SCIENTISM AS A DIRTY WORD

I have been accused of being a member of the "church" of “scientism.”  Considering the context in which the epithet was used, I understood it to be a pejorative.  But I had to look the word up to be sure.  Informally, the term refers to the idea that devotees of scientism treat science as a religion in which they place their faith, just as Christians place their faith in their religion.  At its most extreme scientism has come to mean the belief that knowledge is only attainable through science or that only scientific claims are valid ones.  In both cases I believe that the term is unfair.

In February 2016 the scientific community announced the detection of gravity waves.  The discovery was touted as one of the most important developments in physics in the past 50 years.  The existence of gravity waves had been theorized but had never before been demonstrated because their existence was so difficult to detect.  The actual observation had occurred in September of 2015.  Based on the waves detected, it was determined that they were the result of the merger of two massive black holes, each 30 to 35 times the mass of our sun.  The merger actually took place in a distant galaxy approximately 1.5 billion years ago.  The waves, which lasted 0.2 seconds, were detected by a pair of apparatuses (called LIGOs) located in the states of Washington and Louisiana.  

I believed this announcement.  Does that mean that I am a believer in “scientism,” that I have faith in science in the same sense as a Christian might have faith in the existence of God or in the “truth” of sacred scripture?  After all, I did not personally detect those gravity waves.  I did not personally double-check or otherwise vet the data or do the statistical analyses undertaken to confirm the existence of the waves.  But I did attend a lecture in which the results were explained; I did read a number of articles further explaining how the experiment was performed; I even read a book that described the work that went into building and perfecting the LIGOs constructed and the procedures employed to detect the waves.  I did my best to question and then to understand the science behind the methods used.  So essentially I did what I could as a layman to confirm what the scientific community had announced.  Moreover, if I hear that the results of the experiment are disputed, I will pay attention to those arguments as well and may change my mind regarding the existence or detection of gravity waves.

More fundamentally, I generally have “faith” in science, not because I trust science as an infallible authority but because science as a means of gaining knowledge about the world has such a great track record, especially in comparison with the received authority fundamental to religious faith.  It was science that demonstrated that the earth revolves around the sun rather than the other way around, that the diversity of life that we observe is the result of evolutionary processes occurring over billions of years rather than a special creation within the past 10,000 years, that psychiatric disorders such as epilepsy are the result of organic brain disorders rather than possession by demons, and that way to cure childhood cancer is through medical—that is, scientific—research rather than through prayer.  

That’s not to say that science always “gets it right.”  In fact, the way science furthers knowledge is by pointing out that what we thought was true was wrong.  Newton’s laws of motion and of gravity have been replaced by Einstein’s principles of relativity.  The belief that protons and neutrons are elementary particles has been replaced by the understanding that they, in turn, are comprised of more elementary particles called quarks.  And so it goes.  And of course there are instances when researchers generate erroneous results, inadvertently or intentionally.  But the scientific process is ultimately self-correcting through peer review, replication, and refinement of experimental design.  

In short, I have “faith” in science in the sense that I have great confidence in its methodology as a way of furthering our understanding of the world.  But unlike religious faith which is generally unconditional and not subject to disconfirmation, the “faith” I have in any particular scientific result remains conditional, subject to refutation or modification through further research.  

As to the argument that all questions are best answered through the application of science, I don’t know of anyone who subscribes to such an extreme position.  There are all manner of questions that are not amenable to resolution through scientific experiment.  This is particularly true as to questions relating to the human condition—personal meaning or the nature of, say, love or beauty.  Science is much better at addressing questions of “what is” than in attempting to answer questions of “what ought to be.”  It is better at establishing the facts needed to inform policy decisions rather than in making policy decisions directly.  

Coda:  As I was thinking about the question of scientism, I asked a friend, who happens to be a retired physicist, whether he had heard of the term and what he thought of it.  His response was, “Well of course science represents the best method for understanding the nature of the world.  Just look at the technological developments we have achieved that represent the application of science and compare that to where we would be without the underlying advances in knowledge that science has provided.”

© 2019 John M. Phillips