It might shed light on some of these posts to include here a description of what scientism is as opposed to science:
"Scientism is belief in the universal applicability of the
scientific method and approach, and the view that
empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints.
[1] It has been defined as "the view that the characteristic inductive methods of the natural sciences are the only source of genuine factual knowledge and, in particular, that they alone can yield true knowledge about man and society."
[2] The term scientism frequently implies a critique of the more extreme expressions of
logical positivism[3][4] and has been used by social scientists such as
Friedrich Hayek,
[5]philosophers of science such as
Karl Popper,
[6] and philosophers such as
Hilary Putnam[7] and
Tzvetan Todorov[8] to describe the dogmatic endorsement of scientific methodology and the reduction of all knowledge to only that which is measurable.
[9] "Scientism" has also been taken over as a name for the view that science is the only reliable source of knowledge by philosophers such as
Alexander Rosenberg.
[10]
Scientism may refer to science applied "in excess". The term
scientism can apply in either of two senses:
- To indicate the improper usage of science or scientific claims.[11] This usage applies equally in contexts where science might not apply,[12] such as when the topic is perceived to be beyond the scope of scientific inquiry, and in contexts where there is insufficient empirical evidence to justify a scientific conclusion. It includes an excessive deference to claims made by scientists or an uncritical eagerness to accept any result described as scientific. In this case, the term is a counterargument to appeals to scientific authority.
- To refer to "the belief that the methods of natural science, or the categories and things recognized in natural science, form the only proper elements in any philosophical or other inquiry,"[13] or that "science, and only science, describes the world as it is in itself, independent of perspective"[7] with a concomitant "elimination of the psychological dimensions of experience."[14][15]
The term is also used by historians, philosophers, and cultural critics to highlight the possible dangers of lapses towards excessive
reductionism in all fields of human knowledge.
For social theorists in the tradition of
Max Weber, such as
Jürgen Habermas and
Max Horkheimer, the concept of scientism relates significantly to the philosophy of
positivism, but also to the cultural
rationalization of the modern West.
[9][21] British writer and
feminist thinker
Sara Maitland has called scientism a "myth as pernicious as any sort of fundamentalism."
===http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
