Relation to truth· Truth, language and science

Scientism

Axis: Place of science — Is science the only valid path to knowledge?

The scientific method is the most accomplished form of human knowledge, destined to replace religious and metaphysical explanations. Any question that can be answered will be answered by science, and by science alone.

Who holds this position

Movements 3

The Enlightenmentexplicit

The model is the physics of Newton: a handful of mathematical laws accounts for the whole system of the world, with no occult qualities or providential ends. The Enlightenment turns this success into a universal method; what experimental reason has done for the heavens it can do for morals, politics and religion. No authority, tradition, custom or revelation is exempt from examination; everything must appear before the tribunal of reason. This is not yet the scientism of , which will make positive science the only knowledge, but science here becomes the paradigm of legitimate knowledge and the lever of emancipation.

Kant, What Is Enlightenment? · d'Alembert, Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopédie

Show inferred positions (2)

Rationalisminferable

Mathematics is the model of all certain knowledge: Descartes, inventor of analytic geometry, makes the order of mathematical reasons the paradigm of method, and Leibniz, co-inventor of the infinitesimal calculus, dreams of a universal characteristic that would turn every disagreement into a calculation. Confidence in a unified deductive science inclines the school toward a strong epistemic optimism.

Descartes, Discourse on the Method, part two · Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics

Empiricisminferable

The school is allied with experimental natural philosophy: Bacon sets out its inductive method, and Locke calls himself the humble under-labourer clearing the ground for the Newtons of his age. The most secure knowledge is that drawn from observation and experiment, which places the school on the side favourable to the authority of science.

Bacon, Novum Organum, book II (induction) · Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, epistle to the reader

Philosophers 5

Show inferred positions (5)

Baconinferable

Long before positivism, Bacon raises the methodical knowledge of nature into the royal road of human learning, alone capable of growing and bearing fruit, where the turns in circles. He does not go so far as to dismiss every other truth, for he reserves a domain of its own to religion, but he strips the metaphysics of the Ancients of its authority and makes experimental inquiry the arbiter of what we may legitimately hold to be known.

The Advancement of Learning, I-II · Novum Organum, I, §79-92

Descartesinferable

Descartes conceives a unified knowledge: all the sciences are but one single human wisdom, which he pictures as a tree whose root is metaphysics, whose trunk is physics, and whose branches are the applied sciences. This methodic unity of knowledge leans toward scientism, even though its root remains metaphysical.

Principles of Philosophy, Preface · Rules for the Direction of the Mind, I

Millinferable

The System of Logic aims to extend the inductive method of the natural sciences to moral and social facts, grounding a science of man (the moral sciences). This confidence in the unity of scientific method and its extension to the social marks a clear leaning, without thereby denying the specificity of human phenomena.

A System of Logic, book VI (on the logic of the moral sciences)

Marxinferable

Marx claims for his analysis of capital the status of a rigorous science, opposed to utopian socialism: the task is to lay bare the objective laws of motion of capitalist society. This confidence in a scientific knowledge of history and economics, the model of all serious critique, expresses a marked scientistic leaning, even if Marx does not reduce all knowledge to the natural sciences.

Capital, vol. I, preface (the laws of motion of modern society) · Manifesto of the Communist Party, ch. 3 (scientific against utopian socialism)

Charles Sanders Peirceinferable

sets four methods against one another, tenacity, authority, the a priori taste, science, and keeps only the last: only the scientific method submits our opinions to something external capable of contradicting, and so of correcting, us. This trust in method brings Peirce close to a certain scientism. But his fallibilism and his refusal of all closure hold him at a distance from a Comte: science has no ready answer to everything, it is the indefinite march of a community that knows itself correctable, nearer to a critical rationalism than to a sovereign knowledge.

The Fixation of Belief (1877)

Arguments and objections

ArgumentThe argument from success — The line between knowledge and opinion rests on a test independent of our wishes; but only the scientific method institutes it systematically, and where it applies, disagreements resolve. The 'other paths' either say nothing testable or have given way to it: science is the very measure of knowledge.

The line between knowledge and mere opinion rests on one point: knowledge can be corrected by something other than our wishes, by a test independent of who holds it.
Now no approach institutes this test as systematically as the scientific method: it exposes its claims to public experience and discards what fails. Where it applies, disagreements resolve and predictions succeed, as no theology or metaphysics ever managed.
The alleged 'other paths' — intuition, revelation, tradition — either say nothing a test could settle, or, when they do, have always ended up retreating before science: the heavens, disease, the mind.

Therefore So science is not one source among others but the very measure of knowledge: any question that admits of an answer will, in the end, receive its own.

ObjectionAttacks the reasoningSawing off the branch — The argument sets a criterion: only what exposes itself to the test of facts is knowledge. But the scientistic statement is not itself testable; by its own criterion, it fails. It also presupposes a lifeworld and norms of proof it does not ground.

