Wittgenstein and Scientism

Jonathan Beale, Ian James Kidd, Jonathan Beale, Ian James Kidd

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138829398
• eBook ISBN: 9781351995627
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Wittgenstein criticised prevailing attitudes toward the sciences. The target of his criticisms was 'scientism': what he described as 'the overestimation of science'. This collection is the first study of Wittgenstein's anti-scientism - a theme in his work that is clearly central to his thought yet strikingly neglected by the existing literature.

The book explores the philosophical basis of Wittgenstein's anti-scientism; how this anti-scientism helps us understand Wittgenstein's philosophical aims; and how this underlies his later conception of philosophy and the kind of philosophy he attacked.

An outstanding team of international contributors articulate and critically assess Wittgenstein's views on scientism and anti-scientism, making Wittgenstein and Scientism essential reading for students and scholars of Wittgenstein's work, on topics as varied as the philosophy of mind and psychology, philosophical practice, the nature of religious belief, and the place of science in modern culture.

Contributors: Jonathan Beale, William Child, Annalisa Coliva, David E. Cooper, Ian James Kidd, James C. Klagge, Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, Rupert Read, Genia Schönbaumsfeld, Severin Schroeder, Benedict Smith, and Chon Tejedor.

1 Scientism as a threat to science

Wittgenstein on self-subverting methodologies

Chon Tejedor

Wittgenstein is typically viewed as concerned with one particular variety of scientism: scientism understood as the threat posed by the application of scientific practices to areas of our lives in which they do not belong.¹ In this reading, Wittgenstein’s primary concern about scientism is that science should not overreach its purview: the scientific approach is legitimate within the boundaries of scientific inquiry, but should not encroach into other areas, where different standards and procedures apply – in particular, into ethics, religion or philosophy. I will call this the ‘dominant reading’.

This understanding of Wittgenstein’s preoccupation with scientism is not unfounded and certainly comes to the fore at several junctures (e.g. CV 7). I propose to show, however, that too narrow a focus on this aspect of Wittgenstein’s treatment of scientism distorts both his thinking on science and the nature of his preoccupation with scientism. This, at any rate, is the picture that emerges when we consider this question from the perspective of his early remarks on science, in the Tractatus and ‘A Lecture on Ethics’, presented at a meeting of The Heretics Society in Cambridge, in 1929.² (Although the Tractatus was written more than ten years before ‘A Lecture on Ethics’, Wittgenstein’s position on a number of key issues did not substantially change in the interim. Indeed, many of the themes from the former, including his notion of a ‘world book’ – cf. TLP 5.631 – remain central to the latter.)

In section 1, I summarise the dominant interpretation of Wittgenstein’s concern over scientism. In section 2, I revisit the Tractatus’ discussion of scientific propositions and argue that the dominant interpretation misrepresents Wittgenstein’s early approach to the natural sciences. In section 3, I defend the idea that Wittgenstein’s preoccupation with scientism is part of a broader and more fundamental preoccupation with self-subverting methodologies and with the threat that these pose to all areas – including science itself.

1. Scientism as the threat from science

The dominant reading begins with a particular understanding of Wittgenstein’s approach to science. In this view, scientific inquiry involves constructing senseful propositions that are truth-assessable, bivalent and bipolar. Senseful scientific propositions are characterised by at least one of the following:

1 They represent possible states, in particular obtaining ones – i.e. facts.

2 They give empirical descriptions of facts.

3 They make statements about possible states or facts based on inductive reasoning.

4 They give causal explanations or make statements about the causal relations – or causal mechanisms – that hold between possible states and/or facts.

With this understanding of Wittgenstein’s approach to science in place, his concern over scientism is presented as the concern that the scientific approach – characterised by the generation of such propositions – should not be extended to areas of our lives in which it does not belong. In particular (though not exclusively): it should not be extended to religion and ethics (Phillips, 1993, esp. 57–58).

The early section of ‘A Lecture on Ethics’ is often cited as presenting this view:

Our words used as we use them in science, are vessels capable only of containing and conveying meaning and sense, natural meaning and sense. Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural and our words will only express facts; as a teacup will only hold a teacup full of water [even] if I were to pour out a gallon over it.

