During the pinnacle of Hellenic culture, in 5th century BC Athens, the most important thinkers were not technical scientists but philosophers. Most probably because (not unlike what seems to be also a contemporary belief), they too thought of their science to have reached its conclusion.
They too had their mathematical proofs, their (five) elements and their atoms, their cosmology and their forces, their (hydraulic) physiology and psychology – and the only remaining question to be answered seemed to be: how close to reality our perception of it truly is?
Platonic Caves and conditional truths aside for the moment, it was this epistemological questioning that kept classical science from slipping into mystical Scientism. Something that neither the Middle Ages nor the 20th and 21st centuries have avoided, I am afraid.
In fear of such mysticism, for almost a century, Philosophy has been ostracized from Science. Answers were only valid if they adhered to the strict rules of the Scientific Method and questions that could not have such answers were simply ignored. Or, rather, they were put aside for later.
The requirements of proof have been set high and (coupled with some good-ol’ Abrahamic anthropocentricity that was allowed to slip through) this sprung the notion that reality had to comply with the conclusions of human science. It was only the works of Heisenberg and Gödel that put a humbling dent to this but not for long. And not for everyone.
As the, now (in)famous, NATURE article (http://www.nature.com/news/sometimes-science-must-give-way-to-religion-1.11244) has drawn the line in the sand again, the debate of whether Science, even if clearly not a religion, functions as one for the non-scientists, has been opened anew.
Thus, the question is: how badly do we need Epistemology once again in order to prevent Science from slipping into a religious Scientism?
Gianrocco ,
In the early part of the 20th century Husserl and Cassirer both have written about the crisis of western philosophy; its inhability to accomplish what it had always accomplished since its foundation in ancient time, to draw the central axis uniting all our knowledge and human endavor into a cosmology (in the ancient meaning of the world). This axis is the axis of evolution of the cosmos. Reflecting on evolution not in a narrow sense of the scientism but in the sense of looking at our creation as an universal know thyself. All the scientism tendencies to worship the God whose first and most sacred comand is: THERE SHALL BE NO GOD, is caused by lack of integration of knowledge and its separation from the body, from feeling, from personal need to know thyself.
“The Second Coming,” Yeats writes:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
Sadly, in 5th century BC Athens there were no technical scientists. Everybody was a philosopher. Today (sadly?) philosophy is not a science and (fortunately?) it cannot prevent science from slipping in whatever science wants to slip into. Science does not need epistemology, but philosophy needs it.
Vladimir, picture a group of paleontologists on a Mongolian hill, unearthing dinosaur fossils. Everyone is at his grid, clicking and brushing and wiping slowly and meticulously. But there is a severe sandstorm coming and their time is limited. So someone stands up, sees the big picture, makes heads and tails of the fossil and instructs the team on how to direct its work accordingly.
The sandstorm limiting our work is our finite mammalian intellect. And the the guy standing up to take measure of the reality is Epistemology.
I am afraid Science does need Epistemology if it wants to retain the minimum required integrity and not turn into a religion. If we have no grasp of what we know and how close to reality our knowledge of it actually may be, what is point to pretend to know when all we do is agree on a shared belief.
I am afraid the reports of science turning into a religion have been greatly exaggerated
True. Science is no more a religion than the Sun is.
Unfortunately, this has not stopped people attributing divine characteristics to both of them.
And I think, in the case of science, this Scientism is the result of ostracizing Epistemology
I’d like to add here more specific comments to those I have already posted in RG to related questions and that I may synthesize as the necessity to isolate and then exclude from the fundamental structures of scientific reasoning the external interferences and ideologies that hamper the scientific activity, first of all its continuous conceptual confusions that appear quite clear to philosophical thinking. By thwarting and dismissing the role of philosophy, ethics and religion and by questioning the dialogue on purpose, meanings, and values, the scientific activity has slipped quite hastily into the various forms of scientism: physicalism, technicism, biologism, etc. which had among the most important consequences the hindrance of a critical epistemology to check the reliability, accuracy and validity of knowledge.
A new scientific attitude, open and non-dogmatic, should proceed on the way of considering humanistic and philosophical reflections unthinkable at the time of rationalism, determinism, positivism etc. The presence of a character of reflexivity in modern science matches a kind of insertion of the philosophical dimension of consciousness into the scientific sphere consistent with an epistemology of complexity. The scientific accurateness needs to be introduced into an interdisciplinary methodological framework that, in addition to the contributions of the physical, natural and mathematical sciences, demands to be enriched drawing from the results of speculations within the humanities, social, moral and religious sciences. In fact, it has been asserted that it was a great extension of the causative and quantitative models to permit the fast slipping down into scientism.
