Defenders of evolutionary theory are sometimes accused of “scientism”, and this much-used (and much-abused) term has also arisen in the republic of letters due to Steven Pinker’s recent “Science is Not the Enemy of the Humanities” in The New Republic, which drew interesting responses from Leon Wieseltier, Ross Douthat, and Dan Dennett. Here I want to examine a bit more carefully the idea of “scientism” by way of a criticism of Wieseltier’s “Perhaps Culture is Now the Counterculture”: A Defense of the Humanities”. There he complains that
Our glittering age of technologism is also a glittering age of scientism. Scientism is not the same thing as science. Science is a blessing, but scientism is a curse. Science, I mean what practicing scientists actually do, is acutely and admirably aware of its limits, and humbly admits to the provisional character of its conclusions; but scientism is dogmatic, and peddles certainties. It is always at the ready with the solution to every problem, because it believes that the solution to every problem is a scientific one, and so it gives scientific answers to non-scientific questions. But even the question of the place of science in human existence is not a scientific question. It is a philosophical, which is to say, a humanistic question.
Wieseltier isn’t a philosopher but a professional pundit who sprinkles his prose with philosophemes to appeal to the class-prejudices of his intended audience. So it would take some work just to locate his rant on a more well-traveled map.
He says that the difference between “science” and “scientism” is that science knows its place, and scientism is the inappropriate use of science outside of that place. But it’s really a very murky issue to know just what exactly “the place” of science is, and just how that knowledge is arrived at. How do we know what the limits of science are? What is the justification for claims about the limits of science? The answers to those questions are just as problematic as are the philosophical systems which ground those answers, whether Thomistic, Cartesian, Kantian, Hegelian, etc. In the 20th-century we have seen criticisms of scientism come from phenomenology, pragmatism, hermeneutics, feminism, and so on.
Beginning in the late 19th-century, some neo-Kantian philosophers have held that the difference between the sciences and the humanities is basically *methodological*, and that seems close to the right answer. But once the distinction is methodological, rather than about different sets of phenomena, then “noble speculation for humanity, vulgar quantification for nature” (or however it may be put) doesn’t work so well. We need good social scientific work about human minds and societies just as much as we need a rich tradition of ‘humanistic’ thinking about it. These days, the latter doesn’t have a good track record — “family values” and “traditional ways of life” are increasingly flimsy excuses for pursuing policies that are both ineffective and oppressive.
Wieseltier’s real complaints, however, have nothing to do with science or scientism. That’s just the scapegoat. His real complaints are about the fetish of efficiency, precision, and control. But that’s got rather less to do with science (or ‘scientism’) than he thinks, and much more to do with the political economic goal of maximizing over-consumption to support an economy premised on over-production and profit-maximization. The anxious hand-wringing about ‘scientism’ is just a romantic anti-capitalism that dare not look itself in the face, for fear of losing well-entrenched corporate support. (There’s a reason why Wieseltier writes for “The New Republic” and not “The Nation” or “Dissent.”)
More generally, we can distinguish between a left-wing critique of scientism and a right-wing critique of scientism. Left-wing scientism is the symptom of a left in decline, a left that has lost the very last vestiges of its grounding in Marx’s critique of political economy, and scape-goats science for the social ills produced by unrestrained capitalism. Right-wing scientism is more ‘authentic,’ insofar as social conservatives recognize (even if only implicitly) that the natural and social sciences do not lend support to their various sacred cows (e.g. that abstinence-only sex-education is effective, that restricting abortion access lowers the abortion rate, that anthropogenic climate change is a hoax, or that evolution is a fraud).
I think this should be “left-wing criticism of scientism” and “right-wing criticism of scientism” rather than “left-wing scientism” and “right-wing scientism”. After all these critics say they are very much against scientism, so it seems backwards to accuse them of it.
I have never understood what “scientism” means. There seems to be a lot of disagreement over what the word means.
I read arguments defending scientism, and it seems to me that they are really defending empiricism (roughly, the use of evidence for making decisions). I’m not sure why we need a separate word “scientism” if it means the same as “empiricism”.
To me, there is a clear enough distinction between the humanities and the sciences, though there is some overlap. I enjoy reading a good book, and neither science nor empiricism has anything to do with that. I do expect historians to be empiricist in their methods, but I’m not sure how a similar requirement would apply to literature or art.
It is true that the existence of the social sciences muddies things. The social sciences don’t really fit with the natural sciences, but they also don’t fit well with the humanities. Personally, I don’t require my categories to all have rigid boundaries, so this does not bother me.
