The trouble with scientism
I'm stumbling into all sorts of random readings these days....
http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and...ience?page=0,0 (This is just a teaser... it's a somewhat long essay.) Quote:
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Re: The trouble with scientism
I don't even know what to respond to. It's a steaming pile of nonsense and unsupported assertions. If you rank knowledge based on the inferential value of the supporting evidence, then of course physics and chemistry are going to come out on top. The idea that social sciences are mocked because they're social sciences, and not because their evidence is lower-class (of less inferential value), is just silly. Medical studies are mocked all the time for the same reason and basically nobody doubts that medicine is useful in toto.
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Re: The trouble with scientism
I'm more or less in Tom's camp here. Part of the confusion, to me, is that I think he's arguing against a bit of a strawman:
Quote:
As another example from the first page that jumps out at me: Quote:
He makes some good, non-controversial points but then seems to ignore them when inconvenient for his argument. To wit: he mentions that science is not a monolithic entity ("The enterprises that we lump together are remarkably various in their methods, and also in the extent of their successes") but then says a couple paragraphs later that historical linguistics and paleontology have similar evidential standards, ergo natural science and social science are totally on the same footing. Hrm. Anyway, I started skimming at the end because I wasn't finding much of particular interest. EDIT: If we define scientism in the way Aaron suggests, then I'd say I subscribe to some form of it. While I'm not convinced that Popper's ideas are the be-all and end-all of science, I do think that falsification is an important idea. And that's where I think science beats the humanities in terms of knowledge - it's a lot easier to demonstrate that scientific ideas are wrong than it is in the humanities or social sciences. This isn't to say there's no value in those other things, but whatever value there is should probably be not thought of in terms of knowledge. |
Re: The trouble with scientism
Comparing the standard of proof in social science to the standard of proof in hard-science is a little like comparing the standard of proof in religion to the standard of proof in social science.
So although social science is highly useful/practical, on the criteria of accuracy/standard of evidence, it just does not compare. Whether you believe in scientism is thus mainly a matter of how highly you rank - standard of evidence - over other criteria, such as practicality and personal interests. I would say that I subscribe to scientism/post positivism, and that's primarily the result of me rating high standards of evidence above all else. |
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