Now I wish to expand a little on that issue to say that even the interdisciplinary methodology, coping with the ‘reductivist’ contradictions and the breaking up of the scientistic paradigm, appeared no longer adequate for the epistemology of complexity that describes the current scientific period. It emerged the necessity to switch to a transdisciplinary approach, which crosses and overtakes the elementary principles and knowledge of the individual sciences in order to find their joining basis. I believe it is accurate to say that Interdisciplinarity favors the linking between different types of knowledge, but by itself it moves along a flat level or at least it does not in a clear and explicit way, handing out further problems that rise from a particular scientific position and that is unable to solve. Therefore, it looks like an incomplete solution or only a first step, because it does not address explicitly the "meta-disciplinary" issues.
Yet, this subject deserves a more detailed analysis and I believe it should be discussed separately.
To deal with the question itself, I think that science per se is in no danger of slipping into scientism. Epistemology is an area of much research for me, and a topic of which I am quite fond, but I don't personally believe that the threat of scientism is epistemological so much as it is prejudicial in nature. You are right to point out that scientism breaks down at the level of epistemology, but even if you make your case and show the fallacy of turning science into a "totalizing lens" there are those who will be unmoved by your arguments and who will continue to use it as such.
Provine, Lewontin, Dennett, and most especially Dawkins are going to continue to make their scientistic claims no matter how their fellow scientists may critique their behaviors. The late Stephen Jay Gould, Eugenie Scott, Lawrence Krauss, Paul Davies and numerous other scientists, who have demonstrated no religious commitments at all, have critiqued the scientism of these men, but to no avail. For them scientific naturalism is an epistemic limitation upon their means of doing research, but it is not a philosophical conviction that they maintain with a religious fervor as do Dawkins, et. al. I would submit that for Dawkins and his ilk science has indeed become the equivalent of a religion. Simon Conway Morris of Cambridge calls them the "Ultra-Darwinists" and he says of them, "...the pronouncements of the ultra-Darwinists can shake with a religious fervor. Richard Dawkins is arguably England’s most pious atheist. Their texts ring with high-minded rhetoric and dire warnings—not least [of which are] of the unmitigated evils of religion—all to reveal the path of simplicity and straight thinking. More than one commentator has noted that ultra-Darwinism has pretensions to being a secular religion.” Atheist scientist and philosopher Michael Ruse says of Dawkin’s tendencies to make totalizing scientistic claims: “I think Dawkins is ignorant of just about every aspect of philosophy and theology, and it shows.”
This is not new phenomenon. During the years when Carl Sagan was regularly on Public Television, we in the U.S. became accustomed to hearing these words every week on the show called "Cosmos" - "The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries." Numerous scientists have pointed out the fact that it is not scientific to make these claims about the Cosmos - it is religious. For individuals like Sagan (unlike Dawkins a very winsome individual) and the others, you can point out the epistemological errors of their scientism, but it will not dissuade them one iota.
When Stephen Jay Gould wrote a masterful book called Rock of Ages, in which he suggested the idea of Non-overlapping magesteria (NOMA) for science and religion, Dawkins responded by stating in writing, "“I simply do not believe that Gould could possibly have meant much of what he wrote in Rocks of Ages.” (this is from Dawkin's The God Delusion). My grandfather used to say, "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still." The scientism which concerns you will not be dissuaded by being confronted with its own epistemological failings. It has taken on the characteristics of a religious ideology for some, and they will continue to say the things they do whether or not you show them to be epistemologically inept and confused. Inasmuch as they are a minority I don't believe we should be too alarmed by this tendency.
Gianrocco ,
In the early part of the 20th century Husserl and Cassirer both have written about the crisis of western philosophy; its inhability to accomplish what it had always accomplished since its foundation in ancient time, to draw the central axis uniting all our knowledge and human endavor into a cosmology (in the ancient meaning of the world). This axis is the axis of evolution of the cosmos. Reflecting on evolution not in a narrow sense of the scientism but in the sense of looking at our creation as an universal know thyself. All the scientism tendencies to worship the God whose first and most sacred comand is: THERE SHALL BE NO GOD, is caused by lack of integration of knowledge and its separation from the body, from feeling, from personal need to know thyself.
“The Second Coming,” Yeats writes:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Philosophy
- Philosophy Of Science