I guess the use of “scientism” as a label is part of the culture wars, so perhaps I should not surprised if there is not much rationality to be found in public discussion about it.
Inserting the word “criticism” does help that part make more sense.
Thank you — I’ll make the correction!
Scientism joins Darwinism and materialism in the pantheon of meaningless insults. You can quickly spot a writer with no ideas by their use of epithets.
My own take on the misuse of science is that political activists will take problem identified by science and promote a solution that has no justification.
So the legitimate problem of drug abuse leads to the war on drugs. AGW leads to promotion of technologies that simply can’t solve the problem for many decades and opposition to technologies like thorium that could buy time until greener tech is mature.
Insert your personal prejudices here.
As best I can tell, ‘scientism’ is a word which is only ever used in two contexts: One, it’s used by people who don’t like ‘scientism’. Two, it’s used by people who are replying to ‘scientism’-haters. If there’s anybody who actually does consider themselves to be an adherent of ‘scientism’, I am unaware of who those people (assuming their number to be greater than zero) might be. ‘Scientism’, therefore, is like ‘social Darwinism’ in that both are terms which are never affirmatively held by anyone, but only used as terms of opprobrium by people who want to criticize… something-or-other. What that something-or-other may be is not entirely clear, because each user of the terms ‘scientism’ or ‘social Darwinism’ seems to have their own personal definition, and there is no guarantee that John Doe’s definition(s) will bear any non-trivial resemblance to Richard Roe’s definition(s).
So I conclude that ‘scientism’, like ‘social Darwinism’, is not a well-formed concept; rather, it’s an expression of political/tribal solidarity. ‘Scientism’ is generalized BadStuff—it’s That Which My Tribe Despises—and so is ‘social Darwinism’. And closer to home, Gregory’s total inability (or perhaps just lack of desire?) to define this ‘evolutionism’ thingie, suggests to me that ‘evolutionism’ is Gregory’s personal BadStuff term.
Maybe try coelsblog; defending scientism, though I think he just means empiricism.
I lean toward agreeing with you (cubist) on ‘scientism’. But (I’ll say at the risk of launching an irrelevant tangent) I did once run across someone who openly called himself a ‘social Darwinist’.
http://mindromp.org/forum/showthread.php?p=9530
cubist,
The word scientism has pejorative overtones so no one is likely to describe themselves as a follower of scientism. But there are some people who believe that the scientific method or attitude is superior to all other ways of finding out. Lewis Wolpert begins his essay “In Praise of Science” with:
Science is the best way to understand the world.
I think Ben Goldacre comes close to believing the same thing. While I am great fan of his I do not think, for example, that holding randomised controlled trials on political policies will take us much closer to the truth than a more humanities based approach. The danger of pseudoscience is much greater than the danger of scientism – but there is a risk, for example, neglecting experience and professional expertise in favour of data and sciency sounding evidence. I am thinking particularly of the ideas of Theodore Porter in his book “Trust in Numbers”.
I can’t even imagine how professional expertise clashes with data. You can be a pseudoscientist in any field, including physics, but I think the greatest problems in pollitics and social policy arise where no one checks to see if a policy actually improves anything.
My father was a state health officer, and for decades he published annual statistics on the effectiveness of every program, from immunization to sanitation.
Somewhat late in his career the legislature explicitely abolished this data collection and publication by defunding it. At that point my dad chose to retire.
In the UK numerous tables provide apparently objective and scientific evidence of which schools are successful. These may well conflict with the professional opinion of a school inspector.
“it’s really a very murky issue to know just what exactly “the place” of science is, and just how that knowledge is arrived at.” – KN
Delightful book by the geographer David N. Livingstone: “Putting Science in its Place.” (2003)
“the philosophical systems which ground those answers” – KN
I’d suggest bringing in theology or worldview into the mix with science and philosophy as well. This trio – science, philosophy, theology/worldview – seems more likely to gain a more holistic view of “the limits of science”. That is, unless a reductionistic view is preferred by the discussant.
Wieseltier’s “it gives scientific answers to non-scientific questions” isn’t a bad effort, imo. It then shifts the focus to: what are “non-scientific questions” or questions that ‘science’ (which usually means natural-physical sciences) is not lowercase ‘designed’ to address? Some of the blurriness here is epistemological, if ‘science’ is just equated with ‘knowledge’ and if “non-scientific knowledge” is considered nonsense.
I’ll come back to the ‘evolutionism’ question later. For now, let me express bafflement at just how many people seem to avoid the topic of ‘ideology’ or at least don’t bring it straight to the front row on questions like these. E.g. there was not a single mention of ‘ideology’ in the thread up to now. Why not? Is it because there are several scientists here and because scientists supposedly don’t ‘do ideology’?