The argument sets a criterion: only what exposes itself to the public test of facts is knowledge.
But the statement 'only science gives knowledge' is itself neither an observation nor a testable theory: it is a philosophical claim about science.
By its own criterion, then, it fails: it would have to be filed among the 'opinions' it claims to disqualify. It moreover presupposes a lifeworld, subjects, norms of proof, which science assumes without grounding.

Therefore So scientism saws off its own branch: to assert it is already to do a philosophy its own rule forbids, hence to acknowledge a knowledge that is not science.

ObjectionAttacks the position Thought experimentMary's room — Mary knows all the physical facts about color without having seen it; on seeing red, she learns something. A complete physical knowledge thus left a remainder: science does not exhaust the real.

Mary knows everything physical science says about color, but has never seen anything except in black and white.
The day she comes out and sees a red rose, she learns something new: what it is to see red, which no textbook contained.
There are, then, truths that a complete physical knowledge let slip: the real overflows what science, however accomplished, can put into statements.

Therefore So science does not exhaust the real: against scientism, lived first-person experience gives an access of its own, irreducible to objective knowledge.

Foundations and implications

↑ What grounds it

↓ What it implies

↑ What grounds it

Source of knowledge

If only controlled experience yields genuine knowledge, then science becomes the only legitimate path to knowledge, and religious or metaphysical explanations are merely superseded stages. Empiricism feeds scientism: Comte makes the positive state the culmination of the human mind's evolution.

↓ What it implies

Relation to technology

If science is the highest form of knowledge, destined to solve human problems, then the technology that flows from it is the great lever of progress. Scientism grounds techno-optimism: from Bacon to Comte, applied knowledge is expected to push back need and suffering, and its setbacks are taken as challenges calling for yet more technology.

Practices

By what method am I holding this belief?RuleAttested · Peirce

Ask not whether your belief is true, but by which method you hold it.

In "The Fixation of Belief", distinguishes four ways of settling doubt: tenacity (I cling to what I already believe), authority (I believe it because I was told to), the a priori method (I believe it because it seems agreeable to reason, to my taste), and the method of science (I believe it because it answers to public facts that could correct it). This rule does not hand you instant certainty: it makes you notice how you actually hold a belief, and invites you to move it toward the last method, the only one that answers to communal checking and stays open to revision.

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Thinking for yourself: putting received opinion to the test of reasonRuleInspired by The Enlightenment

Sapere aude: have the courage to use your own understanding.

« Sapere aude », dare to know: for , the is man's emergence from his immaturity, the laziness that makes us prefer a ready-made guide to our own judgement. The practice consists in not accepting a claim on the sole authority of tradition, numbers or an expert, but in asking for the reasons and the evidence that support it. Flooded with information and peremptory opinions, we need it more than ever: thinking for yourself is not knowing everything, it is refusing to delegate your judgement.

When when a claim is presented to you as self-evident, in the name of tradition, authority or what « everyone knows »

Spot the authority being invoked: who or what is asking you to believe it, and on what grounds? Custom, a figure, a prestigious name, supposed obviousness?
Set the authority aside for a moment and ask: what reasons, what evidence would support this claim if no one were vouching for it?
Look for what could disprove it, and whether you would recognize that. A claim that no fact could contradict tells you a great deal.
Conclude in proportion to your reasons: assent, doubt or suspension. You may follow an expert, but then know that this is a choice, and which one.

Embodied by made Selbstdenken, thinking for oneself, the very maxim of the Enlightenment and the first rule of an understanding free of tutelage.

Inspired by The Enlightenment

Thinking for yourself is not rejecting everything out of a contrarian reflex, nor believing that one opinion is as good as another. Using your reason also means recognizing solid evidence and knowledge better established than your own: autonomy of judgement is not caprice.

Problems

Descriptive
The remainder, after science
Science tells the how, never the why or what is worth doing: it could answer all its possible questions without having even touched what gives a life its meaning. Are there truths, about meaning or the good, beyond its reach?
the questions of life
Descriptive
Explaining, or understanding?
To study man, history, a society, is it to seek causes as in physics, or to understand a meaning and intentions from within? One method for all objects, or other kinds of knowledge for what does not reduce to a mechanism?
human affairs
Descriptive
Does scientism refute itself?
"Only science gives knowledge": but this statement is not itself scientific, it is a philosophical claim about science. In claiming to ground everything on science, does it not saw off the branch it sits on?
the scientistic claim itself
Descriptive
What makes something a science?
What separates a science from a belief that puts on its appearances, astrology or a doctrine that nothing could disprove? Its capacity to expose itself to the verdict of the facts, or is another criterion needed, if a sharp boundary exists at all?
a theory
Descriptive
The true, or the useful?
Do scientific theories describe reality as it is, down to the entities we cannot see, or are they only convenient instruments for prediction and action?
a scientific theory