Science or Scientism?

How does science work? And what's all this about quantum mechanics?

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Immanuel Can
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Science or Scientism?

Post by Immanuel Can »

In view of some recent discussions, it's perhaps past time we talked about the difference between "science" and "Scientism.

Briefly, "science" is a methodology, useful in all sorts of subjects, from physics and chemistry to (somewhat more controversially) the human sciences, such as psychology and sociology, and useful even for a certain range of other questions. Genuinely "scientific" claims are those that are made on the basis of disciplined, empirical testing, including such things as repetition of results, employment of control groups, single and double blind procedures, peer review of results, publication of raw data, and so forth. But "Scientism" is an ideology. It's an attitude TO anything that anybody calls "science," whether it's real science or not.


Science, in its ideal form:
  • employs the scientific method
  • uses data and controlled, repeatable experiments
  • aims at being as dispassionate and objective as possible
  • is skeptical, critical and rational in processing data
  • does not regard appeals to tradition or authority as legitimate grounds for conclusion
  • presumes the truth about material things is best derived from material testing
  • values publication, peer review and critique of results
  • makes its conclusions modestly and provisionally, pending the next experiment or theory, since it is revisable and improvable
  • has no particular agenda: simply issues results, whatever the implications of those results may be
  • is not irritable when questioned: is as willing to see disproof as proof

In contrast, Scientism:
  • is an ideological belief
  • is often acquired through admiration, not understanding, of science's achievements
  • is practiced by those with a naive or limited understanding of scientific method
  • calls "scientific" things which are not, such as speculative theories or even public prejudices, and leaps instinctively to the defense of anything called "science" by anyone
  • is not skeptical or critical of claims, and shuns critiques
  • has no particular methodology and no process of peer review
  • cannot produce data, or has only superficial data to support claims
  • trusts reputation and authority, and genuflects at the mere sight of a lab coat
  • is instantly irritable when questioned, because it is highly sensitive to its own vulnerability and is ultimately interested in confirmation, not truth
Of course, these are ideal descriptions. People sometimes slip from genuine scientific discovery into an attitude of Scientism, and somebody who has been Scientistically credulous may inform himself/herself better, and discover that something he/she only once believed on trust is actually also warranted by the facts.

But this is really a definitional question, rather than a question of how pure these things ever are in real life. My suggestion would be that, on balance, some people behave more scientifically than Scientistically in relation to a particular question, and some behave more Scientitistically than scientifically.

So my question is simply, "Is this a fair assessment of the difference between science from mere Scientism, or are there other criteria the lists should include?"
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Re: Science or Scientism?

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I agree in the main. I would add that scientism tends to have a blind spot related to politics and paradigms. It is easier to talk about the first, so, being lazy I will.

People often think that if scientists were involved in drawing a conclusion, then the conclusions were drawn via science or good science or rigorous protocols. But anyone looking at, for example, what the tobacco industry managed to do for decades, will see that this is not at all necessarily the case. And in the corporate world, what will get called science may be quite other, especially given the capture of regulating bodies, such as the FDA, by corporate interests.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Science or Scientism?

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Iwannaplato wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 5:25 pm I agree in the main. I would add that scientism tends to have a blind spot related to politics and paradigms. It is easier to talk about the first, so, being lazy I will.

People often think that if scientists were involved in drawing a conclusion, then the conclusions were drawn via science or good science or rigorous protocols. But anyone looking at, for example, what the tobacco industry managed to do for decades, will see that this is not at all necessarily the case. And in the corporate world, what will get called science may be quite other, especially given the capture of regulating bodies, such as the FDA, by corporate interests.
That's a good point. One must always ask, "Who is paying for this research, with what agenda, and what other research did they refuse to do or ignore?" And that's even when the research in question is genuinely scientific.

For example, the tobacco people could do research to show that smoking creates a level mood in the smoker, or facilitates his conversation, or serves as an occasion of social interaction (as in "the smoking break," for example); and all of that might turn out to be perfectly true and scientific. But at the same time, the tobacco people are not funding any research on lung cancer, the economic advantages of not smoking, and the uses of smoking as a gateway drug. Those also would yield scientific results: but they become the research not being done, whereas the socializing value of smoking is the research being done. And if so, what light does it really throw on the situation to say that the sociological research is "scientific"? That doesn't mean that it's complete, or the most relevant or important scientific work to be done in that area.

