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The Folly of Scientism
- gnosis 14y agoThis essay should be required reading for anyone who thinks science is or should be the only legitimate way of understanding the world. For more information, I strongly recommend: "Naturalism and the Human Condition: Against scientism" by Frederick A. Olafson and "Scientism" by Tom Sorell
- seiji 14y agoWhat are some [legitimate] examples of non-science ways of understanding the world?
- maratd 14y agoTraditional religions.
- super_mario 14y agoWhich are now completely discredited as complete lies.
- Daniel_Newby 14y agoComplete? Lies? Those are strong statements.
- super_mario 14y agoYes, they are. But I have spent a chunk on my life investigating the claims of major religions and when you start poking around you not only find out there is absolutely no evidence to back them up, but there is plenty of evidence that they man made. So, religion and faith comes down to bending yourself, making yourself suspend your disbelief and accepting premises without seeking any evidence. It comes down to wishful thinking really.
- maratd 14y ago> when you start poking around you not only find out there is absolutely no evidence to back them up, but there is plenty of evidence that they man made. You have no capacity to determine if something is true without the process of trial and error. This is the founding principal of the scientific mindset and is the basis of the scientific method. Form a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, repeat. How do you "test" a religion? Not with any feeble investigation by your primitive rational mind. You try the belief system. If it makes you happier, if it makes you a better person, you've found a winning formula. If it gives you good results, you win. It is entirely irrelevant whether it passes some "truth" test concocted by your imagination. It either has real, relevant results in your life or it doesn't. Religion is a way of life, a guide for living ... not merely a creation mythology. If you bother asking, you will find the overwhelming majority of human beings on the planet get this, understand it, and will actually tell you just how it improves their lives. Unfortunately, engineers seem to be brain-damaged in some specific way that prevents them from thinking in this manner. You need to work on that. It's not very scientific.
- super_mario 14y agoFirst of all I'm a mathematician, in my 40s and I can think for myself quite well, thanks. Second, it is perfectly possible to reach true statements and falsify well false ones without experiments, like we do in math all the time. But more importantly for this discussion, religion is not some guide for moral living. If it were so, there would be no problem with religion. No, religion is all about absolutism, it is a totalitarian world view by definition. It is argument from certainty. Religion comes down to some people claiming not only they know with absolute certainty there is a god, but they also know his mind, what he wants us to do. It is about gods that care about human beings, that interfere in their lives, that tell you what you should do, what you should eat, on what days, who you may sleep with and in what position, gods who break the known laws of nature for their people, god who stops the motion of the sun around earth so certain people in the Bible can finish their work, god who takes "our" side in a war, a god that gives itself body so it can kill it to save the humanity. And how do they know? Personal revelation of course, god told them something (often times contradictory to what he told others). Yet, no ordinary evidence is ever offered for these claims, let alone extraordinary evidence it would take to prove the claims. Religion (and I'm referring to the three monotheistic ones, the three desert dogmas) are claiming that without this absolute divine supervision we would not know right from wrong. So, if religion is just a way of life, and if you don't accept the required dogmas wholesale, in what way is it a guide for you? If you get to pick and choose out of all the required supernatural dogmas, does that not show that your morals in fact don't come from religion, but you already know what is good and what is right? Of course, morals and our civility to each other predate religion. We would not have gotten this far without it. And seriously, believing something as absolute because it makes you feel good is a definition of delusion. Can you be any more dishonest with yourself? But some of us care about what is actually true. And besides what religion you get indoctrinated into has nothing to do with the truthfulness of your particular religion, but more to do with where you were born, and the religion of your parents.
- bendmorris 14y agoHow do traditional religions helps us to understand the world? Claims without evidence don't help to increase understanding.
