A topic in teaching science
Scientism is a position on the role of science in society and human affairs which is adopted by some sciences, but is not accepted by most scientists.
Defining scientism
Scientism is a position that all topics and phenomena are open to being studied by the methods of the natural sciences.
This may take a number of forms, such as
- Everything will be understood by science eventually
- Anything worth studying should be examined with the methods of natural science
- The only meaningful/trustworthy/true knowledge is that obtained through science
That is, there are varying levels of optimism in whether science can potentially explain everything, or simply that what science cannot explain is not open to being understood in any authentic way.
"Those who reject the dualism of science must demonstrate that the historical-hermeneutic sciences can be completely subsumed under the general methodology of the empirical sciences.
Habermas, 1967/1998
Scientism can be seen as opposed to a view of human knowledge as dividing between foci that can be studied by the positivist methods of the physical sciences, and the more interpretive, hermeneutic approach of he 'human sciences': either considering that areas such as literature and history can be subsumed under a positivistic approach, or dismissing the kinds of knowledge generated in such disciplines as secondary to scientific knowledge.
"It was the belief of the positivists and utilitarians who gave its progressive intellectual tone to the first half of the nineteenth century that the science of nature which Newton had established was due to be completed by a science of man. This was not merely a question of supplementing physics with biology: the empire of science was to be extended to every facet of man's nature; to the workings of men's minds as well as their bodies and to their social as well as their individual behaviour; law, custom, morality, religious faith and practice, political institutions, economic processes, language, art, indeed every form of human activity and mode of social organisation, were to be explained in scientific terms…"
Ayer, 1964
It is therefore related to arguments about the roles of, and choices between, 'paradigms' in enquiry.
Read about 'paradigms' in research
Scientism then can be seen as a view about the scope and/or limits of science
- science has a wider scope than the traditional subject matter of the natural sciences
- ultimately there are very few limits on the power of science to produce knowledge
Read about the limits of science
Scientism and reductionism
Scientism is also sometimes associated with an extreme commitment to reductionism. We might see phenomena in the world as occurring at different levels (perhaps a physical level, a chemistry level, a biological level, a psychological level, a social level, a cultural level). Reduction involves explaining a phenomenon at one level in terms of a more fundamental level.
So, for example, we might think that the concept of chemical bonding reduces to the physics of forces and energy, or the quantum theory. Much physiology may be explained and understood in terms of biochemistry.
Emergent properties are those that are only found at the level of complexity that exists at higher levels (so a bacterium is not just a lot of molecules, but a highly organised system of molecules- indeed, we call it an organism– such that it is best understood in terms of higher level concepts). So, for example, someone of a materialistic bend would likely think that even though consciousness is not a physical phenomenon, that it could in principle (and perhaps one day in practice) be fully explained in terms of, say, molecules and their interactions.
An extreme approach to reductionism may be seen as scientific, that is, if someone thinks that ultimately everything can be reduced to the lowest level (to physics). So, in principle, historical events could (in principle) be understood as simply the interactions of fundamental particles. Everything is the consequence of physical events and nothing more.
(It is separate issue if this is pragmatically useful. For example, many chemists might be persuaded that concepts such as acid, resonance, aromaticity and electronegativity could be defined and described exhaustively in terms of physics alone – but they might also think that even if this is so the physics accounts would be impractical for use in chemistry and so it is useful to retain the chemical concepts as they are.)
Scientism as anti-science
Scientistm has been seen as actually a form of 'anti-science'
"We must disaggregate from the disparate jumble that which is the truly worrisome part of anti-science, so that we can discriminate between
'real' science (good, bad, and indifferent; old, new or just emerging);
pathological science (as in Irving Langmuir's essay on people who thought the were doing real science but were misled);
pseudo-science (astrology and the 'science' of the paranormal);
blatant silliness and superstition ('pyramid power');
scientism (the overenthusiastic importation of 'scientific' models into nonscientific fields; or the vastly exaggerated claims of technocrats for scientific and technological powers, such as the 'Star Wars' projects);
and other forms."
Holton, 1993
Scientism in public discourse
We are nothing more than genes
"…genetics, the study of our genes: those fascinating molecules that encode everything about who we are…I think that most of us have pretty good understanding of what genetics is: that who we are, how we behave, is encoded in every cell in our body."
Jim Al-Khalili speaking on an episode of BBC's The Life Scientific
Work cited:
- Ayer, A. J. (1964). Man as a Subject for Science. The Athlone Press.
- Habermas, J. (1967/1988). On the logic of the social sciences (S. W. Nicholason & J. A. Stark, Trans.). Cambridge: Polity Press.
- Holton, Gerald (1993) Science and Anti-science. Harvard University Press