The paradigms are also an interesting issue. I would assume you're alluding to something like Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, no? He was, after all, the guy who popularized talk of "paradigms." Anyway, science does indeed get locked into a particular paradigm, and have a heck of a hard time extricating itself from it, even in the face of massive contrary data. The funding, the kudos, the hierarchy, and so on, all get tangled up in reinforcing an existing paradigm, and a paradigm that is different represents a threat to the authority of all that stuff. A good example today is the "progressivist" or "evolutionary" paradigm, which once was thought to be comprehensively explanatory, but which recent thinkers like (Atheist) Thomas Nagel have severely called into question for stifling the progress of actual science.

So well said, I think.
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Re: Science or Scientism?

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Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 8:33 pm
Iwannaplato wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 5:25 pm I agree in the main. I would add that scientism tends to have a blind spot related to politics and paradigms. It is easier to talk about the first, so, being lazy I will.

People often think that if scientists were involved in drawing a conclusion, then the conclusions were drawn via science or good science or rigorous protocols. But anyone looking at, for example, what the tobacco industry managed to do for decades, will see that this is not at all necessarily the case. And in the corporate world, what will get called science may be quite other, especially given the capture of regulating bodies, such as the FDA, by corporate interests.
That's a good point. One must always ask, "Who is paying for this research, with what agenda, and what other research did they refuse to do or ignore?" And that's even when the research in question is genuinely scientific.

For example, the tobacco people could do research to show that smoking creates a level mood in the smoker, or facilitates his conversation, or serves as an occasion of social interaction (as in "the smoking break," for example); and all of that might turn out to be perfectly true and scientific. But at the same time, the tobacco people are not funding any research on lung cancer, the economic advantages of not smoking, and the uses of smoking as a gateway drug. Those also would yield scientific results: but they become the research not being done, whereas the socializing value of smoking is the research being done. And if so, what light does it really throw on the situation to say that the sociological research is "scientific"? That doesn't mean that it's complete, or the most relevant or important scientific work to be done in that area.

The paradigms are also an interesting issue. I would assume you're alluding to something like Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, no? He was, after all, the guy who popularized talk of "paradigms." Anyway, science does indeed get locked into a particular paradigm, and have a heck of a hard time extricating itself from it, even in the face of massive contrary data. The funding, the kudos, the hierarchy, and so on, all get tangled up in reinforcing an existing paradigm, and a paradigm that is different represents a threat to the authority of all that stuff. A good example today is the "progressivist" or "evolutionary" paradigm, which once was thought to be comprehensively explanatory, but which recent thinkers like (Atheist) Thomas Nagel have severely called into question for stifling the progress of actual science.

So well said, I think.
I think it's a good point that scientific hierarchy can lead to a tendency to produce an irrational need for those at the top to defend their beliefs or decisions to a point where they can circumvent proper scientific debate. However, as a layman to science, it's difficult for me to tell who or when such is being done. For example, in the case of the effects of smoking, it seems to have turned out that leftists (for lack of a better term) were right about smoking and the tobacco industry's manipulation of scientific research to forward an agenda not based on science.

As far as evolution, I'm not an expert on that either but I took a couple of classes in college back in my day that seemed to expand pretty well on the topic and the only arguments creationists seemed to have at the time for their paradigm were ones that cast doubt on evolution. However, creationists seemed to ignore what seemed like more significant holes in their own theories about origins. I mean, I haven't kept track of the debate in a long time so I don't know what the latest developments are but I remember thinking how ridiculous creationists looked at the time I was learning from my professors who were scientists. Maybe something has changed, I don't know.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Science or Scientism?

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Gary Childress wrote: Thu Dec 02, 2021 12:30 pm ...it seems to have turned out that leftists (for lack of a better term) were right about smoking and the tobacco industry's manipulation of scientific research to forward an agenda not based on science.
It seems that it's more subtle than that, Gary. It's not that they "forward[ed] an agenda not based on science" at all, but they "forwarded an agenda based on a limited range of science." That's just as bad, but harder to detect.