- maratd 14y ago> Claims without evidence don't help to increase understanding. Where is your evidence for this? Humor aside, this is absolutely not the case. Traditional religion stems from human intuition, a natural sense of reality that was shaped my many, many years of evolution. A process of trial and error. Trial and error, of course, is the natural equivalent of the scientific method. Continuous iteration and refinement. If anything, our intuitive sense is more refined than our sense of reason and tells us much about the world around us that our capacity for reason simply does not.
- AffableSpatula 14y agoConsciousness/experience.
- derleth 14y ago> Consciousness/experience. These are both scientific.
- zdw 14y agoAh, so you can scientifically replicate an arbitrary unique experience? I'd like a slice of roast dodo bird please.
- derleth 14y ago> Ah, so you can scientifically replicate an arbitrary unique experience? Not yet. Can you explain morality in terms of your favored philosophical framework? > I'd like a slice of roast dodo bird please. A fine example of what people do when they don't reason things through. How does this discredit science?
- zdw 14y ago"Not yet" - really? Reversed entropy or invented time travel lately? It sounds like you're assigning omniscient characteristics to science.
- thirdtruck 14y agoHow, specifically? Given the incredible variance in available descriptions of "the conscious experience", I would posit that "consciousness" itself exists only as a mental grouping and nothing distinct. As an exercise: explain what exactly constitutes a "car", including the point where such an item officially "stops being a car" during the process of disassembly. Show your work.
- MrScruff 14y agoI don't think they are referring to the phenomenon of consciousness, rather than the experience of consciousness itself.
- mattgreenrocks 14y agoIntuition? (Yes, it's probably pattern-matching taken to an extreme, but can we quantify it? Why not?)
- rohern 14y agoWhat does that mean? I intuit that your program has bugs, therefore it has bugs? I intuit that there is an alien race living on Mars that is able to disguise itself as red rocks? I do not see how intuition gives you anything other than -- maybe, and only maybe -- a smaller set of hypotheses to test scientifically.
- mattgreenrocks 14y agoYour inability to fit it into your belief system is not my problem.
- rohern 14y agoIf that is the strongest argument you can make, I think you've said all that needs to be said about intuition.
- mattgreenrocks 14y agoHehe, I'm not trying to convince you. I suppose I shouldn't be posting, then. Really, I'm not certain you would be convinced even if I did a better job, though. All I'm really looking for is less of a skeptical "explain it to me in terms of science" viewpoint, and more of a "huh, interesting" response. I've never seen someone even try to work with me when discussing these things. It's always shut down so they can claim their Internet points. Not intellectually engaging in the slightest.
- derleth 14y agoThis purely dismissive attitude is why philosophers are mocked and ignored.
- VMG 14y agoThe answers that you'll receive won't be supported by rational thought or evidence. If they were, it'd be scientism.
- aroberge 14y agoHow can something that is not supported by evidence be a valid answer to any legitimate question?
- VMG 14y agoIt can't, that's my point. Arguing against rationality using rational arguments is self-contradictory.
- georgeorwell 14y agoHow are you feeling right now?
- derleth 14y ago> How are you feeling right now? Emotions, both feeling and decoding, are smack-dab in the realm of neurology.
- droithomme 14y agoWhat do you want to eat for dinner? (legitimate question) How about pizza? (no scientific evidence involved in this response)
- lotharbot 14y agoMathematics is separate from science (at least in the modern sense, to the same degree that philosophy is separate from modern science). It's also a form of rational thought, and relies heavily on evidence -- just not empirical evidence. It relies upon reason and proof, but not experimentation or observation.
- georgeorwell 14y agoWell, science is based on the rational interpretation of our five senses. Other ways of understanding the world include our five senses but also rely on other phenomena, such as our dreams and emotions, and then are subject to somewhat rational but mostly irrational personal and subjective interpretations. Note that irrational is not the same as incorrect, and I don't consider it a pejorative. I guess as a primary example, art is non-scientific, but it is an equally valid way of communicating the understanding of our experience to others. We understand beauty. The meaning of symbols in our society seems unlikely to ever come under some scientific theory but forms a very large part of our experience. The search for meaning in life is not a scientific one. It is probably true that science is the only objective, factually accurate, rational, logical, and methodical approach to understanding the world. This does not invalidate other approaches, since we are more than objective, factually accurate, rational, logical, and methodical beings. Your subjective experience is yours and yours alone and totally resistant to the scientific method.
