Scientism: It's out there.

Christian apologists often criticize what they call "scientism." I've seen a lot of people on the internet scoff whenever the subject of "scientism" comes up. I remember one person saying that whenever they hear the word, "scientism," they know they're about to hear a bunch of nonsense from a Christian. Another person thought it was just a boogey man and that nobody actually subscribed to scientism.

BTW and FYI, scientism is the view either that science is the only method for acquiring knowledge or that science is the best method for acquiring knowledge. The former can be called strong scientism while the latter can be called weak scientism.

Back when the one person said he doubted whether anybody actually subscribed to scientism, I quoted from a book I had only recently read by Peter Atkins called On Being. He said on p. xiii, "In short, I stand by my claim that the scientific method is the only means of discovering the nature of reality, and although its current views are open to revision, the approach, making observations and comparing notes, will forever survive as the only way of acquiring reliable knowledge." Clearly somebody subscribes to scientism.

Today, I came across this interesting video that talked about how published research can go awry and all the reasons why. I thought it was a pretty good explanation. Then I got to 11:25, and he said, "As flawed as our science may be, it is far and away more reliable than any other way of knowing we have." Egads! That's so wrong it's almost right again.¹

I left this comment on the video:

11:25 "As flawed as our science may be, it is far and away more reliable than any other way of knowing we have."

Really? What scientific study demonstrated this to be true? And if it wasn't science that lead to this piece of knowledge, what method was used? On its face, this strikes me as being patently false. After all, we couldn't even do science if we didn't have scientific methods. So how do we know which methods to use? If you say science tells us which methods to use, then you're arguing in a circle. You're using scientific methods to prove the reliability of scientific methods. So if science can tell us anything at all, there must be at least some things we know apart from science. Well, no conclusion can be more certain than the premises upon which it is based. If our scientific conclusions are based on methods or items of knowledge that we got from some other source besides science, then the conclusions of science can't be more reliable than our knowledge of those methods and such. In spite of everything else valuable and true that was said in this video, this statement appears to be self-refuting and obviously false.

And it's not hard to think of things we know with more certainty than science can give us. We know, for example, that we are thinking, but it isn't science that tells us we're thinking. We know we're thinking merely by introspection. We can just think about our own thoughts and know directly and immediately that we're thinking. If you're thinking of a number between 1 and 10, you know directly and immediately which number you're thinking of, and you know it with absolute certainty. We know that if two statements contradict each other, they can't both be true. We know that two plus two is four. We know that if straight lines intersect, opposite angles will be equal. We know all these things merely by thinking about them. We can sit in a dark room with our eyes closed and merely reflect on these things and know with certainty that they are true without ever engaging in any scientific methods. Without our ability to know things by introspection, it would be impossible to ever do science in the first place.

I can kind of understand the sentiment, though. When people say that science is our most reliable way of knowing, they're usually not thinking about the basic fundamental tools or assumptions of science. They're thinking about our knowledge of how the physical world operates. If we want to know the boiling point of water, for example, the scientific method is the most reliable method we have. But to use it, we still have to know what the method is, that our senses are giving us true information, and that our memories are generally reliable.

The reason Christian apologists put up a stink about scientism is that it is often used as a way of dismissing philosophical arguments for theism, the existence of the soul, and various other things. A lot of the philosophical arguments that Christians use rely on presuppositions that are known in the same way that the presuppositions of science are known--rational intuition, deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, memory, authority, etc.

In a way, I agree with the person who said nobody really subscribes to scientism. Peter Atkins may say he does, but if he were consistent with his claim, he'd have to admit that he doesn't know anything at all since he can't even know the methods and assumptions of science or that they are reliable. One would only need to question him on how he knows anything to show this. I think people who claim to subscribe to scientism (though they may not use that word) either are unreflective about their own epistemology or they're just posturing as a way to shield themselves against arguments for conclusions they don't want to deal with. I think there is value in addressing it, though. If you can show a person that it's self-refuting, that person will have to be open to different ways of knowing, and in turn to Christianity. If a person is merely being unreflective and actually does think they believe in scientism, it can be an obstacle to lots of apologetic arguments for Christianity.

NOTES

1. I got this line from Dr. Cox on Scrubs.