What is Skepticism? Week 2: Science Vs. Scientism « Skepticism « Critical Thi... - 0 views
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‘scientism’ has become a favorite of critics of the scientific method. Accusations of scientism, which are largely unjustified, can be heard from proponents of alternative medicine, homeopathic practitioners and everyone in between.
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Scientism is an umbrella term for a group of extreme attitudes towards science. For example, in his article “What is Scientism?”, Mikael Stenmark defines rationalistic scientism as the view that we are rationally entitled to believe only what can be scientifically proven, or what is scientifically knowable. Other forms of scientism offer variations on a basic idea which will serve as our definition of scientism: the view that in the future, all or nearly all of our real problems can and will be solved by science. Some of the implications of this idea are that problems which are not solved by science, or can not be put into scientific terms, aren’t important problems and that scientific knowledge is the only knowledge that exists.
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Carl Sagan once said that humans are simply a “collection of almost identical molecules.” It is difficult for most people, who perceive themselves as thinking, feeling human beings, to reduce their existence in such a way. Can science really answer every question about our reality and render all other forms of inquiry meaningless? Few people will deny the effectiveness of the methods employed in the natural sciences for explaining the world around us. If a better method were discovered, it would be immediately adopted by scientists, since that is the nature of the scientific enterprise. But to stretch these methods to areas that normally wouldn’t be considered a part of the sciences, and claim that that is the only way to study said areas, is to step from science into scientism. Under this criterion, philosophy, religion, art and many other areas of human interest would all be effectively stripped of much of their significance.
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