Alright, Mark has successfully baited me into a response on the issue of scientism. I should begin by saying that Mark has an interesting reading of Dennet that makes him out not to be a reductionist (as I and many others interpret him). I won’t address that here; I’m more interested in the general question of the influence of scientism on well-educated, intellectually curious people.
As I’ve said before, I think scientism — the idea that science is applicable to any domain of inquiry that is meaningful, and will inevitably provide a solution to all meaningful questions — is a much more pernicious cultural force than does Mark. In fact, I think it’s the popular religion of most smart people (even of many people who also consider themselves moderately religious). The other popular religion for educated people is cultural constructivism (or something of the sort) and accompanying relativism and postmodernism: it shares with right-wing religious fundamentalism an overly dismissive attitude towards science (see this article on how the right has co-opted this approach in its resistance to science). I’m not a fan of this extreme either; but it doesn’t have the same influence outside the university that it does within it. It’s quite hard to find an educated person who isn’t significantly influenced in one of these directions.
Scientism is part of a cultural milieu in which the role of the humanities and interiority in general have been devalued. There can’t be any dispute that philosophy and literature simply does not have the same value today (within the university and without) as the sciences; that most people think of philosophy as a kind of bullshitting that science will do away with; and that talking to a therapist about one’s problems seems to many a patently absurd, farcical idea in light of the fact that we can talk instead about the brain (and, today in very clumsy ways, act directly upon it with drugs). In fact, it’s all a form of anti-intellectualism of the same sort as we see in religious fundamentalism: science promises to do away with the need to reflect. Again, that the only cultural force really countering this trend is obscurantist postmodernism and limited to the university just makes it worse.
Because of the prevalance of such values, otherwise well-educated Americans tend to be poorly educated about philosophy. And they believe a bunch of things (such as the idea that values can be justified empirically) that are just as stupid and infuriating as the idea that the earth was created 4,000 years ago and we walked with the dinosaurs. I’m equally intolerant of all of it. Arguably, the dominant cultural force in the United States is religious fundamentalism; but it’s almost balanced out by the secular and moderately religious left. And because I identify with the latter, it’s their delusions that I care about and would like to see corrected. It’s the fact that a bunch of smart, well-educated people believe a bunch of crypto-religious nonsense that’s fed to them under the banner of science that really irritates me. These are the people I hang out with and talk to. So I don’t find myself a missionary out to preach science to the religious; it’s the people who have purportedly accepted the same rules as me, who are playing the same game, that I care about. So that’s an explanation of why I care more arguing about this sort of thing (whereas I see that battle against religious fundamentalism as political).
Of course, the assessment of the cultural force of some view — which seems to be the point of disagreement here — is a difficult sort of argument to make. It depends on one’s sensitivities, habits of cultural exposure, and the orientation of one’s spleen. Where I see scientism cropping up in pernicious ways in public and intellectual discourse all the time, Mark does not. And one could point out that I’ve made the kind of “the world is going to hell in a hand basket” argument that I usually decry (although really my view is that the world has always been in the hand basket and has remained at a relatively constant (but uncomfortably close) distance from hell). But I think it’s safe that Massimo Pigliucci, an evolutionary biologist by trade and philosopher in his spare time (who seems to agree with me about the pernicious effects of scientism), is a minority among scientifically minded public intellectuals. Most scientists making public comment on philosophy and religion are simply saying dumb things. Pigliucci is part of a small pocket of resistance within that community. And a voice of reason. And to get an idea of how irrational things get, go to a site like ScienceBlogs and look at relevant posts (and comments). Scientism is what leads the world’s resident genius to make the stupid claim that “philosophy is dead.” That’s an embarrassment that broadly educated scientists like Pigliucci care about. Scientism is what makes it possible for someone like Sam Harris to be taken seriously on morality, despite the fact that his arguments flunk philosophy 101. That intellectually curious people are influenced by that kind of stuff (and freebase it regularly via TED lectures) is a crime. They’re better off with “The Secret.”
For a more extended argument of this sort, see Marilyn Robinson’s Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self.
— Wes Alwan
Suggest you lads might find these links of interest http://mises.org/media/5341/11-The-Challenge-of-Scientism and http://mises.org/daily/2074,
OK, I only just listened to the first 30 seconds of that first clip, and I hear “the natural sciences don’t know anything about final causes.” On the contrary, that’s the evolutionary biologist’s entire purview, and per our Hegel episode, at various points in history teleological explanations were thought essential (e.g. Schopenhauer’s and Schelling’s vitalism), even if now (as with the biologist’s) the idea is to explain how final-cause explanations are ultimately underwritten by mechanical explanations.
