In Defense of Scientism
- Hermes Solenzol
- 3 days ago
- 8 min read
Science is the best form of knowledge
What is scientism?
Scientism is the idea that believing that science is a superior form of knowledge is wrong because it amounts to an unwarranted worshipping of science. It is an accusation often leveled against scientists, humanists and skeptics by New Age gurus, old-fashion religious conservatives and quite a few misguided philosophers.
One of such philosophers is Massimo Pigliucci, who writes in Medium with the penname of Figs in Winter. This is surprising, since Pigliucci used to be a scientist before he became a philosopher who centers his work around the ancient discipline of Stoicism. He also writes often against different forms of pseudoscience and magical beliefs.
Massimo Pigliucci has written a book about scientism (which I have not read) and the following article in Medium:
This article is a response to Pigliucci’s article. It grew out of a series of comments I wrote in response.
Science is not the only form of knowledge
In turn, Pigliucci’s article is a response to the article Why not scientism?, by Moti Mizrahiis, Associate Professor of philosophy at the Florida Institute of Technology, published in Aeon magazine.
He [Mizrahiis] proceeds by defining scientism in one of two ways: (i) The thesis that scientific knowledge is the only form of knowledge we have; (ii) The thesis that scientific knowledge is the best form of knowledge we have. The first one is demonstrably false, the second one nonsensical.
I agree with Pigliucci in that science is not the only form of knowledge.
Apart from Philosophy, there are many disciplines in the Humanities that I do not consider science because they do not use the scientific methods. This would include Economics, Sociology, History and Literature.
Other disciplines, like Psychology or Anthropology, are semi-scientific because some of their practitioners use the scientific method while others do not. Psychoanalysis is not scientific. Anthropologists accepted the books of Carlos Castaneda as fact-based for a long time, but rejected the rigorous work of Napoleon Chagnon on the Yanomami for ideological reasons.
In any case, using the scientific method is not necessary to arrive at true knowledge. In many cases, it is not even possible to use the scientific method.
Outside academic disciplines, there are many ways to gain knowledge. Most of the things we learn in life we learn from experience, including to walk and talk, how to do sports, how to communicate with people, who to trust, who to love and how to behave in public. As a lifelong follower of a spiritual path, I believe that introspection, mindfulness, subjective experience and altered states of consciousness are essential resources to integrate our minds and live a good life.
I think that few people would defend the idea that science is the only form of knowledge and, least of all, scientists. This is a bit of a strawman. Therefore, I will center in defending the position that science is the best form of knowledge. That's why I am in favor of scientism.
Science is the best form of knowledge
I summarize my position as follows:
Whenever a non-scientific discipline produces an idea that conflicts with science, science should take priority.
This is similar to the second definition of scientism provided by Mizrahiis: “the thesis that scientific knowledge is the best form of knowledge we have.”
However, I agree with Massimo Pigliucci that there are many fields that are not the competence of science.
At least, not yet. Science is ever expanding. Things that once were thought not to fall under the scientific purview, like subjective experiences, can now be investigated with methods like brain imaging (fMRI and PET), which can examine brain activity that correlates with certain mental experiences, and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which can externally induce mental experiences.
Another case is History, which is increasingly using the scientific method and applying scientific ideas. For example, in his the masterpiece Guns, Germs and Steel, physiologist Jared Diamond used concepts from biology to explain why Europeans were able to conquer the rest of the world, and not the other way around, putting to rest white supremacist theories.
Obviously, science cannot assert supremacy in fields that do not fall under the purview of the scientific methods, like Philosophy or Economics. Still, science has forged a vast worldview by now. If any discipline asserts an idea that contradicts this worldview, it should supply an amount of evidence that matches the scientific evidence that has led to this worldview. Good luck with that! Alternatively, it should provide a means to reconcile this idea with the scientific worldview.
This is, in fact, something that Massimo Pigliucci does regularly when challenging pseudoscience. He seems to believe in the priority of science sometimes — when fighting magical thinking — but not others — when defending his pet philosophical ideas.
Therefore, I support scientism because I believe that science is the best form of knowledge we have. It is not the only valid form of knowledge, but it should take primacy over any other in the fields of its competence.
The primacy of the scientific method
The scientific method is, by far, the best way of acquiring knowledge that we have.
Other than direct experience (which can also be deceiving), methods of knowledge are either beliefs (religious faith and ideologies) or the type of fact-independent reasoning practiced by philosophers. Belief is irrational. Philosophical reasoning (“logic”) has failed to produce a self-consistent set of ideas in thousands of years.
Philosophers, unlike scientists, can hardly agree on anything. The failure of philosophy to produce any progress is why philosophers keep referring to people who lived 2,000 years ago. Imagine if science was done by endlessly analyzing the writings of Galileo, Newton or Darwin!
But what is the scientific method, anyway?
Epistemologists have tried to answer this question for hundreds of years, and failed. At this point, there is not one scientific method, but several. Each science has its own. The scientific method is also a moving target, it keeps on changing. In fact, developing the scientific method is part of the scientific discovery process. As we refine scientific theories, we change the methods we use to adapt to the new knowledge.
