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Isn’t scientism the idea that we have a set of knowledge that is conclusively known along with a heavy reliance on authority, while science is about inquiry, ex

• uoaei 3y ago
  > A physicists dismissing philosophy as out of date implies that we are already on the optimum path to discovering the remaining knowledge about the universe to be learned. It implies they believe that. Which is ultimately a dogmatic ideology. That is why I call it scientism and not science. Obviously we cannot know if that is the case or not because of the nature of time (the future holds answers that the past cannot, yet remains inaccessible to beings such as us). There is no good reason to believe that our theories aren't missing some crucial aspects which were already understood and subsequently lost. The cultural narrative of progress is so strongly asserted, yet what we know of as "history" is such a narrow and skewed perspective. I myself am a physicist. I once had the confidence to assert that physics is the One True Way to understand life, the universe, and everything and that progress is inevitable (Newton's "shoulders of giants"). I no longer believe this is the case because of my explorations through the traditions of thought present in philosophy. For sure I can cram the lines of discourse that most interest me into quasi-physics-based theories (post-structuralism is especially interesting as a systems person) but that's not to say that physics can represent everything there is to know. Physics is a language just like any other and there are some ideas that physics simply cannot express.
• lisper 3y ago
  No, scientism is simply the belief that the scientific method is applicable to all areas of intellectual inquiry, and that it's the most productive such method. The dismissal of philosophy is a straightforward corollary to that belief. Note that the scientific method is self-correcting even in this regard: if someone can demonstrate a more productive method of inquiry, someone following the scientific method would accept that new method, just as they would accept any hypothesis that is demonstrably superior to the current state of the art.
• ajuc 3y ago
  > A physicists dismissing philosophy as out of date implies that we are already on the optimum path to discovering the remaining knowledge about the universe to be learned. Does not follow. It suffices that such a physicist thinks philosophy isn't going to improve on science (like it hasn't so far). It might turn out alchemy will become useful, but it's unlikely. And bear in mind alchemy provided more results than philosophy so far. There might be something else, even better than science, that's an independent question. But why people assume philosophy will necessarily be involved in any way? This is the trick that philosophy and religion uses that frustrates me the most. They claim all the territory we don't know anything about as if their own it and shout "scientism" and "dogmatism" when people protest :)