I might also add that there was certainly nothing particularly "Leftist" about the anti-tobacco lobby. While there were various hippies and secular granola-types in it, the preponderance of conservatives and religious folks were quick to have doubts about it. The medical community also came on line, eventually; and there's nothing particularly "Leftist" about their contribution. It's actually doubtful anything ever would have happened about tobacco if only the Lefties had cared.
As far as evolution, I'm not an expert on that either but I took a couple of classes in college back in my day that seemed to expand pretty well on the topic and the only arguments creationists seemed to have at the time for their paradigm were ones that cast doubt on evolution.
That's no longer the case, Gary. There are now an increasing number of secular voices that are also casting doubt on the progressivist paradigm. I was mentioning Thomas Nagel -- he's a conventional Atheist philosopher, and one who, if you read through his book, has no intention at all of turning into a creationist or a Theist at all. He holds out hope that some new Atheist paradigm will come in to fill the niche that is presently being held by evolutionary Materialism; but he recognizes that by any fair assessement, the current paradigm is strictly limiting scientific discovery, particularly in regard to the human mind or to the cosmos itself. Hence the title of his book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False.

That's a brave title. And it's got him hated by the establishment Materialists, for sure, because they argue that if Materialist Darwinism is allowed to be wrong -- or even incomplete, perhaps -- then it might open up the door to creationism again.

However, Nagel himself is entirely uninterested in that particular controversy. He's speaking purely from a secular perspective, and makes no part of his argument dependent on anything else. You can see in Mind and Cosmos: there are good, neutral, purely scientifically-interested reasons for thinking that Materialist Darwinism has become one of Kuhn's dying paradigms, those hidebound orthodoxies that may have seemed temporarily to solve some scientific problems in a limited way, but that, if left in place forever, clog the way for future investigation of important phenomena. Nagel's saying, "It's time we went forward and found a better, more complete (and, for him, secular) paradigm."
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Re: Science or Scientism?

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Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Dec 02, 2021 2:29 pm
Gary Childress wrote: Thu Dec 02, 2021 12:30 pm ...it seems to have turned out that leftists (for lack of a better term) were right about smoking and the tobacco industry's manipulation of scientific research to forward an agenda not based on science.
It seems that it's more subtle than that, Gary. It's not that they "forward[ed] an agenda not based on science" at all, but they "forwarded an agenda based on a limited range of science." That's just as bad, but harder to detect.

I might also add that there was certainly nothing particularly "Leftist" about the anti-tobacco lobby. While there were various hippies and secular granola-types in it, the preponderance of conservatives and religious folks were quick to have doubts about it. The medical community also came on line, eventually; and there's nothing particularly "Leftist" about their contribution. It's actually doubtful anything ever would have happened about tobacco if only the Lefties had cared.
As far as evolution, I'm not an expert on that either but I took a couple of classes in college back in my day that seemed to expand pretty well on the topic and the only arguments creationists seemed to have at the time for their paradigm were ones that cast doubt on evolution.
That's no longer the case, Gary. There are now an increasing number of secular voices that are also casting doubt on the progressivist paradigm. I was mentioning Thomas Nagel -- he's a conventional Atheist philosopher, and one who, if you read through his book, has no intention at all of turning into a creationist or a Theist at all. He holds out hope that some new Atheist paradigm will come in to fill the niche that is presently being held by evolutionary Materialism; but he recognizes that by any fair assessement, the current paradigm is strictly limiting scientific discovery, particularly in regard to the human mind or to the cosmos itself. Hence the title of his book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False.

That's a brave title. And it's got him hated by the establishment Materialists, for sure, because they argue that if Materialist Darwinism is allowed to be wrong -- or even incomplete, perhaps -- then it might open up the door to creationism again.

However, Nagel himself is entirely uninterested in that particular controversy. He's speaking purely from a secular perspective, and makes no part of his argument dependent on anything else. You can see in Mind and Cosmos: there are good, neutral, purely scientifically-interested reasons for thinking that Materialist Darwinism has become one of Kuhn's dying paradigms, those hidebound orthodoxies that may have seemed temporarily to solve some scientific problems in a limited way, but that, if left in place forever, clog the way for future investigation of important phenomena. Nagel's saying, "It's time we went forward and found a better, more complete (and, for him, secular) paradigm."
Surely Nagle isn't insisting that species didn't evolve from other species, is he? Or at the very least, I would kind of doubt that he endorses the Biblical version of creation. Unless he's gone full reverse on his past positions. I always got the picture he was more of an agnostic than an atheist. I could certainly be wrong, though.

As far as the tobacco thing, I read a lot of leftist stuff back in the day and it was very much a leftist phenomenon. It certainly wasn't pushed by the Reaganites and other conservatives in the US at its inception. In fact, to my memory, it was even pushed by PR at the time to be just "leftist" BS.
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Re: Science or Scientism?