- subsection1h 14y agoWell, science is based on the rational interpretation of our five senses. Five senses? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense
- super_mario 14y agoName one question for which a scientific answer no matter how inadequate was once the best, but for which now a philosophical or religious one is the best one?
- AffableSpatula 14y agoConsciousness, experience, spontaneity, 'the present moment'.. There's a very good book on this called "The Wisdom Of Insecurity" by Alan Watts. It's very short and definitely worth a read if this question interests you.
- super_mario 14y agoConsciousness, experience or the present moment are not a question. What about these? What in particular about them is answered better (i.e. more correctly or truthfully) by non-scientific answers. What answer can be satisfying at all if it is not tested at all? Or if it does not give correct predictions. Feeling better about something or wishing it were so are not good enough criteria in my mind. Finding consolation in illusion is not a worthy goal either. All questions are scientific questions. What is right, what is moral or what we should do follows from what is true. Science happens to be the only sure way to discover what is true on the other hand. All other methods fail us.
- Ygg2 14y agoIf all question are scientific question then what is a question 'What is right (in the sense of morals)?' and can that answer in any way help me? Science isn't about truth. Science is about three things. Making hypothesis, making decisions based on hypothesis and testing them. It has no singular answer and that answer changes depending on scales we operate.
- super_mario 14y agoOf course "what is right" is a scientific question. If science (i.e reason and evidence) has nothing to say about it, then what does? What is right follows directly from what is true. For example, if animals are indeed sentient, if they are self-aware even, if they can suffer, are scientific questions. If scientific answers to these questions are positive, then some of us sufficiently evolved, aware humans can't ignore the fact, and we have no choice but to treat animals differently than what we do now. Some countries like Spain have gone so far as to give protection and right to life to higher primates, our closest cousin apes. We can decide slavery is not a good idea. We can decide that fairly applied laws, rather than nepotistic favoritism, is a good idea. We can outlaw certain punishments with treaties. We can encourage accountability with the invention of writing. We can consciously expand our circle of empathy. These are all inventions, products of our minds, as much as lightbulbs and telegraphs are.
- return0 14y agoI wouldn't agree; this essay takes few examples of bad or half-baked science (which are disputed even among scientists, in specific fields such as behavioral ecology and evo. psychology, and behavioral neuroscience) and generalizes to all of science.
- carsongross 14y agoIn a world with the three body problem and godel, humility should be the defining characteristic of the intelligent. Should.
- mattgreenrocks 14y agoI'm always suspicious of people who are think they've got it all figured out...in any area, much less the full extent of human knowledge. I've been there, and I was always out of my depth; I just didn't realize it.
- tokenadult 14y agoA reply under the title of "The folly of 'The folly of scientism'" by Professor Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago, who frequently reads and comments on issues related to the philosophy of science: http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/the-folly-of-the-folly-of-scientism/ http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/the-folly... ". . . . Hughes is an evolutionary biologist with wide-ranging interests, and I’ve really liked some of his papers." . . . . "The big problem with Hughes’s essay is that despite his claim that there are other ways of apprehending truth beyond science—ways that involve the three areas of ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology—he gives not a single example of a question that those disciplines have answered."
- georgeorwell 14y agoQuestions don't lead to answers, they lead to more questions. It is the asking of questions and the process of trying to answer them that is valuable.
- derleth 14y agoThis sounds like a response that would not exist if questions were being answered.
- shasta 14y agoThis is exactly it. Hughes writes: > Similarly, modern theorists imply, the multiverse has necessary being even though any given universe does not. No. What's implicit is that arguments of necessary being will not ever be found. As I'm fond of saying (a bit unfairly): a philosopher is someone insightful enough to ask the fundamental questions and thick enough to try to answer them.