I consider ‘scientism’ as an ideology and find that is the best category for it (e.g. rather than ‘curse’), in which a definition can be fruitfully mediated (except by those who deny ideologies exist at all or deserve special signifiers, like ‘materialism’ instead of just ‘material’).
Isn’t KN’s ‘humanism’ yet another type of ideology? I’d accept the label ‘humanist,’ but it is more coherent imo if it involves a qualifier (e.g. secular or Catholic). I consider ‘critical realism’ an ideology too, but don’t mind being labelled a critical realist. People who fear labels, imho, are often those who don’t have a very clear understanding of their own positions or the significant thinking and categorising that has been done in order to provide clarity and coherence (and not just about angels dancing on the heads of pins – yet another ideology; scholasticism).
“Scientism joins Darwinism and materialism in the pantheon of meaningless insults.” – petrushka
The recent fascinating discussions reveal that ‘scientism’ is not just meant or implied as a ‘meaningless’ insult. I suggest you get used to the new language (Pinker is not a small voice in this conversation and the storm hasn’t nearly subsided). Pinker’s attempt to find a valid ‘scientism’ is a distinct move that counters petrushka’s (and cubist’s) opinion. Friedrich von Hayek’s views on ‘scientism’ are also imo worth considering, as are Murray Rothbard’s.
“The anxious hand-wringing about ‘scientism’ is just a romantic anti-capitalism that dare not look itself in the face, for fear of losing well-entrenched corporate support.” – KN
Corporate scientism or the notion of ‘big science’ come into play here. There is much to be said about the socio-economic features of the discussion. Curtis White’s “The Science Delusion” is certainly “romantic anti-capitalism.” I’ll have a review out on that soon. We likely agree on that KN, but I’m outside of the USA, so the view looks different from here, even east of your German philosophers.
“I’m not sure why we need a separate word “scientism” if it means the same as “empiricism”.” – Neil Rickert
There are theoretical, methodological and empirical aspects of ‘doing science’ (this verb humanises it). Not all science done is ’empirical.’
“I guess the use of “scientism” as a label is part of the culture wars.” – Neil Rickert
It was used long before the ‘culture war’ in today’s America, depending how one defines it.
Some might find this interesting: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Scientism%2CEmpiricism%2CNaturalism%2CEvolutionism&year_start=1820&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=
Or this: http://carbon.ucdenver.edu/~mryder/scientism_este.html
Still waiting for an example.
Tell us a story about some poor wraith caught in the snare of scientism and how it destroyed his life.
Please. Anything besides more smoke.
I have read plenty of the philosophers; including “philosophers.” While some of the philosophers have had interesting ideas in the past, most of the post-modernist “philosophers” of the present are like millipedes that start to think about how it is that they can walk, and, in the process of thinking about thinking about thinking, suddenly become paralyzed and can no longer walk.
The point is that “stupid, philosophically ignorant” scientists continue to forge ahead making discovery after discovery and working out the details of these discoveries both technologically and pedagogically, while the “philosophers” continue to be baffled and wrangle endlessly about how scientists do it. This tells us who really has a handle on epistemology and ontology.
I’m not sure that “non-scientific questions” even makes sense. Science is not a question-answering endeavor. It does answer many questions, but quite often the question was never asked except as a rhetorical device to highlight science’s “answer.”
Perhaps because most scientists avoid ideology.
I consider “scientism” to be an epithet which has no actual meaning. In spite of posting a lengthy comment (to which I am replying), you have written nothing there that would suggest that the word has a useful meaning.
I guess we will have to leave that for KN to answer. For me, “humanism” names a moral stance, not an ideology.
Once you add those qualifiers, it becomes more likely to be an ideology rather than a simple moral stance. I prefer to not add the qualifiers.
I’m not sure whether that’s an ideology. But, since I am not what KN describes as a critical realist, I guess it doesn’t much matter to me whether it is an ideology.
I don’t fear labels. I am often labeled a Darwinist (which I am not) or a materialist (which I am not), but I don’t take offense when others apply those terms to me. I correct them only when it is pertinent to the discussion.
I readily admit to being a behaviorist and a pragmatist. But I do not subscribe to traditional accounts of either behaviorism or pragmatism. My behaviorism is not ideological, it is methodological. And, likewise, my pragmatism is not ideological but is methodological.
For those with a sense of humour (or a ‘sense of humor’ for the USAmericans) regarding ‘scientism’ (which some still dare to believe is a non-existent ideology): John Cleese – The Scientists (2008)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M-vnmejwXo
It’s true. A day never goes by that I don’t see a public reference to the god gene. Sometimes it’s three or four times in one day.