Rorty, anyone?
I have to admit I’m not a fan of Rorty (I’ve always seen him as a relativist) — but I’m going to re-evaluate after I’m firmed up on pragmatism.
I find Rorty like Nietzsche in that even where I disagree I appreciate them as creative thinkers and especially great writers, which is too rare a talent in philosophy. There is a great essay by Rorty from 1999 here comparison analytic philosophy and “transformative” philosophy:
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/rorty02.htm
“When analysts and non-analysts get on each other’s nerves, academic administrators sometimes try to solve the problem by splitting the department in two — creating one department for the analytic “techies” and another for the non-analytic ‘fuzzies’. The antagonism between analytic and non-analytic philosophy is tediously familiar to all us insiders. But references to that split often puzzle non-philosophers […]”
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/rorty02.htm
thanks — will check those out.
Rorty is a relativistic only insofar as he does not believe there is a foundational metaphysics/epistemology which we will one day both A) know to be true and final, and B) all agree on and accept as a matter of course.
Beyond that, I think he’s difficult to call him a relativistic with much evidence unless you’re quoting him in half sentences rather than the full-paragraphs his subtlety warrants.
There are a couple of good essays in which he uses more descriminating language to discuss the charge of relativism a d his own thought (at least one of those is in Philosophy and social hope), but i think it is enough to absolve him of the charge by simply reflecting on what a rediculous example of false dichotomy is embodied in the relativism v. Objectivism argument when it is typically framed.
Like Kuhn, i think rorty is more frequently misunderstood than not–and assumed to be radical when he is a stone’s throw from modern liberal society status quo.
Praxeologue
I’m listening to your Austrian Ludwig. Thanks for the link. I can tell Rorty is no von Mises fan on the basis of collectivism, and Dennett’s scientism would likewise separate him from the Austrian.
Economics is rather dry but I’d recommend the financially curious to dig around a little more on the Austrian economics sites. They are neither left or right, Keynsian or Chicago…they base their economics on philosophical simple (can I say that) basis (non contradiction/praxeology) and end up with an old fashioned, common sense view of economics that, by they way, predicted the recent crisis when no others did. However, given they are not advocates of current political system, they get about as much airtime as an atheist in the pulpit.
Yay! I got Wes to blog!
Very well stated, Wes, and worthy of an episode at some point in the future (beyond what we’ll bring in about this on the God one). I certainly see your point about the neglect of philosophy, and certainly have a lot of ambivalence myself, seeing how I see fit to dive into all these readings but then come out of them thinking “this was a good exercise, and has some good points, but are the ideas themselves an essential part of human knowledge given that they’re so obviously flawed.” All in all I’ve felt that the experience itself is essential for being a reflective and critical person, but no particular reading is so… as sad as it would be from a literary standpoint for the whole of Plato’s dialogues to be flushed into the sea, we could still have whole and reflective philosophers without their having to wade through him in particular.
I think different kinds of philosophy do different things; some of them really should do a better job of keeping up with scientific progress (e.g. what Dennett is doing and just about any kind of cosmology or theorizing about the origins of anything), but many of the most interesting kinds are mostly irrelevant to that. As to the cultural threat of scientism overall, let me say that I’m not particularly worried about anyone who would deign to read this blog/listen to our podcast being tainted by this, and if they read anyone who smacks of this, they can safely overlook it as an eccentricity. I accept your point re. Hawking but still think that getting people into intellectual life at all is a good thing… science is the gateway drug for philosophy. Harris in particular, being a philosopher is (perhaps inadvertently) tricking popular-science-minded people into reading a book of philosophy.
Maybe (to be self-critical here) the argument I’m making is kind of like saying that Glenn Beck tricks people into learning about actual political science, and to the extent that you think Sam Harris books are dumbed down to the point of nonsensical, this response will be apt. I don’t think that’s quite fair in this case.
Very well stated Wes. It’s a lonely intellectual world if you’re not either (1) a conservative fundamentalist, (2) a libertarian capitalist, (3) a middle-of-the-road liberal committed to naturalistic scientism (and its shallow dogma on its own universalistic value norms), or (4) a lefty postmodern relativist. I’m sure I’m missing a few other contemporary philosophical options, but none widespread which really get the problem you’re pointing to. The argument you’ve begun to articulate here is the argument I’m usually groping for when I engage with my own friends who mostly fall into categories (3) and (4).