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Gary Childress wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2021 1:08 am Surely Nagle isn't insisting that species didn't evolve from other species, is he?
He says this:

"I believe there are independent empirical reasons to be skeptical about the truth of reductionism in biology....for a long time I have found the materialst account of how we and our fellow organisms came to exist hard to believe, including the standard version of how the evolutionary process works...it flies in the face of common sense...It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the the mechanism of natural selection. ...What is lacking, to my knowledge, is a credible argument that ther story has a nonnegligible probability of being true...what is the likelihood that self-reproducing life forms should have come into existence spontaneously on the early earth, solely through operation of the laws of physics and chemistry? The second question is about the sources of variation in the evolutionary process that was set into motion once life began: In the available geological time since the first life forms appeared on earth, what is the likelihood that, as a result of physical accident, a sequence of viable genetic mutations should have occurred that was sufficient to permit natural selection to produce the organisms that actually exist?...[My belief is] that the available scientific evidence, in spite of consensus scientific opinion, does not in this matter rationally require us to subordinate the incredulity of common sense. That is especially true with regard to the origin of life."

That's a lot to unpack, of course, and you need to read his whole argument to have a position on it, I think. But that tells you where his concerns are going. He does not appeal to creationism or any other alternate view; he simply says that what the Evolutionists are conventionally offering is nowhere good enough, in its own right, and that even common sense renders it implausible on the available evidence.

So he's plugging for what alternative anybody might suggest: he just says that the Evolutionist-Materialist one is clearly not good enough on its own merits. And he hopes for some new, secular alternative to appear; but he knows it will not, or will not have easy going being considered, so long as the conventional Materialist-Evolutionist paradigm is so totally entrenched. That hill will not be surrendered lightly.
I always got the picture he was more of an agnostic than an atheist. I could certainly be wrong, though.
No, he's an Atheist, I think. But he does say some odd things like that human beings are "part of the process of the universe waking up and becoming aware of itself." I really don't know what that could mean. I don't think it's intended to be Deism. Rather, it seems like he kind of shifts the burden of explaining teleology off any divine explanation and toward some sort of vague anthropomorphism of "the universe." But you'd have to push him on that question, I guess, because I really can't tell you what he means there.

I guess whenever we drop the idea of God our of our explanations of things like Nagel lists in his book: natural order, consciousness, value, and cognition, you end up having to appeal to some sort of anthropmorphized property to take His place. But Nagel flatly denies that he wants you to conclude that he means "god." So I think his Atheism's intact.

The interesting thing is the fact that he mounts a very cogent secular argument against the conventional materialist-evolutionary orthodoxy. And since he looks to the future and hopes for some new secular option, that does not, contrary to his objectors, automatically mean he's endorsing God again by accident. He's still wanting to endorse some version of Atheism, I think.
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Re: Science or Scientism?

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Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2021 1:39 am
Gary Childress wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2021 1:08 am Surely Nagle isn't insisting that species didn't evolve from other species, is he?
He says this:

"I believe there are independent empirical reasons to be skeptical about the truth of reductionism in biology....for a long time I have found the materialst account of how we and our fellow organisms came to exist hard to believe, including the standard version of how the evolutionary process works...it flies in the face of common sense...It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the the mechanism of natural selection. ...What is lacking, to my knowledge, is a credible argument that ther story has a nonnegligible probability of being true...what is the likelihood that self-reproducing life forms should have come into existence spontaneously on the early earth, solely through operation of the laws of physics and chemistry? The second question is about the sources of variation in the evolutionary process that was set into motion once life began: In the available geological time since the first life forms appeared on earth, what is the likelihood that, as a result of physical accident, a sequence of viable genetic mutations should have occurred that was sufficient to permit natural selection to produce the organisms that actually exist?...[My belief is] that the available scientific evidence, in spite of consensus scientific opinion, does not in this matter rationally require us to subordinate the incredulity of common sense. That is especially true with regard to the origin of life."

That's a lot to unpack, of course, and you need to read his whole argument to have a position on it, I think. But that tells you where his concerns are going. He does not appeal to creationism or any other alternate view; he simply says that what the Evolutionists are conventionally offering is nowhere good enough, in its own right, and that even common sense renders it implausible on the available evidence.

