Scientism

Science, Ethics and Religion

Mikael Stenmark

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351901604
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Can science tell us everything there is to know about reality? The intellectual and practical successes of science have led some scientists to think that there are no real limits to the competence of science, and no limits to what can be achieved in the name of science. Accordingly, science has no boundaries; it will eventually answer all our problems. This view (and similar views) have been called Scientism. In this important book scientists' views about science and its relationship to knowledge, ethics and religion are subjected to critical scrutiny. A number of distinguished natural scientists have advocated Scientism in one form or another - Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, and Edward O. Wilson - and their impressive impact both inside and outside the sciences is considered. Clarifying what Scientism is, this book proceeds to evaluate its key claims, expounded in questions such as: Is it the case that science can tell us everything there is to know about reality? Can science tell us how we morally ought to live and what the meaning of life is? Can science in fact be our new religion? Ought we to become "science believers"? Stenmark addresses these and similar issues, concluding that Scientism is not really science but disguised materialism or naturalism; its advocates fail to see this, not being sufficiently aware that their arguments presuppose the previous acceptance of certain extra-scientific or philosophical beliefs.

Chapter One
What is Scientism?

Although the term 'Scientism' is frequently used, it is often not clear what it signifies. People have in fact given it a number of different meanings. We must therefore distinguish between these different forms of Scientism. In this chapter I shall analyse some of these conceptions of Scientism and relate them to one another and to traditional religion.

Scientism within academia

What different meanings has the notion of Scientism been given by its advocates and opponents? One way the term has been used is to refer to a programme or strategy within science or academia itself. Hence we could call this version academic-internal Scientism. Academic-internal Scientism is the attempt to reduce (or translate) into natural science an academic discipline which has not previously been understood as a natural science, or, if that is not attainable, to deny its scientific status or significance in some way. The defenders of academicinternal Scientism all maintain that the boundaries of natural science can be expanded, in one way or another, into fields of inquiry that have not before been considered parts of natural science. The biologist Edward O. Wilson expresses such a view as follows: 'It may not be too much to say that sociology and the other social sciences, as well as the humanities, are the last branches of biology waiting to be included in the Modern Synthesis' (Wilson 1975: 4).

Sometimes, however, the reduction (or translation) does not stop there, but continues even within the natural sciences themselves. For instance, not only is sociology reduced to biology, but biology is reduced to chemistry, and chemistry to physics.

Both of these forms of Scientism (let us call the former academic-internal, Scientism and the latter academic-internal₂ Scientism) seem to be endorsed by Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA, who writes that 'eventually one may hope to have the whole of biology "explained" in terms of the level below it, and so on right down to the atomic level. ... The knowledge we have already makes it highly unlikely that there is anything that cannot be explained by physics and chemistry' (Crick 1966: 14, 98).

We can perhaps define academic-internal Scientism as:

(1) The view that (a) all, or at least some, of the genuine, non-scientific academic disciplines can eventually be reduced to (or translated into) science proper, i.e. natural science (academic-internal, Scientism). and/or that (b) all natural sciences can eventually be reduced to (or translated into) one particular natural science (academic-internal₂ Scientism).

The claim is typically not that it is possible right now to accomplish either (a), or both (a) and (b), but that eventually it will be possible. However, its supporters hold that we do at present possess grounds for believing that this goal is likely to be obtained in the future. Tom Settle says it is 'a programme, not yet complete, the explanations only promissory notes in some cases, such as the explanation of mentality by neurophysiology' (Settle 1995: 63).

Methodological Scientism

One common way of interpreting academic-internal Scientism₁ is to understand it is:

(2) The attempt to extend the use of the methods of natural science to other academic disciplines.

Let us call this version, or similar ones, of academic-internal Scientism₁, methodological Scientism. Philip S. Gorski, for example, defines Scientism as 'the attempt to apply the methods of natural science to the study of society' (Gorski 1990: 279). And Tom Sorell writes that it is 'The thought ... that it is highly desirable for the concepts and methodology of established sciences to be spread, and unsatisfactory for, for example, ethics or history to be left in their prescientific state ... [which] captures the Scientism in scientific empiricism' (Sorell 1991: 9).¹

The problem, however, with this view of Scientism is that it is not really plausible to think that the attempt merely to apply methods of natural science to other academic disciplines would be 'scientistic'. Suppose someone argues for the use of statistics or of inter-subjective procedures (i.e. experimental repeatability) in sociology, and the importance of empirical observations and mathematics in philosophy - does that make her a defender of Scientism? Hardly. We need a stronger requirement than Gorski and Sorell offer to make a claim an example of Scientism. However, if the claim is that only statistical (and, for example, no hermeneutical) methods are to be used in sociology, then things are clearly different. Or if the idea is that all proper sociological methods must yield a result that can be strictly intersubjectively testable (i.e. the study must be repeatable in such way that if somebody else carries out the study a second time in exactly the same way the results must be identical), then this idea can be understood as scientistic.

