Science versus Scientism

When it just doesn't fit anywhere else.
Post Reply
User avatar
Bootstrap
Posts: 14439
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2016 9:59 am
Affiliation: Mennonite

Science versus Scientism

Post by Bootstrap »

In the Global Warming thread, Temp pointed to a useful article on science versus scientism. The conclusion is enough to grasp the basic point it is making:
It is one thing to celebrate science for its achievements and remarkable ability to explain a wide variety of phenomena in the natural world. But to claim there is nothing knowable outside the scope of science would be similar to a successful fisherman saying that whatever he can’t catch in his nets does not exist. Once you accept that science is the only source of human knowledge, you have adopted a philosophical position (scientism) that cannot be verified, or falsified, by science itself. It is, in a word, unscientific.
Science is only one of many ways of getting at truth, and there are other valid ways of understanding that are not scientific. She also pointed to this article, which gives a simple definition.
scientism is the belief that the methods of science and the worldview of science are obviously correct over all other methods and worldviews.
As Christians, we obviously believe that the most important truths are not scientific ones, and that they are knowable. We are also aware of the limitations of all human knowledge. Many scientists are too, incidentally, that's a lot of what classes on the history and philosophy of science teach.
0 x
Is it biblical? Is it Christlike? Is it loving? Is it true? How can I find out?
lesterb
Posts: 1160
Joined: Fri Oct 21, 2016 11:41 pm
Location: Alberta
Affiliation: Western Fellowship
Contact:

Re: Science versus Scientism

Post by lesterb »

The push to agree with or fit into the mainstream of anything is fraud with danger for the Christian. My motto has been a little like the one portrayed in this poem. Not all of that has been by choice.

The Road Not Taken
BY ROBERT FROST
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
1 x
Post Reply