The meaning of the term "scientism" is "excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques.". Yet the article says: "there is 'excessive' scientism, and 'not excessive' scientism, but no one holds that excessive scientism views, so we won't discuss them".

>...most attention has been focused on the most radical version (upper left corner), which states that the natural sciences are the only valid form of knowledge. This is a pretty extreme view, which would imply that all of the humanities and social sciences are just rubbish. I believe this version of scientism is relatively easy to knock down, but in fact barely anyone holds it

So not only the article perverted the meaning of the term, but after that they artificially pre-picked only 'good' meanings, and this way "proved" that scientism is therefore good for you. Very scientific way to "prove" things.

The truth-statement that all truths can be empirically verified is itself empirically unverifiable.

That does not undermine empiricism, but it does show its reliance on truths outside its own toolbox. Science is instrumental to knowledge. But its own methodological scaffolding goes beyond science itself. To know that we can know anything, an epistemology is necessary. Every scientist relies in someway on truth-values outside scientific observation to interpret their data. The basic question, "what is truth?" points us to empirical reasoning, but cannot itself be answered by empiricism. I dare anyone to try.

Edited to improve clarity.

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Susan Haack has some decent work on the subject.

I take issue with her arguments on demarcation and falsifiability a little bit, and I think she is a little guilty of nut-picking fallacies when talking about the extent to which at people hold to scientism.

That said, I think she does a good job explaining how we can have issues with science, and how some people view it. How we need to be aware of the intricacies of science, not just fall for anything labelled as science, and not forget that science it is susceptible to human error.

She also rebuts the common misconceptions of science and philosophy being separate, or science and religion being parts of separate domains.

People dangerously conflate anti-science with scientism as a way to avoid the tension between modern science and outdated beliefs(often religious or spiritual ones). But its key to remember science is simply the best philosophical method we have for discovering truth and knowledge. I would not say its the only way to knowledge, as thats too strong, and we run into serious definitional games and grey areas.

While i mostly agree with Susan's definition with scientism(kind of like gullibility for anything with the label science), I think most people who use the term are anti-science people who straw-man science or attempt a tu quoque fallacy to blissfully hold their unscientific beliefs on equal footing.

Iain McGilchrist has written a 3 volume tome that effectively and scientifically counters the current trend of left-brain dominance.

You cannot divorce science from philosophy. The hole created will fill with market currency.

Can you prove science is the only way to truth via the scientific method?

Uh oh…

I'm mostly convinced that criticisms of "scientism" are, for the most part, essentially about politics and have little meaningful to say about knowledge.

Nonsense. Self-knowledge and introspection is a valid "way of knowing" that doesn't fall under the category of science in any meaningful way (introspection is essentially the opposite of observable empirical evidence). I also think its possible to encode or express truths about human experience in literature/poetry/art that isn't possible via the scientific method. Its also not clear that know-how (as opposed to know-that) is necessarily scientific.

That said, the accusation of "scientism" is almost always overblown and misapplied, and science certainly is our best and most reliable way of understanding the physical world. But it does have limitations, just like any other human intellectual activity, and there are methods of acquiring certain types of knowledge in areas where scientific methodology is less successful or even impossible.

>>In short, the definition of “scientism” that I would endorse is the following: there are no other ways of knowing apart from those used by the sciences (broadly construed, including history and the humanities). All valid modes of knowing are continuous to each other and rely on pretty much the same methods and modes of inference. If, on the other hand, someone presents us with a method that is completely detached from the ones used in science, like personal intuition or revelation or reading tea leaves, we can be confident that it’s rubbish.

I know I’m a few days late to this post, but I have to take issue here.

First, I think this “broad construal” of science to include history and the humanities makes “science” a meaningless term and is not really defensible. The end of the article names “personal intuition” as a “rubbish” way of knowing that is clearly detached from the methodological continuity of science. But what makes Hegelian dialectical idealism a methodologically continuous part of science that is not present in personal intuition (or, say, astrology)? You could say that it has to do with the lack of comparing notes with others and thinking rigorously, but people talk about and revise their personal intuitions based on empirical information all the time. It’s called gossiping. Is gossiping a science?

Second, I flatly disagree that something like personal intuition is an invalid way of knowing. If I’m a woman on a date and I’m noticing what could be red flags, getting bad vibes, etc, am I to reject that as an invalid type of knowledge, unfit to inform action?

Finally, I think by advocating for or spurring the adoption of this frame, you are legitimating and entrenching colonial epistemological frames. “The humanities” get to count as methodologically continuous with science and therefore valid ways of knowing, but I’ll bet you indigenous traditions don’t. Philosopher Gabriela Veronelli argues that colonialism operates along linguistic lines by separating true, sufficiently sophisticated languages from lower, brutish, pseudo-languages. Colonial subjects are facially excluded from the category of possible interlocutors because their linguistic milieu is thought to be fundamentally unconnected with the type of rationality necessary for “civilized” discourse. This view of what gets to count as a legitimate way of knowing, to me, seems to do much the same: if a person doesn’t have access to traditions that are methodologically continuous with science—or if they find particularly pertinent meaning or knowledge from a tradition that is not methodologically continuous with science—they are told this is an invalid form of knowing and whatever insight should be thrown out on the face of it, without consideration. Meanwhile, ideas emerging from methodological continuity with science like dialectical materialism are worthy of rigorous consideration.

If it’s a fallacy to argue for any non-regressive foundation of knowledge, isn’t it also odd to argue that scientism is a “best” path to knowledge? That is, the endpoint isn’t static, so there will be an infinite number of baselines to define what is the shortest or most accurate path. Scientism surely can’t always be the BEST path to a constantly moving target. And what are we saying about that degree of reliability if we agree that a discrete target doesn’t even exist until it’s observed?

I think it’s important to consider what knowledge really means when framing these arguments. Knowledge is mostly about utility, not possession of some singular truth. After all, we can’t prove that there’s any single truth of the state of reality, and what’s best for the owners of knowledge depends on their subjective and time-variant preferences. So it seems to me that all we can say is that Scientism is the most reliable path to a model of reality that’s eventually proven by accumulated verification. Anything further begs questions about the foundations against which we propose to measure this argument.

Sorry if I’m not making sense or committing some logical fallacy. I’m new, and I’m not a philosopher and barely a scientist. I do enjoy reading everyone’s ideas here, so thanks in advance for any help in following this conversation.

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There are other ways, such as personal experience, you can know something about yourself. But scientific evidence is the best way to demonstrate a truth you have come across to others and so be able to more easily get them to act on it and organise with that truth in mind. Science, like democracy, isn't perfect, it's just the best solution to a problem we've come up with so far.

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Hey, I learned a new term today!

Anyway, don't social studies pretty much do the tea leaf adoption? The definition I keep hearing from practitioners for what makes a science (paraphrase: a body of knowledge that agrees within itself in order to make predictions) is the same one Llewellyn George used in the early 20th century to show astrology is a science, and it actually works.

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