Real science has been completely pushed aside in favor of the god gene.
Hello, all! Back on track here, I guess!
First, the easy questions: yes, Gregory, I would call White’s book an exercise in romantic anti-capitalism. (Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it immensely.) The contrast between White’s The Science Delusion and Eagleton’s Reason, Faith, and Revolution could be instructive — though I find Eagleton’s discussion of belief, faith, certainty, etc. too compact for it to help us sort through the issues.
Second, on the much more difficult question of “ideology”: I get my use of “ideology” through Marx and the Frankfurt School, so I use it as a pejorative rather than descriptive term. Raymond Geuss (The Idea of a Critical Theory) proposes “ideology in a pejorative sense”, or IPS, to focus on what ‘the critique of ideology’ is up to. So when I use “ideology,” it is the pejorative sense that I have in mind. For the non-pejorative sense, I’m perfectly content with Rawls’ term “comprehensive doctrine” and somewhat less happy with the more familiar term “world-view”.
So, I take my own view — Kantian naturalism, hence the moniker — to be a comprehensive doctrine, insofar as it consists of taking the basic Kantian framework — how the mind prescribes a priori rules to experience, the role of those rules in both theoretical and practical reasoning, and so on — but turn it around on itself by explaining (though not ‘grounding’) the a priori structures themselves in contingent processes of natural history. I could also call this view Hegelianism (of a certain kind?) or pragmatism (of a certain kind), but I like the sound of ‘Kantian naturalism’. And I’m sure I’ve already indicated how deeply I’ve been influenced by Dewey, C. I. Lewis, Wilfrid Sellars, Adorno, and Merleau-Ponty.
(Nietzsche functions in my thought as a warning — if one doesn’t re-conceptualize the concept of normativity within naturalistic terms, then — but only then! — does the commitment to naturalism lead to nihilism. As I see it, Nietzsche is a failed Kantian naturalist, and Sellars is a successful Kantian naturalist precisely Sellars, unlike Nietzsche, has a robust theory of society grounded in his close study of Hegel, Marx, and Wittgenstein — and his own life experience.)
So, here’s a question for us: is Dawkins’ The God Delusion implicitly committed to ‘scientism’? If so, why; if not, why not?
I’ve never read “The God Delusion” and I have never had any interest in reading it.
But I’ll watch the discussion from the sidelines.
Mike Elzinga,
Are you implying that philosophy of science is worthless because scientists don’t need to know it in order to do science? I suspect most philosophers would agree that they do not. But, as KN noted in an earlier post, the converse is not true (philosophers of a (say) physics do need to understand physics).
I’m also unclear on what you mean here. Do you mean that scientists do philosophy (ie epistemology and ontology) better than philosophers? Or that ontology and epistemology are science, not philosophy? Or that most philosophers work in these areas is too specialized to be of interest or applicability outside of the field? Or something else?
Kantian Naturalist,
It’s been a while since I read God Delusion, so I’ve used the Wikipedia synopsis to jog (actually replace) my memory. I’ll go through its summary of the book’s arguments and try to relate them to scientism which I take to be the attempt to apply scientific knowledge and methods to areas where they are inappropriate. I am not commenting on the quality of the Dawkin’s arguments per se, only on my understanding of how they relate to scientism.
He argues that science provides a better explanation than God for the appearance of design in life. I think this involves two premises:
1. If a claimed reason to believe in God includes explanations of what we see in the world, then science can be used to suggest an alternative explanation for these observations. This seems to be reasonable claim about science under most people’s understanding of science, and not scientism.
2. If the scientific explanation explains the observations, then there is no reason to believe in God based solely on those observations and the religious explanation of them. This might be classed as scientism, but I would see it more as a philosophy of science(since it is a claim about epistemology and what types of explanation of observations of the world to prefer).
He contrasts two explanations for complexity in the world: complexity is (1) designed by an already complex God or(2) derived from evolution, a process that creates complexity starting with simplicity. He says that evolution’s start from simplicity is the better explanation because it seem a priori more probable and because it satisfies Occam’s razor. Once more, I would see this more as Dawkins using philosophy of science to justify his argument, that is ranking the acceptability of explanations based on prior probabilities and heuristics like Occam’s razor. He is also using the premise that explanations that invoke God are subject to the same criteria as scientific explanations. I am not sure what type of claim that is, but it is not a scientific claim, so using it is not scientism.