BTW, Rorty is profoundly insightful on this problem and I’m often convinced that his resignation to what he calls a pragmatic “liberal ironist” position — http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/#L — is the last real option for those of us liberals who see the inadequacy of both postmodernist relativism and naturalistic scientism.
BTW BTW the deepest problem that all liberal-minded thinkers should have with naturalistic scientism is that this seemingly ‘harmless’ philosophy or ideology posits that all (i.e. the herd) simply need to get right, get in accord with, e.g. the accurate representation of the natural brain and its natural mechanisms and its natural desires. After all, such things that science tells us about are universal aren’t they? The metaphysics of naturalistic scientism is a metaphysics unbeknownst to itself: it believes there is a model given by nature for us to follow if we wan’t to see and set the world in its proper order. And this model-for-all is discoverable by empirical science without need of silly archaic notions like ‘philosophical thinking’. As Hegel and Heidegger argued, we need to start thinking about metaphysics as the way in which a culture organizes and puts itself in order. This ordering can be done reflectively or unreflectively. Since naturalistic scientism does its metaphysics unreflectively, it is profoundly unfree in the obedience of its members to norms seen as ‘naturally’ given.
I think this discussion would be helped by a clearer definition of scientism, and a better explanation of the boundaries between science and philosophy, as well as the similarities between bad science and bad philosophy.
For instance, Wes (and correct me if I misinterpret you), you seem to insinuate that something liek therapy is opposed to modern day science, and yet I would think therapy follows similar trial and error procedures in perfecting technique.
So perhaps the argument might be better framed with your note about interiority, and the increasing bestowal of cultural value on third party verifiable exterirority rather than on the private, personal, and inner conciousness. But that seems a difference of what subject matter is thought significant rather than a differnce of fundamental procedure.
So if we mean by scientism, something like, it’s only important to look at and study third party verifiables, I could see a valid critique. But I’m less convinced that we are some how wrong headed in trying to utilize the general principles upon which the scientific method is based and which it shares with good reasoning more generally.
I should add, for all the Harris haters out there, that he considers himself a mystic, considers subjective experience as a valid part of “evidence,” and negates the existence of a anthropomorphised supernatural God, but not the idea of God int he abstract and impersonal.
@ Ethan:
If Harris claims to be a mystic then I presume he comes to this conclusion in the same way as Wittgenstein refers to the mystical in his Tractatus: the realm of values. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus gives a near perfect expression of representationalism: the idea that true and legitimately recognizable knowledge must be given in the form of a picture or representation of facts. It follows from this that we ourselves, in our own interiority, reflection, willing, reasoning, and acting are unknowable. This is the Kantian side of analytic scientism that Wittgenstein repeats in his Tractatus: we are unknowable mysteries. This is of course absurd. But Harris and scientism come to this conclusion because they do not know how to countenance rational normativity. They confuse rational normativity, the reason-giving life of human beings, with ‘bad metaphysics’. Thus they banish everything ‘non-scientific’ to irrationalism. And thus the crazy fundamentalism they oppose is the product of their own banishing of human life to irrationalism.
@ Ethan:
Also, that Harris “negates the existence of a anthropomorphised supernatural God, but not the idea of God in the abstract and impersonal” is perfectly fitting of naturalistic scientism in the sense that I’ve defined it above: we must make ourselves subject to impersonal norms given by nature and our technical understanding of it. Norms are not made by us. Norms are made by IT.
Isn’t saying IT made norms bestowing agency in a way most naturalists would find illigitimate?
Yes, but naturalists won’t discover that contradiction in themselves until they inquire into the nature of normativity.
But where do you see them recognizing that agency? How many naturalists go so far as to be vitalists?
@ Tom:
Where are you getting that Harris and scientism come to the conclusiong that “we are unknowable mysteries?”
Harris’ mysticism might be more akin to skeptic humility and an acknowledgement of the existence and effectiveness of things we might call intuition and inspiration.
Are we maintaining that scientism-ists acknowledge things beyond comprehension and banish attempts at knowing the unknowable as irrational, or that they are dissolving the Kantian divide and asserting a single method of knowing as the most useful and accurate (i.e. “science”)?
Ethan,
This is a great dialog to have. But at this point we definitely need to define what is supposed to be mystical and what not in the view of someone like Harris. I believe that if we start considering specific examples of mystical “intuition” what we will find for the most part are historical and cultural norms not recognized as such.
Tom
“I think this discussion would be helped by a clearer definition of scientism”
Damn it. It never fails.