Induction versus deduction
And yet, the essential part of the scientific method is induction. It is the idea that, by making observations, we can come up with ideas explaining these observations and predict future observations.
Induction was initially criticized by philosophers, notably David Hume, for being irrational. Although Hume had a big part in conceiving the scientific method, he noted that induction was logically circular: it could only be justified using induction. Indeed, induction happens to work because the world has an uncanny property: it follows certain laws. By observing the world in numerous ways, science was able to discover these laws.
While science embraced induction, philosophy stuck to deduction, or logic. It pursued the truth by using reasoning alone.
In a relatively short time, two to three hundred years, science made amazing progress. Meanwhile, philosophers got stuck in endless disputes and rival theories. Logic seems to work in different ways for different thinkers. Every new philosophical idea seems crazier than the previous one. That’s how we got to Postmodernism and Identity Politics.
If you reject the scientific method as the gold standard to acquire knowledge, you are doomed to live in a world of opinions. You’ll have no basis to reject ideas like the chakras, karma or chi. Without having a way to check ideas against reality, anything goes. Some philosophers don’t even believe that reality exists.
Mathematics is a science
One of the most annoying things that philosophers say when attacking science is that Mathematics is not a science. For example, Pigliucci says:
“Mathematicians produce knowledge, and mathematics is not a science, because its results are independent of any empirical finding concerning the outside world. The Pythagorean theorem, for instance, is true regardless of any actual triangle out there.”
This is not true.
Take Statistics, for example, an ever-growing part of Mathematics. Throughout my scientific career, I have seen statistical methods change and improve. Part of this was driven by the computer revolution. Using the primitive computers of the early 80s, I was one of the first scientists to use non-linear regression and iterative fitting algorithms to analyze biochemical data. Computer programs allowed me to enter different equations and determine which one fitted my experimental data the best. This is checking mathematics — the equation — against empirical findings in the world.
Similarly, different types of Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were developed based on their success in analyzing empirical data ranging from molecular measures, to animal behavior, to the outcome of different drug treatments in patients.
But this is not limited to Statistics. Calculus is a branch of Mathematics without which Quantum Mechanics and the theories of Relativity — or anything in modern Physics, for that matter — would not have been possible. Calculus was co-discovered by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, two notable scientists. Newton was after a way to formalize the laws of motion and had to use mathematics to do that. Again, if his equations could not predict the outcome of physical experiments, they would have had to be rejected.
Mathematics are not just a science. They are central to science. They are the language of science. They are at the core of the modern scientific method. Denying the centrality of math in science is to profoundly misunderstand science.
The fact that Pigliucci cites the Pythagoras Theorem as an example suggests an explanation for why philosophers think that Mathematics are not science. Pythagoras was an Idealist. He thought that Mathematics offered a window to an unseen world of ideas at the foundation of reality. Perhaps philosophers — who rarely use math for anything other than figuring the tip at a restaurant — still view Mathematics as pure thinking, utterly disconnected from scientific experimentation. The daily experience of scientists contradicts that.
The primacy of the scientific worldview
There is much more to science than the scientific method.
By systematically applying the scientific method, science has produced a body of knowledge that is internally consistent and vast, encompassing all the physical world and much of what we experience as humans.
Do I need to tell you what this worldview is about?
Physics has shown how stars produce their energy, how planets like Earth are formed, what matter is made of, and has given us a description of the Universe and its history.
Chemistry has listed all known substances, explained their properties and created and bunch of new chemicals.
Biology has provided all-encompassing theories (evolution, biochemistry and molecular biology) that explain what life is, how living beings work and how they are interconnected in a common history.
Neuroscience is well on its way to explaining how the brain produces the mind, mental diseases and how different brain activities produced different mental states.
Science is using its explanatory power to reach within Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology and History to (hopefully) transform them from ideology-driven disciplines to evidence-founded sciences.
There is no worldview that can rival that produced by science.
The sociopolitical importance of science
People and countries reject science at their own peril.
The scientific worldview has dethroned religion as the basic system of ideas around which to construct society. While in theocracies religion provides the ethical foundation on which to construct laws, science provides a basic foundation of knowledge about which everybody can agree. This made it possible to have secular societies in which many religions and no religion can coexist, because no religion has to claim its primacy as the ethical foundation of society.
Yes, there will be always people who reject science, but they will pay a heavy price for doing so by denying themselves the medicines and vaccines they need to stay healthy, and the culture that they need to succeed in society.
This is even more true when it comes to nations. Science is absolutely required for building a sound industrial base, to develop life-saving vaccines and medicines (as we just came to learn with the Covid pandemic), to teach a cadre of engineers and medical doctors, and to invent weapons that give secular nations a military edge.
Even authoritarian countries like China and theocracies like Iran have to accept science if they don’t want to fall behind in the global competition.
In contrast, countries that ignore Western philosophy would hardly notice it. They may even save money and protect their own culture.
Perhaps herein lies the problem. Philosophers seem to have an inferiority complex and a bit of envy when they compare science with the dismal progress of their own disciplines. That’s why they feel the need to bring science down a notch or two.
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