Dawkins invokes some of the usual philosophical arguments that religion is not needed as a basis for morality. He may not do a good job of addressing all the philosophical subtleties in this area, but it is (possibly bad) philosophy, not scientism.
He refers to man’s evolutionary and cultural history as the source of morality. This claim is biology, anthropology, possibly evolutionary psychology. It is not scientism. I don’t believe he gets into the issues of the “naturalistic fallacy” regarding morality; possibly one could argue there is an example of scientism exemplified by this “fallacy”. Someone can start a Sam Harris thread if they want to pursue that issue.
Dawkins also comments (disparagingly, of course) on the history of religion, its influence on society, and its role in child raising. These types of claims seem to be historical and sociological, which I would take as scientific, not scientism. (Again, I am not saying Dawkins is right in what he argues, only commenting on the context for the argument).
So, in summary, I don’t see scientism in his arguments. Possibly bad philosophy or bad science, but not scientism.
I’m not speaking for Mike and obviously, I am not Mike.
It is true that scientists do not need to know philosophy of science. But that’s a minor concern. From my point of view, the problem with philosophy of science is that it misdescribes science.
What does “a priori” mean in the context of a naturalistic explanation of Kant’s synthetic a priori?
I understand that the naturalistic explanation attempts to find evolutionary and possibly cultural sources for the assumptions human minds make to shape experience of the world (eg causation, perceptions and actions in space). But if these assumptions were shaped by evolutionary learning driven by the external world, in what sense are they a priori?
BruceS,
They count as “a priori” because they must be in place for the possibility of applying concepts to sense-experience. But you’re right to suggest that the true-blue transcendentalist would say that my naturalized, pragmatic a priori is just a special case of the a posteriori.
It’s a large field, with many contradictory theories, so I’m sure that must be true of some of them.
I don’t want to go off topic for this thread, but I was puzzled because several of the prolific posters here seem to disdain philosophy of science eg Mikes comment could be read that way. Yet some of the most popular topics on the blog involve philosophy of science as well as plain science — eg the NECRO stuff on what is a reasonable model and experimental test.
Actually, you shouldn’t read too much into that “N.E.C.R.O.” thread; it is not as “philosophical” as it superficially appears.
We have an ID/creationist with no understanding of the fundamentals of science, at even the high school level, cycling rapidly through ID/creationist “debating” points and not addressing egregious errors in his assertions and calculations. He won’t go near any questions that require him to demonstrate basic scientific knowledge; he simply Gish Gallops onward.
Some of us are just watching with occasional prompts to see how far he will attempt to carry the ruse.
I have several bookshelves full of philosophy books, philosophy of science books, and history of science books. I read these pretty thoroughly as an undergraduate and as a graduate.
What do you find objectionable about my comment? I think I stated it pretty much as I meant it. Many of the post modernist “philosophers” are way off base; and most of the scientists I know are far better at epistemological and ontological issues than they are given credit for by those “philosophers.”
One can’t “philosophize” about science without knowing a considerable amount about the science and the detailed day-to-day activities of real, hands-on, research.
Here are some philosophers of science who, I would submit, are worth reading: Ian Hacking, Helen Longino, Susan Haack, Helen Douglas, Peter Godfrey-Smith, John Dupre, Hilary Putnam, Elliot Sober, William Wimsatt, Nancy Cartwright, Paul Churchland, and Joseph Rouse.
I’m sure there are many more, but since I don’t work in philosophy of science as a serious scholar, those are the names that came to me. (For that matter, I actually think very highly of Alex Rosenberg as a philosopher of science — I just disagree with him.)
Of course there’s a lot of bad philosophizing about science out there — and there are also scientists who aren’t nearly as good at philosophy as they think they are.
I have some of those on my bookshelves as well; and I have read them. Susan Haak I would place among those who seem to get it; but I don’t agree with everything she writes either. Too many of these philosophers make it look much more contorted than it really is.
No question about that; many of those scientists have become drones doing dull, routine measurements of lots of dull routine properties. There is a place for that in science because somebody has to do it; but you sure as hell don’t want to get hooked up with one of them if you are a doctoral student looking to do some frontier research.
I have had the good fortune to have at least worked among some very creative scientists; and they all have had a pretty good handle on philosophical issues. Whether that contributes to their creativity or whether they are just scientists who are curious about lots if things is a little harder to sort out.
Since you quoted me, I guess I should respond.
From my perspective, the trouble with philosophy of science, and for that matter with epistemology, is that it takes knowledge to be a form of belief (usually presented as knowledge = justified true belief). I think that generally misrepresents knowledge, but it is particularly troublesome as an account of scientific knowledge.