- rohern 14y agoThe Hughes article is very strange, but the theme of the sentiment is remarkably (perhaps alarmingly) common among the university students I know who are not scientists, engineers, or mathematicians. This is enormously condescending to write, but I think this is born of frustration at not being able to make progress in discovery without the tools of mathematics and science. If you have not picked up and mastered these tools, you are left out of the game. Suddenly four years of college goes whoosh and you are no closer to the enlightenment you were seeking. To give one ridiculous example, I had a graduate student in anthropology suggest to me that science needs to be democratized and taken away from the scientists and verified and decided upon by the common man. I asked by what method the common man could do such verification and make any such decisions, as the obvious answer to both is Science. I do not think criticisms of this type are worth much, especially when they are written on a computer, posted on the internet, and then discussed on forums like this. In a dictum: "Science works, bitches."
- gorrillamcd 14y agoI must admit, I haven't read the entire article, but he puts many of my own sentiments into words better than I could myself.
- andrewcooke 14y agothe magazine itself looks great - never seen it before. there's a nice article on ray bradbury at http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-dark-and-starry-eyes-of-ray-bradbury http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-dark-and-star... and it's currently half price for subscriptions and only $10 delivery international. i just signed up for two years :o) thanks for posting this.
- stfu 14y agoI wish more journals would follow this example. This is a really smart way to widen the reach of their ideas.
- return0 14y agoI thought we were done with Constructivism a long time ago. And scientism is not the biggest problem in a world where climate change, stem cells and creationism debates still exist. Unfortunately philosophers alienated scientists with their postmodern (de-)constructivism to the point of creating enmities (such as the Sokal affair[1]). At this point, when scientists speak to philosophers, one gets the impression that there's nothing to learn from them that they don't already know (or even worse, that philosophers dance around subjects). The author seems frustrated that philosophers are no longer the highest authorities, but that's just the current state of philosophy. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
- gnosis 14y agoThis might come as a surprise, but not every philosopher is a postmodernist. Postmodernists aren't even in the majority. They're a relatively small minority in an ocean of different philosophical outlooks. Even many so-called postmodernists deny the label applies to them. As for who alienated who in the Sokal affair, it should be remembered that Sokal was the original perpetrator of the hoax, and appeared to have initiated it with the sole aim of discrediting philosophers he did not approve of.
- return0 14y agoNo doubt about that; yet postmodernists seem to be the ones most engaged in what is perceived as a pursuit to discredit or trivialize science. Unfortunately, they are loud people so it's hard to hear other, more interesting views on the philosophy of science. I would be grateful if you could suggest some good books.
- gnosis 14y agoOn the Analytic side, take a look at Balashov's and Rosenberg's "Philosophy of Science: Contemporary Readings" On the Continental side, the classic essay is Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology". I'd also recommend Jacques Ellul's "Technological Society". And, while not dealing directly with science, I think Foucault's critiques of power in discourse are very relevant. Earlier in this thread I'd mentioned: "Naturalism and the Human Condition: Against scientism" by Frederick A. Olafson, whose critique comes from a phenomenological perspective. and "Scientism" by Tom Sorell, who's a neo-Kantian. None of the above are postmodernists.