(LE 3)

A similar idea can be extracted from Wittgenstein’s discussion of a miracle later in the lecture:

Take the case that one of you suddenly grew a lion’s head and he began to roar. Certainly that would be as extraordinary a thing as I can imagine. Now whenever we should have recovered from our surprise, what I would suggest would be to fetch a doctor and have the case scientifically investigated and if it were not for hurting him I would have him vivisected. And where would the miracle have got to? For it is clear that when we look at it in this way everything miraculous has disappeared; unless what we mean by this term is merely that a fact has not yet been explained by science which again means that we have hitherto failed to group this fact with others in a scientific system. This shows that it is absurd to say ‘Science has proved that there are no miracles.’ The truth is that the scientific way of looking at a fact is not the way to look at it as a miracle.

(LE 7)

I will call the concern that scientific approaches illegitimately encroach into other areas – notably those of ethics or religion – the concern over scientism as a threat from science. There is no doubt that Wittgenstein repeatedly expresses concerns over scientism as a threat from science. I propose to show, however, that we misunderstand his position when we read it as arising from hostility towards science, or as consisting primarily in the worry that science – as such – will dominate other areas.

I would like, first, to motivate the idea that the dominant reading involves an unduly simplified understanding of Wittgenstein’s view of science and, second, show that there is a better way to understand his position on scientism.

2. Wittgenstein’s early writings on science

Even in a text like ‘A Lecture on Ethics’, which is sometimes regarded as presenting the epitome of Wittgenstein’s concern over ‘scientism as the threat from science’, his attitude towards science is subtler and more complex than is at times supposed. At the start of that lecture, Wittgenstein states:

I should not misuse this opportunity to give you a lecture about, say, logic. I call this a misuse, for to explain a scientific matter to you it would need a course of lectures and not an hour’s paper. Another alternative would have been to give you what’s called a popular scientific lecture, that is a lecture intended to make you believe that you understand a thing which actually you don’t understand, and to gratify what I believe to be one of the lowest desires of modern people, namely the superficial curiosity about the latest discoveries of science. I rejected these alternatives.

(LE 3)

Two points are worth noting about this passage. The first is that Wittgenstein draws an analogy between his own task as logician and that of the scientist – and goes as far as to portray logic as a ‘scientific matter’. This does not sit well with the suggestion that his concern over scientism in the ‘Lecture on Ethics’ stems from hostility towards science.³ Indeed, it is striking that, in his discussion of the miracle example, he imagines himself as approaching the miraculous situation in a scientific way: ‘Now whenever we should have recovered from our surprise, what I would suggest [in the first person] would be to fetch a doctor and have the case scientifically investigated and if it were not for hurting him I would have him vivisected’ (LE 9). Second, it is important to note the contrast that Wittgenstein draws between scientific explanations and popular science, the latter of which he seems to regard as distasteful – possibly even dishonest. I will return to this idea in section 3. Before I do, I would like to explore in more detail what might be behind the analogy that he draws between logic and science in the ‘Lecture on Ethics’.

Why does Wittgenstein draw an analogy between logic and science in this text? Such an analogy makes little sense if we understand science in the manner portrayed by the dominant reading. For Wittgenstein certainly does not, during this period, regard the task of the logician – insofar as she has a task at all – to be that of constructing senseful propositions (let alone ones characterised by 1–4 – see above, section 1).⁴ It would seem therefore that Wittgenstein either makes a mistake in drawing this analogy or that his understanding of science is quite different from that presented in the dominant reading – different in a manner that does, after all, support his analogy between logic and science. The Tractatus’ discussion of science points to the latter idea, as we will now see.

Contrary to what is commonly suggested (cf. McGuinness, 2002, 116–123), in the Tractatus Wittgenstein does not regard the natural sciences as circumscribed to the producing of senseful propositions. Indeed, in this text, Wittgenstein’s interest in science is twofold. It is an interest in the subject matter of science (as expressed by the senseful propositions in points 1–4). And it is an interest in the scientific principles constitutive of the (scientific) representational systems within which those senseful propositions are produced. This twofold interest and the two associated notions of proposition emerge clearly in the following entry from the Tractatus:

Mechanics determine a form of description by saying: All propositions [Sätze] in the description of the world must be obtained in a given way from a number of given propositions – the mechanical axioms. It thus provides the bricks for building the edifice of science, and says: ‘Any building that you want to erect, whatever it may be, must somehow be constructed with these bricks, and with these alone.’