To me, scientific knowledge is an understanding of the causal structure of reality.
I can go take the written auto drivers test, and answer it with beliefs. But having all of the right beliefs doesn’t mean that I can be trusted to safely drive an auto. Fortunately, they also require an on the road driving test, which gets at knowledge of the appropriate causal structure.
You mention the N.E.C.R.O. thread. The arguments presented be EricB are what you would expect if his “knowledge” is in the form of true beliefs. And the rebuttals you are seeing are by people who can see that his beliefs are a poor fit to the actual causal structure of biological evolution.
science = provisional expectation
Since “scientism” has been brought up (again) in the recent thread on “Historical and Observational Science,” I thought of resurrecting this thread on “scientism”.
Often the term “scientism” is used to connote, “the extension of science beyond its proper or appropriate limits or boundaries”. I find this a terribly problematic notion, because it’s not at all clear (a) whether or not science has “appropriate limits or boundaries” or (b) how we could know what those limits are.
I think that anyone who wants to defend the intellectual legitimacy of this notion needs to have a response to those concerns. But — here’s the rub — there’s no single way of responding to those concerns, and how one responds to those concerns itself depends on the various other philosophical, political, and theological commitments that one brings to the table.
Take, for example, the following statement from Wilfrid Sellars:
On the one hand, Sellars goes to great pains to explain that “the dimension of describing and explaining the world” is not the only dimension of human discourse that is important to him, and that other dimensions of discourse — e.g. ethical discourse — cannot be reduced to empirical discourse. Each dimension of discourse has its own rules that constitute it as being that distinctive kind of discourse that it is.
On the other hand, Sellars does insist that empirical discourse is privileged by virtue of being that dimension of discourse in which discourse meets reality — our empirical discourse “pictures” the world as it really is, whereas ethical and mathematical discourse do not (though they are indispensable for our theoretical and practical ways of being in the world).
So, is Sellars guilty of “scientism”? That depends.
On the one hand, one might think that he is, if one thinks “scientism” holds that empirical discourse is privileged over other kinds of discourse with regard to corresponding to how the world is. It might be ‘scientistic’ to think that science tells us how the world really is, whereas ethical or mathematical or theological discourse tell us nothing about how the world really is. And Sellars, scientific realist that he is, does think that.
On the other hand, one might think that is not, if one thinks that “scientism” holds that the empirical dimension of discourse is the only dimension of discourse that matters (or should matter) to us, or that other dimensions of discourse matter only insofar as they are reducible to the empirical dimension. And Sellars clearly does not hold that view, so on this sense of ‘scientism,’ Sellars is innocent of scientism. (Whereas Quine would be, or that for matter, Alex Rosenberg.)
I’d be happy to define “scientism” in Rosenberg’s sense — he goes so far as to say that he is trying to reappropriate the term as a badge of honor! — as follows:
And in that sense, I think scientism is, actually, false — for reasons I’ll develop over the next few days. For it is central to what I want to do to show that one can (and should) be a scientific realist in Sellars’s sense without accepting scientism in Rosenberg’s sense.
KN,
It seems you might have read Mariano Artigas’ article that I linked to in the other thread. But you wish instead to promote Sellars’ agnostic-atheist Anglo version of ‘scientific realism’ (or ‘naturalistic realism’ as he called it), rather than Artigas’ or Polkinghorne’s or probably any other theists’ version of it. Both Artigas and Polkinghorne were/are scientists, of course, whereas Sellars has no qualification in natural-physical sciences.
I’ll repost the link to Artigas here because it has sections on both scientific realism and scientism: http://www.unav.es/cryf/past2003.html
What I’d direct you to explore, KN, is how you entangle ’empiricism’ with your view of ‘scientism’ and ‘scientific realism.’ Notice how the term ’empirical’ just snuck in, unannounced in your above post (as if ‘theoretical’ doesn’t need to be discussed alongside)? You seem to be a proud empiricist (which is strange for a philosopher, who it doesn’t seem has studied natural-physical sciences), whereas religious Judaism instead embraces a non-empirical meaning of nephesh and many other ‘human’ characteristics. Thus, like the secular ‘philosopher’ Ayn Rand (Alicia Rosenbaum), you probably simply hear ‘consciousness’ when someone says ‘soul’ or ‘spirit.’
A science of the spirit or spiritual science is thus something you would not for a moment consider, e.g. anthroposophy and theosophy are not ‘sciences’.
It sounds like you are planning to write some typical low-brow ‘pragmatist’ things about ‘scientism’ at TSZ, which nevertheless are uninspiring because their proponents are predominantly agnostics/atheists, which of course tells something on its own. Hopefully you prove that wrong, KN.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-closing-of-the-scientific-mind/
I’m still wondering why it matters.
