt of mystics.
Posted by: melior | Dec 19, 2012 12:45:11 AM
"Scientism" is necessary because the only way we can determine if certain issues can be resolved by the scientific method is if we actually investigate them using the scientific method. It is beyond unreasonable to arbitrarily decide that certain areas fall out of the scope of the best tool mankind has to gain knowledge (and frankly, almost infinitely more successful than any other knowledge gaining method).
I think the author's fear is not that scientism is stepping out of its scope, but rather, science (eith its cousin math) has been radically successful in pretty much every field it has entered, almost always completely displacing the existing practitioners. A very recent example of this was polling in US elections, where a rigorous mathematical effort at predicting the elections completely destroyed anything the punditocracy, who were the existing poll predictors, could put out.
Posted by: addicted | Dec 19, 2012 1:32:50 AM
1) It's worthwhile to ask, what if anything is at stake in this debate? Why is it flaring up so much lately, when for so many subjects, there is so much to be gained from taking a multidiscplinary approach?
2) Quantifiable, verifiable predictions are the end, not the beginning of any science. First of all we have to figure out how to even quantify the stuff we care about. Before the law of the conservation of energy could be formulated someone had to invent a thermometer--and the concept of energy.
But in that case we shouldn't dismiss a priori any empirically grounded theory merely because it doesn't yet make any quantifiable testable predictions. E.g., a neurological theory of consciousness, or something like that.
3) Science and philosophy can illuminate each other, though showing where and how is itself the terrain of philosophical argument.
For instance, in philosophical ethics, it seems like Aristotelians and utilitarians should be eager to learn as much as they can from the social sciences about what makes human beings flourish. Ethical intuitionists might be interested in research being done by behavioral and evolutionary psychologists about the nature and origins of our moral intuitions.
Even a very elegant and thoughtful political philosophy should be rejected if it is strikingly misattuned to well-corroborated facts of human nature. (Such a theory would lack application.) So it would make sense, e.g., to consider whether Rawls Theory of Justice is consistent with behavioral economics.
From the other direction, arguably Hubert Dreyfus' interventions into AI have enriched that field as well.
Posted by: JoshM | Dec 19, 2012 3:25:39 AM
In reply to the first comment by Dredd: String theory does not purport to answer "philosophical" questions (and many would say it doesn't say much about physical ones either), but Hughes *did* devote a whole section to evolutionary cosmology. I actually share his view that the claims by some people that these theories answer the "why" question are preposterous - but on different grounds, as I see no evidence that the question has any meaning in the first place.
On ethical questions, Hughes correctly distinguishes scientific study of how ethics arose from the inappropriate application of not-properly-established scientific speculation to social engineering and from the silly efforts of Sam Harris to identify the goal of predicting moral decisions with the act of making them. But these are completely different sins, and so the adoption of a common label is inappropriate.
In fact I have always been offended by the term "scientism" ever since it was introduced in the 1960's, because it seemed designed to sound like the typical position of a scientist (and so, despite pious disclaimers, to taint the latter in the public mind).
If some scientists are sometimes unjustifiably arrogant then that is worth pointing out, but to define science as the search for all discoverable testable truths is not the same as falsely claiming to have found them.
Posted by: Alan Cooper | Dec 19, 2012 4:27:49 AM
In reply to Mr. Cooper:
"but on different grounds, as I see no evidence that the question has any meaning in the first place."
What evidence could there be that anything has meaning?
Posted by: oldman | Dec 19, 2012 7:21:44 AM
Addicted,
It is beyond unreasonable to arbitrarily decide that certain areas fall out of the scope of the best tool mankind has to gain knowledge
Agreed. However, opponents of scientism usually produce arguments, so the decision is not actually arbitrary.
But then, you knew that, right, because you've read some of the anti-scientism literature? I mean, a lover of science obviously wouldn't just start talking about something when they don't actually know about it, would they? That would be pretty... unscientific, wouldn't it?
Posted by: Joe | Dec 19, 2012 10:46:45 AM
3QD agonistes!
Posted by: Aditya | Dec 19, 2012 6:52:43 PM
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