- thirdtruck 14y ago"Likewise, many cosmologists have articulated various forms of what is known as the “anthropic principle” — that is, the observation that the basic laws of the universe seem to be “fine-tuned” in such a way as to be favorable to life, including human life." Simple answers to this: (a) we have far too few examples of life (on a galactic scale) to gauge the actual "Goldilock" range for life suitability, and (b) we have a documented tendency to assume agency even in its manifest absence, which renders all such anthropomorphic impressions highly suspect. "In that case, we are still left without ultimate explanations as to why that universe exists or has the characteristics it does." Begs the question of whether "why" even matters at such a scale. Like the "then what created god?" question, the chain must either stop somewhere or recede infinitely to a "bad question" asymptote. "For a complete evolutionary account of a phenomenon, it is not enough to construct a story about how the trait might have evolved in response to a given selection pressure; rather, one must provide some sort of evidence that it really did so evolve." Apply that same criteria to all other non-evolutionary explanations, then come back with their relative measures of predictive value. Who wins that tournament of efficacy? "For comparison, we know a quite a lot about the physiology of digestion, and we are able to describe in great detail the physiological differences between the digestive system of a person who is starving and that of a person who has just eaten a satisfying and nutritionally balanced meal. But this knowledge contributes little to solving world hunger." The discovery and implementation of a system that makes hunger more objective, for example, would help address work hunger by freeing up overeaten food for those in greater need. Unimpressed. "Harris seems to think that free will is an illusion but also that our decisions are really driven by thoughts that arise unbidden in our brains. He does not explain the origin of these thoughts nor how their origin relates to moral choices." What about the receipt of controlling, "unexplained" "unbidden thoughts" contracts a disbelief in free will? The claim that Harris leaves them "unexplained" or unrelated to moral choices speaks more to the author's ignorance of Harris's work than anything else. "This view [emphasizing the impact of genes and circumstance on the frequency of "moral behavior"] undermines the possibility of happiness and moral behavior for those who are dealt a bad hand, and so does more to degrade than uplift at the individual level." Try telling that to had their "moral" capacity demonstrably inhibited by damage to their frontal lobes. Any hope of addressing such organic damage to impulse control lies in the advancement of neuroscience, which might provide an actual fix. The alternative equates to expecting a computer user to search online for their own answer as to why their Internet connection is down. "Continued insistence on the universal competence of science will serve only to undermine the credibility of science as a whole. The ultimate outcome will be an increase of radical skepticism that questions the ability of science to address even the questions legitimately within its sphere of competence." A straw-man, then begging the question. Given how much we know of the foibles of human cognition, perception, and recollection, the responsibility for taking something out of the sphere of science lies with those who would attempt the removal. Best of luck doing so without hard data, i.e. science, though. tl;dr: a biologist reaches far outside her area of experience (and into, e.g., neuroscience) in order to try and fault the scientists actually in those fields for finding scientific answers to once-philosophical questions in their own fields. That, and the author's ultimate position boils down to an argument from consequence.
- xd 14y agoMaybe it's just me, but I all I see is the strong parallels of "Scientism" in HN.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- aroberge 14y agoFor too long, the vast majority of scientists have kept silent, keenly aware of the limitation of their knowledge, and leaving it to idiots (e.g. Bill O'Reilly's nobody can explain the tides...) to make sweeping and completely false statements. We don't have all the answers yet (and never will) but that should not stop scientists from voicing their opinion more vocally and more frequently.
- cs702 14y agoThe author believes scientific inquiry should not 'overreach' into subjects that have traditionally belonged to fields like philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, and religion, because, he explains in painful detail, science can't have all the answers. Regardless of whether one agrees with him or not, his argument makes NO sense to me. The relevant question is not whether science can have all the answers, but whether science yields better or more accurate answers than those other approaches.
- return0 14y agoEthical questions cannot not really be answered by science cause that would be an appeal to nature. Some evo-psychologists may claim otherwise, but i think he's right about their narrow utilitarian position.
- AffableSpatula 14y agoIs it better to classify a rabbit by its meat or by its fur? It depends what you want to do with it.
- droithomme 14y agoIt has been asked whether science yields "better or more accurate answers" than other approaches. We know that most published scientific research results are wrong. http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal... Therefore flipping a coin and always guessing "heads" yields more accurate results than science. Now what? Has this insight taught us anything?
- thirdtruck 14y agoAnd how did that research come to the conclusion that most research comes out wrong? Statistically-rigorous research. Second: it remains a question of degree. Most preliminary medical research, for example, suffers from heavy biases, but it remains far more predictive than the "alternative medicine" beliefs that are more than 90% incorrect.