Individual scientists will make progress or not, for mysterious reasons that cannot be anticipated.
We train people and try to manage research projects, but only a handful of scientists in any generation lend their names to great discoveries. And no one can anticipate who these will be. I doubt if ideology plays a role.
I’m still asking if this is leading to a discussion of policy. Either policy based on calls to action by scientists, or perhaps research funding policy.
Gregory links to Gelernter’s ridiculous rant. I guess that tells us something.
A few points:
(1) I am not an empiricist, if that means (as it typically does in academic contexts) that a concept is meaningful if and only if it can be “associated” with some range of sense-experiences. Empiricism as a theory of meaning I regard as an error;
(2) I treat the difference between observable entities and posited (“theoretical”) entities as a methodological distinction between our modes of access to the entities that there are, and that line between them shifts as our technology changes. The atomic nucleus was a theoretical entity for Rutherford, but it is an observable entity for us, because the changes in our technology since the early 20th century have opened up new avenues for intervention into the causal order.
(3) When I hear someone say “soul”, “spirit,” or “consciousness,” I hear them talking about experience and reporting on phenomenological facts. It is precisely because I think there are phenomenological facts that I disagree with Rosenberg. So when I hear some one talk in spiritual language, I hear them talking about an experience that they underwent, rather than making any assertions about the order of being.
(4) More specifically, I think that all talk of agency, normativity, and rationality is a transcendentally necessary presupposition of any inquiry at all, and is therefore practically ineliminable.
(5) I don’t see what the point would be of a “science of spirit” — because I don’t see how anything but confusion results from conflating the symbolic expression of spiritual experience (religious, artistic, literary, musical, poetic, etc.) with causal explanation of matters-of-fact (physics, chemistry, biology, sociology).
(6) I have an undergraduate degree in biology, with concentrations in paleontology and cognitive neuroscience. I was planning to become a paleoanthropologist until life forced me in a different direction, which is why I went to graduate school in philosophy.
We are definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, and Luminaries, and we want the machine off now!
Gregory,
You would do better to focus on the content of these views, not their provenance.
OMG! Gregory owes me a new keyboard.
“Scientists are (on average) no more likely to understand this work than the man in the street is to understand quantum physics. ”
This has to be the most deliciously bad choice of a comparator since Mach likened relativity to “the existence of atoms, and other such dogmas”. And from a Prof of Computer Science!
I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.
🙂
I’d be curious about what branch of philosophy or theology contributed to understanding the double slit experiment.
We could perhaps now call ‘romantic anti-capitalism that dare not look itself in the face, for fear of losing well-entrenched corporate support’ Johanssonism, after the actress, fighter against poverty, and fizzy drink icon.
I was arguing about the idea of “scientism” with some friends on-line the other day — all of whom are professional philosophers, though from quite different (and opposed) philosophical traditions — and we kept on circling around the following questions:
(1) is there a difference between “scientific realism” (as an epistemological thesis about the content of scientific theories — that a theory, if true, is true by virtue of corresponding, to some degree or other, to how the world really is) and “scientism”?
(2) how does “scientism” help us understand the prevalence of “pseudo-science” — might it be, for example, that pseudo-science proliferates because (a) through a lack of basic science education, most people aren’t able to distinguish between good science, bad science, and pseudo-science, and (b) there is a more-or-less automatic granting of epistemic authority to anything that seems vaguely scientific to non-scientists.
and insofar as (2) is plausible, it also strikes me that
(3) creationism and ID are themselves ‘scientistic’, since they proliferate only because non-scientists aren’t good at distinguishing between science and pseudoscience and therefore defer, epistemically, to anything that looks vaguely scientific. Insofar as creationists and design advocates criticize scientism, they are only biting the hand that feeds them.
Can you distinguish between being real and being consistently verifiable? I share with Lizzie an admiration for ePrime, a writing convention that prohibits any form of the verb to be.
I totally agree with that.
What distinguishes science, is that there great importance given to the reliable use of data and connecting it to reality. This is presumably what Popper intended with his falsificationism, though I think falsificationism fails.
In this view, string theory does not count as science. I count it as speculative hypothesizing. But it fails to adequately and usefully connect its data to reality. However, I would not say that string theory is scientistic, because it does not claim to adequately describe reality. Creationism and ID, by contrast, do make such claims. But they fail to provide useful data. So they qualify as scientistic.
I really don’t understand “scientific realism”. To me, it should mean that the world that we study and examine in science is real. Whether or not our scientific theories can be said to be true seems irrelevant.