So he's plugging for what alternative anybody might suggest: he just says that the Evolutionist-Materialist one is clearly not good enough on its own merits. And he hopes for some new, secular alternative to appear; but he knows it will not, or will not have easy going being considered, so long as the conventional Materialist-Evolutionist paradigm is so totally entrenched. That hill will not be surrendered lightly.
Interesting. Yeah, I guess there could be some explanation that we are yet unaware of--one that is easier to believe than the spontaneous emergence of conscious beings out of nothing. Heck, maybe we're all living inside a computer simulation or something. Or maybe the Bible is true and we live in a world of a jealous, sometimes angry God who wants everyone to worship him for whatever reason. Or maybe there's some (meta)physical property of things in this world (one we haven't yet discovered or perhaps can't) that leads to the spontaneous emergence of conscious ambulatory beings. I don't know.
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Re: Science or Scientism?

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Gary Childress wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2021 11:11 am
Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2021 1:39 am
Gary Childress wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2021 1:08 am Surely Nagle isn't insisting that species didn't evolve from other species, is he?
He says this:

"I believe there are independent empirical reasons to be skeptical about the truth of reductionism in biology....for a long time I have found the materialst account of how we and our fellow organisms came to exist hard to believe, including the standard version of how the evolutionary process works...it flies in the face of common sense...It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the the mechanism of natural selection. ...What is lacking, to my knowledge, is a credible argument that ther story has a nonnegligible probability of being true...what is the likelihood that self-reproducing life forms should have come into existence spontaneously on the early earth, solely through operation of the laws of physics and chemistry? The second question is about the sources of variation in the evolutionary process that was set into motion once life began: In the available geological time since the first life forms appeared on earth, what is the likelihood that, as a result of physical accident, a sequence of viable genetic mutations should have occurred that was sufficient to permit natural selection to produce the organisms that actually exist?...[My belief is] that the available scientific evidence, in spite of consensus scientific opinion, does not in this matter rationally require us to subordinate the incredulity of common sense. That is especially true with regard to the origin of life."

That's a lot to unpack, of course, and you need to read his whole argument to have a position on it, I think. But that tells you where his concerns are going. He does not appeal to creationism or any other alternate view; he simply says that what the Evolutionists are conventionally offering is nowhere good enough, in its own right, and that even common sense renders it implausible on the available evidence.

So he's plugging for what alternative anybody might suggest: he just says that the Evolutionist-Materialist one is clearly not good enough on its own merits. And he hopes for some new, secular alternative to appear; but he knows it will not, or will not have easy going being considered, so long as the conventional Materialist-Evolutionist paradigm is so totally entrenched. That hill will not be surrendered lightly.
Interesting. Yeah, I guess there could be some explanation that we are yet unaware of--one that is easier to believe than the spontaneous emergence of conscious beings out of nothing. Heck, maybe we're all living inside a computer simulation or something. Or maybe the Bible is true and we live in a world of a jealous, sometimes angry God who wants everyone to worship him for whatever reason. Or maybe there's some (meta)physical property of things in this world (one we haven't yet discovered or perhaps can't) that leads to the spontaneous emergence of conscious ambulatory beings. I don't know.
Yes, it's interesting, isn't it?

Well, here's the important thing for us: we little human beings, where we are in our own lives, have no way to avoid having to invest ourselves in one or another of the hypotheses you list, or in another. That's because we have to go forward on some assumption, just in order to live our lives. Otherwise, how do we decide what's worth doing, and what's not? How do we decide what we really want, or what we should really want, if we have no idea what's worth wanting? How do we organize our lives in order to make them meaningful, without committing to some "meaning" in our existence?

You might say we are sort of faith-generating entities. We find it unavoidable to believe something. So the question becomes, which, of all the alternatives, am I going to invest my life in believing?

We can use various things to help us decide that, of course: what I think is most likely to be right, what has the most evidence I know of going for it, what seems to give some possibility of ending in something truly meaningful, and so on. But at the end of the day, we are finite creatures. That means we have limited time and, because we are not omniscient, limited information, as well. So at some point, we have to say, "So far as I can judge, this is what I should believe." And then we have to -- because we can do nothing else -- invest our belief in that conclusion.

Lots of people have been investing their faith in Materialism and Evolutionism. Whether that investment was ever a wise one is what people like Thomas Nagel and David Berlinski have been challenging -- and both from an entirely secular perspective.
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