- return0 14y ago
- freshhawk 14y agoSo science showed itself to be a powerful tool for determining truth about some subjects and exposed the ridiculousness of most pre-scientific ideas concerning those subjects. Now that a higher level of certainty is available for some subjects people have higher expectations about what level of confidence they demand from an idea purporting to tell them something about reality. They also have a lot more scientific knowledge about the ways in which and the reasons why these other methods fail, often spectacularly. I guess I'm guilty of scientism. I assume that if these "other ways of understanding" failed nearly completely at discovering truth in every subject that has been touched by science I assume this extrapolates to the subjects we cannot apply science to. I fail to see why accepting our current limitations about what it's possible for us to know is anything other than the opposite of hubris. Once another system of thought actually makes predictions that answer questions about reality then I will happily change my mind. Until then I'm not satisfied with the horrible levels of accuracy they have been shown to have. I'll just stick with the humble scientific opinion: "We don't know yet, we haven't figured out how to move beyond conjecture about this issue".
- derleth 14y agoI'd be interested to know if anyone actually holds to the ideas mocked as 'Scientisim', or if it's just another example of a strawman in the 'Darwinist' mold.
- lotharbot 14y agoI was most struck by the line that "It easily becomes an interpretive blank check, permitting speculation that seems to explain any describable human trait." This has long been a criticism "real" evolutionary scientists (like geneticists) have leveled against the speculative nonsense often seen coming from sociobiology/evolutionary psychology [0]. Science works to find scientific conclusions. But the trappings of science are sometimes applied in ways that have little to do with actual science. [0] http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/09/17/120917crbo_books_gottlieb?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/09/17/12091... -- note that sociobio/ev psych can produce real science. In my experience, though, most of what they produce is "just-so stories", as Gould's comment points out.
- mnemonicsloth 14y agoThis is an article on the limitations of science, but it contains no science. Isn't that interesting? For example the author concedes, in the first half of one paragraph, the existence of "genuinely scientific" evolutionary psychology. Then he spends the second half on the abundance of unserious -- not just philosophically unserious, but scientifically unserious -- material in the same field. And that's all he has to say about the actual content of evolutionary psychology. But good science speaks for itself: """The left side of the [neanderthal] skull had a large dent, apparently from a ferocious blow, and the rib cage -- also on the left side -- had the head of a spear lodged in it.... [He] had died roughly 50,000 years ago, the earliest known homicide victim. His killer, judging from the damage to the skull and rib cage, bore the lethal weapon in his right hand. The fossil record of injuries to bones reveals two strikingly common patterns (Jurmain et al, 2009; Trinkaus & Zimmerman, 1982; Walker, 1995). First, the skeletons of men contain far more fractures and dents than do the skeletons of women. Second, the injuries are located mainly on the left frontal sides of the skulls and skeletons, suggesting right-handed attackers. The bone record alone cannot tell us with certainty that combat among men was a central feature of human ancestral life. Nor can it tell us with certainty that men evolved to be the more physically aggressive sex...""" ...and even if they could, our ancestors habits offer limited guidance on how we should act today. Stabbing people with pointed sticks is now frowned upon. Do we need to be told this by a tenured philosophy professor? But note how much clearer the prospects and limits of science become when you know something about what it has already told us in the here and now. When your knowledge is limited, all you can talk about is the limits of knowledge.
- a_bonobo 14y agoStrangest part: >What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator? ... Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge. >Though physicists might once have been dismissive of metaphysics as mere speculation, they would also have characterized such questions as inherently speculative and so beyond their own realm of expertise. The claims of Hawking and Mlodinow, and many other writers, thus represent a striking departure from the traditional view. It's weird that the author takes a non-scientific introduction to a pop-science book that is aimed to appeal to the layman's understanding of the world, and makes it out that Hawking and Mlodinow are departing from traditional views in their science.