(TLP 6.341)

Imposing a unified form involves homing in on certain propositions (or ‘axioms’) that provide instructions, within a particular system, for the construction of other propositions (the latter being the ‘propositions in the description of the world’). Although Wittgenstein uses the same term ‘proposition’ (Satz) in both cases, he clearly regards these two types of propositions as performing quite different roles: the former provides instructions for how to construct the latter; the latter are senseful propositions that are part of the ‘the description of the world’. I will use the expression ‘instruction-proposition’ to refer to the former and to distinguish these from senseful propositions.

I suggest that Wittgenstein’s notion of a principle (Gesetz) is precisely that of a proposition (Satz) that is used to provide instructions for the construction of senseful propositions within a given system.⁵ Wittgenstein suggests that the principles of the natural sciences – i.e. these instruction-propositions – are a priori. He writes:

All propositions, such as the law of causation, the law of continuity in nature, the law of least expenditure in nature, etc. etc., all these are a priori insights [Einsichten] of possible forms of the propositions of science.

(TLP 6.34)

In the previous entry, Wittgenstein is careful to note that the a priori insights in question are not a priori beliefs (or mental representations), but a type of a priori knowledge:

We do not believe a priori in a law of conservation, but we know a priori the possibility of a logical form.

(TLP 6.33)

The understanding of knowledge at work in this remark is that of ability-knowledge or know-how (cf. Tejedor, 2015a, 15–72; 91–118). This type of knowing does not consist in entertaining particular beliefs (i.e. ones that are justified and true) or mental representations; instead, it involves the ability to use signs in particular ways for specific purposes. Knowing the principles of a given natural science system therefore involves being able to construct senseful propositions according to a unified set of instructions – according to a ‘single plan’ (TLP 6.343). Our knowledge of these principles – and, therefore, our knowledge of the form in question – is prior to experience, not in that it must involve beliefs that are not derived from experience (where both experience and beliefs are mental representations), but in that it is a type of know-how: it is the know-how or ability to construct senseful representations (propositions, iconic pictures, but also mental representations, including beliefs and experiences) according to the instructions pertaining to a particular system.

While Wittgenstein suggests that the form and associated set of principles of a given system are a priori, he also notes they are ‘arbitrary’ – or optional (‘beliebig’ in the original) (cf. TLP [PM] 6.341). As he writes:

This form is arbitrary […] To the different networks correspond different systems of describing the world.

(TLP 6.341)

These different forms – with their different associated sets of principles or instruction-propositions – are optional in that we can move between them (and their associated principles) (TLP 6.341). I will return to this below.

For Wittgenstein, the notion of form is intimately connected with that of use: form – e.g. the form of a proposition, of a thought, of an iconic picture, of a name, etc. – is shown in the use of signs (cf. Tejedor, 2015a, 15–45). Consider the logical form of a picture – that is, a picture’s analysability into elementary pictures. Wittgenstein suggests that, when we use signs to express a senseful picture (be it a senseful proposition, a thought or an iconic picture), this use of signs shows the logical form of the picture. The use of signs shows that we are expressing a picture with a determinate sense and therefore a picture ultimately analysable into logically independent elementary ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviated works by Wittgenstein
• Introduction: Wittgenstein and Scientism
• 1 Scientism as a threat to science: Wittgenstein on self-subverting methodologies
• 2 Superstition, science, and life
• 3 Rituals, philosophy, science, and progress: Wittgenstein on Frazer
• 4 Wittgenstein’s anti-scientistic worldview
• 5 Wittgenstein, scientism, and anti-scientism in the philosophy of mind
• 6 Reawakening to wonder: Wittgenstein, Feyerabend and scientism
• 7 ‘Too ridiculous for words’: Wittgenstein on scientific aesthetics
• 8 How to think about the climate crisis via precautionary reasoning: a Wittgensteinian case study in overcoming scientism
• 9 The myth of the quietist Wittgenstein
• 10 Meaning scepticism and scientism
• 11 Wittgenstein, science, and the evolution of concepts
• 12 Wittgenstein, naturalism, and scientism
• Index