Robert C. Bannister is, therefore, probably correct in classifying a certain view as an expression of Scientism if it contains a claim such as 'a scientific sociology must confine itself to the observable externals of human behavior ... [He continues, saying that this] goal meant an end to the cataloguing of feelings, interests, or wishes as a principal activity of prewar sociologists' (Bannister 1987: 3). Here clearly something more than just the application of some of the methods of natural science is undertaken. What have previously been considered proper objects and methods of sociology are also rejected and replaced. Hence a more appropriate characterization of methodological Scientism follows:

(2') Methodological Scientism is the attempt to extend the use of the methods of natural science to other academic disciplines in such way that they exclude (or marginalize) previously used methods considered central to these disciplines.

Scientism within the broader society

There are, however, other ways of understanding 'Scientism' which may or may not be combined with academic-internal Scientism. What these other forms of Scientism have in common is that they attempt to reduce (or translate) something into science which has not previously been understood as science or, if that is not attainable, to deny its significance. They all maintain that the boundaries of science can be expanded, in one way or another, into non-academic areas of human life (such as art, morality, and religion). They are, therefore, all examples of what I shall call academic-external Scientism. We can define this as:

(3) The view that all or, at least, some of the essential non-academic areas of human life can be reduced to (or translated into) science.

Loren R. Graham, in an influential study, has dubbed views similar to academic-external Scientism 'expansionism'. He writes,

Expansionists cite evidence within the body of scientific theories and findings which can supposedly be used, either directly or indirectly, to support conclusions about sociopolitical [e.g. moral, political, aesthetic, religious] values. The result of these efforts is to expand the boundaries of science in such a way that they include, at least by implication, value questions.

(Graham 1981: 6)

He defines values as 'what people think to be good' (Graham 1981: 4). In my view, however, Graham unnecessarily limits expansionism (or Scientism) to value questions. Hence, the difference between academic-external Scientism and expansionism is that the advocate of the former could but, unlike the latter, need not claim that the boundaries of science can be extended so that it includes values. Instead, she could, for instance, claim that all beliefs that can be known (or even rationally maintained) must and can be included within the boundaries of science. Science sets the limits for what we possibly can know (or rationally believe) about reality. The only sort of knowledge we can have is the scientific kind of knowledge. So there is a crucial difference between these two concepts that should not be overlooked. Nevertheless, in what follows 'scientific expansionism' will often be used as a synonym for 'Scientism' (or more exactly for 'academic-external Scientism') and someone who advocates Scientism will thus be called a 'scientific expansionist'.

Academic-external Scientism raises the question of whether there exists any domain or practice-external limits of science.² Do all the tasks human beings face actually belong to (or are solvable by) science? In its most bold formulation Scientism in this form can be taken to maintain that science has no such limits. We will see that there are also weaker versions of academic-external Scientism which admit that science has some kind of practice-external limits.

Epistemic Scientism

The first and probably most common version of academic-external Scientism (or Scientism within the broader society) that we shall consider consists of the attempt to expand the boundaries of science in such a way that all genuine (in contrast to apparent) knowledge must either be scientific or at least be able to be reduced to scientific knowledge. Ian Barbour defines this view as the claim that 'the scientific method is the only reliable path to knowledge' (Barbour 1990: 4). Roger Trigg writes that Scientism consists of the view that 'science is our only means of access to reality' (Trigg 1993: 90). Michael Peterson et al., offer a third way of explaining this version of Scientism. They write that Scientism is 'the idea that science tells us everything there is to know about what reality consists of ...' (Peterson et al., 1991: 36). We can call this form of Scientism, epistemic Scientism, and define it as:

(4) The view that the only reality that we can know anything about is the one science has access to.