I see scientific theories as human artifacts. I don’t know what it means to say that they are true.
By analogy, I see cameras as human artifacts. We use cameras to take pictures. It makes sense to ask whether a photograph is true. It does not make sense to ask whether a camera is true. We do sometimes say that a lens is true, but I take that to be a metaphorical use of “true”. As a rough guide, the photograph is true if it corresponds to reality. The role of the camera is to provide/define the correspondence that is to be used.
I see scientific theories as much like cameras. The theory defines the correspondence. The data collected under a theory is what needs to be considered true or false. The change from Newtonian mechanics to relativistic mechanics (which Kuhn called a “paradigm shift”) is comparable to the change from using a portrait lens to using a telephoto lens on the camera. The change of theory changes the rules of correspondence, but it does not change reality. It only changes how we describe reality.
It’s correspondences all the way down.
ETA:
seriously, string theory is an extension of many physicists intuition that “reality” is just math. Relationships. Not even relationships between objects.
Every time we think we have an indivisible object — say an atom, or an electron, or a photon or a quark, it begins to have hair as we look closer.
That’s not a truth. It’s just an inference from history.
The important question about string theory is not whether it is true, but whether it will ever be useful. Will it ever unify relationships.
Neil Rickert,
To use the camera/photograph analogy, I would say that the procedures, techniques, and instruments used in science are the ‘camera,’ and the theories are the ‘photographs’. A photograph corresponds to the objects depicted by virtue of standing in a causally-founded homomorphic relation to them, and our perceptual states correspond to perceptual objects in just the same way. Scientific theories correspond to their objects (even posited objects!) by virtue of how procedures, techniques, and instruments augment our perceptual and motor capacities. And of course it doesn’t make sense to ask whether those procedures and instruments are true — only whether they are useful, reliable, etc (as with cameras).
What makes scientific realism seem unappealing is the misbegotten idea that correspondence is an all-or-nothing affair. It needn’t be. We can say that a map corresponds to its territory by virtue of standing in a homomorphic relation with that territory, despite the effects of scale, selectivity, and so on. (A 1:1 map would be useless and redundant; a political map corresponds differently than a physical map, etc.).
It is often pointed out that we can’t stand outside of our maps and see the territory as it really is, from the God’s-eye point of view. (However, I recently came across a philosopher who argued that since we cannot dispense with correspondence, and correspondence requires the God’s-eye point of view, theism is a necessary presupposition of a theory of truth.) On my view, though we can’t compare any of our maps with the territory directly, we can certainly compare maps with each other, and figure out on that basis which maps correspond better than others.
And the map can accurately describe some portion of territory by virtue of, among other things, highly reliable map-making techniques and the slowly acquired competence of the map-makers.
That’s a very common view, but I don’t think it works.
If theories are like photographs, then theories should be a dime a dozen — click, and you have a new theory.
You want the procedures to be what sets the correspondence. But the theory is the procedures, though often wrapped up in a story to make it easier to remember.
A good place to see this is with electricity and magnetism. The main difficulty that the early researchers had, was in finding ways to measure the electricity. And, when they eventually came up with good ways that work, those became the basis for the theory.
I remember, years ago, coming across a relatively simple formula for finding the inductance of a coil, given its diameter and the number of turns. And I wondered where that formula came from. There a reference here. It turns out that the formula can be derived from the definition of the electromagnetic units, which is part of the basic theory.
I almost agree with that. Where I disagree, is that I do not take correspondence to be metaphysical. I see correspondences as human made, or as neural constructs if you are looking at perception.
We have many correspondences. When we talk of the earth orbiting the sun, we are using the heliocentric correspondence. But when you see that “55” speed limit sign on the highway, that is based on geocentric correspondence. And if you are flying, and walking down the aisle of the airliner, you are going to be using a correspondence based on motion relative to the aircraft.
For myself, I do not take correspondence to be a theory of truth. Rather, I take it that science comes up with measuring conventions, and we judge the truth of data in accordance with those conventions. So I go by something like truth by convention, but with a broader view of convention than what Quine was criticizing. And then I take correspondence to be a theory of reality. That is, we form true representations following our measurement and categorization conventions. And then we take reality to be what corresponds to those representations.
Science is better and better stories. Do they converge on truth and reality?
All we know is that so far in the history of science it is still possible to tell better and better stories. On interesting exception is quantum phenomena.
So far it has not been possible to tell a better story about what causes radioactive decay.
I believe that they converge on reality. I’m not convinced that there is any meaning for “truth” such that they can be said to converge on truth.