Science versus Scientism
Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2018 7:53 am
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:
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.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.
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.scientism is the belief that the methods of science and the worldview of science are obviously correct over all other methods and worldviews.