The idea is that what lies beyond the reach of scientists cannot count as knowledge. The only sort of knowledge we have is the scientific kind of knowledge. There are no other valid (non-reducible) epistemic activities apart from science. Carnap seems to express this view when he writes that although 'the total range of life still has many other dimensions outside of science ... within its dimension, science meets no barrier. ... When we say that scientific knowledge is unlimited, we mean: there is no question whose answer is in principle unattainable by science" (Carnap 1967: 290). Two contemporary scientists who explicitly hold this kind of view are Carl Sagan and R. C. Lewontin. In his review of Sagarfs The Demon-Haunted World, the famous biologist Richard Lewontin agrees with Sagan that people ought 'to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth' (Lewontin 1997: 28).

One question of importance for understanding the merits of Scientism concerns which academic disciplines should be considered scientific ones. What is science? Any discipline within academia could, in principle, be called a science. (That is the way the term is typically used in for instance Swedish and German.) What is characteristic of Scientism is that it works with a narrow definition of science. Before any reduction or translation has taken place, advocates of Scientism use the notion of science to cover only the natural sciences and perhaps also those areas of the social sciences that are highly similar in methodology to the natural sciences. How broad the definition in the end will be (when the programme is completed) is a matter of how many academic disciplines one thinks could be successfully turned into a natural science.

Thus a claim like 'All knowledge is scientific' should be interpreted to mean that we cannot know anything about reality which is not knowable (either directly or after translation) by the methods of inquiry of the natural sciences. We can also see why this is a reasonable way of understanding Scientism if we consider the most common philosophical criticism of it, namely that a scientistic claim like 'All knowledge is scientific' is not itself a scientific but a philosophical claim and is consequently not itself knowable. (More on this in Chapter 2.) If science were defined by the advocates of Scientism in such a way that philosophy is considered a part of science proper, this criticism would lose its point and, of course, Scientism would also lose its point; it would not be a very controversial view. Such a scenario does justice neither to Scientism nor to its opponents. I am therefore inclined to think that a narrow definition of science is a necessary condition for a view counting as Scientism, and this will be the way I shall understand the concept in what follows.

Rationalistic Scientism

It is not always recognized that it is also possible to maintain a stronger epistemological version of Scientism than the above epistemic one. Epistemic Scientism only denies that any claim or belief that cannot be scientifically knowable can constitute knowledge. We cannot know anything about reality which transcends the limits of science. Now, many people have some religious beliefs. Let us suppose that their truth cannot be scientifically proven; can these people still be rational in accepting these beliefs? An advocate of epistemic Scientism as defined thus far could accept that. All he is, in fact, claiming is that we cannot know whether these beliefs are true. From this proposition alone it does not follow that we are not rational in accepting them. What is not scientifically knowable might still be rationally believable.

Nevertheless epistemic Scientism and what I shall style rationalistic Scientism are sometimes confused because it is not recognized that knowledge and rationality are two distinct concepts. (Epistemic Scientism could only entail rationalistic Scientism if these two concepts were shown to be identical.) It is, however, fairly easy to see that the conditions for knowledge and for rationality cannot be the same. In general we think that people 2,000 years ago were rational in believing that the earth was flat (their believing satisfying the conditions for rationality), but we would not say that they knew that it was flat (their believing satisfying the conditions for knowledge). If they knew, it follows that the shape of the earth must have changed since then. Hence the conditions for knowledge and rationality cannot be the same.³ Consequently, one can be rationally entitled to believe tilings that are not scientifically knowable.

Therefore, a stronger epistemological version of Scientism than epistemic Scientism can be maintained. In fact, Anders Jeffner seems to define Scientism along these lines. He writes that the advocate of Scientism 'accepts as reasons for what one should believe about reality (a) reasons such as those acceptable within empirical natural science and (b) only such reasons' (Jeffner 1978: 46). On such an account science sets not only the limits for what we can know about reality, but also the boundaries for what is rational to believe. We have styled this rationalistic Scientism and can now define it as:

(5) The view that we are rationally entitled to believe only what can be scientifically justified or what is scientifically knowable.

Bertrand Russell, for instance, betrays the commitment not only to epistemic but also to rationalistic Scientism when he writes that

God and immortality, the central dogmas of the Christian religion, find no support in science. ... No doubt people will continue to entertain these beliefs, because they are pleasant, just as it is pleasant to think ourselves virtuous and our enemies wicked. But for my part I cannot see any ground for either. I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian God may exist; so may the Gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.

(Russell 1957: 44, emphasis added)

So, ...