Science and Scientism

“Scientism is the belief that all valid knowledge is science.  Scientism says, or at least implicitly assumes, that rational knowledge is scientific, and everything else that claims the status of knowledge is just superstition, irrationality, emotion, or nonsense.

“The purpose of this book is to show the pervasiveness of the doctrine of scientism; to explore its coherence, and consequences; and to show that it must be repudiated, both to make sense of a vast range of non-scientific human endeavor, and also for science itself.  One of the conflicts that is most visible in current culture is between scientism and religion.  But the overall confrontation is not just with religious faith, prominent though that part of the debate may be.  Religious belief is not at all unique in being an unscientific knowledge.  On the contrary, I shall argue that there are many important beliefs, secular as well as religious, which are justified and rational, but not scientific.  And if that is so, then scientism is a ghastly intellectual mistake.

“But how could it have come about that this mistake is so widespread, if it is a mistake?  The underlying reason is that scientism is confused with science.  This confusion is commonplace in many, many popularizations of science.  Scientists of considerable reputation speak with authority and understanding (but rarely modesty) about the knowledge and technology that science has brought; and frequently they introduce into their explanations, without acknowledging it, non-scientific assumptions, unjustified extrapolations, philosophy and metaphysics either based on or promoting scientism.  It is natural then, for readers, particularly those without inside knowledge of science, to assume that science and scientism are one and the same.  After all, many leading scientists, and science popularizers, speak and act as if they are.  A major strand within the community of science thus directly promotes this confusion. . . .

In so far as scientism is an overarching world-view, it is fair to regard it as essentially a religious position.  Its advocates are unhappy with such an assertion, and argue that because scientism does not entail the belief in the supernatural, and does not entail ceremonials and rituals, it cannot be regarded as religion.  But that is hair-splitting.  There are religions that don’t involve a belief in God, and religions that don’t require participation in ceremonies.  What’s more, as we will see, several of the historic forms that scientism has taken actually do involve ceremonials and rituals of religious intent.  In any case, the key aspect of religious conviction that scientism shares with most organized religions is that it offers a comprehensive principle or belief, which itself cannot be proved (certainly not scientifically proved) but which serves to organize our understanding and guide our actions.

(Ian Hutchinson, Monopolizing Knowledge [Belmont, MA: Fias Publishing, 2011], 1-3)

Dr. Ian H. Hutchinson is Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with a primary research interest in plasma physics.