Why, in philosophic discussions such as this, why must there always be some body who just has to have the terms defined? 🙂
Scientism usually conotes someone who takes science and scientific info uncritically and unreflective. It’s got the strawman built into it.
I defined scientism at the beginning of the second paragraph: ” the idea that science is applicable to any domain of inquiry that is meaningful, and will inevitably provide a solution to all meaningful questions.” I meant this to be pretty concise, tight definition. A broader definition would replace “meaningful” with “worthwhile”; and the solution clause isn’t necessary (but often involved). For further unpacking, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism.
Where the implication of applicability to any meaningful domain is taken to imply that a) certain questions that seem to resist scientific inquiry and belong to other domains (like philosophy) are based on category mistakes or are meaningless (positivism), or that b) such questions — to the extent that they are meaningful — can be investigated scientifically. So if the mind body problem is example, one might claim (with Ryle) that the classical “hard problem” is an illusion; and the problem that remains once one dispels such illusions is accessible to science; and that whether science “inevitably” will solve such problems, in principle they are solvable scientifically. If we go the “worthwhile” route I think we get a much weaker form of scientism. To say that thinking about the mind body problem is a waste of time comes down to a difficult-to-justify expression of values; one would have to argue that this activity conflicts with other values we all generally accept. The question of whether there are meaningful domains of inquiry that are inaccessible to science — as I think there are — is the crux of the issue.
I think this is less the perniciousness of scientism, and more the perniciousness that arises from combining scientism with what you note as cultural constructivism and postmodern relativism.
It has not helped anything that many of the intellectuals in the humanities have been happy to let go of any authority to say important things that should be regarded weightfully.
Though any intellectuals who do head out into the world to enact change (for instance the ever nefarious Peter Singer) are usually soon rejected by their own and seen as unintellectually serious.
I’m not sure how the humanities are to enter back into the public sphere and social awareness/respect when they reject doing so and have no patience for those who do.
I suppose that problem then lies in what is meant by meaningful and what it means to waste time.
What’s usually hidden in scientism then is that doing x in such and such a way is more “useful,” in that the results will have effects beyond the individual. So for the scientism-ist to say that the mind/body problem is a waste of time or a misunderstanding would be to say that approaching it in the way philosophy has traditionally done will not yeild results that have effects beyond the individule.
A certain philosophical formulation might be appealing to me, in particular, or I might enjoying thinking about it in different ways, or reading and engaging with past and present philosophers on the issue, but any extrapolation beyond that will have consequences beyond my preferences will be grounded in the scientific method (or some ambigious concept like secular reasoning/empiricism).
Almost all of the areas underseige from the scientism-ists are areas that are rich in meaning, usually culturally and aesthetically, but the consequences of which can not be trusted to inform emprical matters.
I guess I just don’t see where the conflict comes in. Yes Wes, I understand there are plenty of arrogant and unreflective people, some who teach philosophy, and others who work in labs or recite summaries from Scientific America and consider any issue settled. But it seems me that the broader swath of people who embrace science do so with regard to emprical matters.
Are there really scientists or science-worshippers out there saying that science is the only way to understand art? Or that because science can’t understand art, the human race should stop doing it?
@ Ethan:
Unfortunately the question of “where the conflict comes in” is where anti-scientism-ists can come off as elitist jerks. If one is content with the culture that we have then one is probably not going to see any conflict, but if one is in a position where one finds the current culture to be unjust or unimaginative or unwise or unreflective of itself then the conflict becomes clearer. I personally “embrace science […] with regard to emprical matters” even though I reject scientism (as defined by Wes). Again I have to defer to Francis Fukuyama and Richard Rorty who each in a different way articulates the problem that serious philosophy seems to become irrelevant once human history comes near to a universal homogenous state or culture where there are no longer any major ideological conflicts, and all the remaining problems are of a merely practical or utilitarian nature.
For a conflict between science and philosophy we have to presuppose that they are doing fundamentally different things, that they are distinct from one another.
What serious philosopher has not been somehwat scientific in their reasoning? What scientist has not been somewhat philosophical in their sciencing?
Armchair philosophy doesn’t get you very far anymore. Though it can be a fun, stimulating, and yes, still meaningful activity, if one wants to actually find out something about how the universe behaves, it is not long before one has to start interacting with science.
And if armchair philosophers are the strawmen of philosophy, than the polemical remarks of a Dawkins here or a Hawkings there, represent the strawmen of scientism.
There are many more moderate, and equally if not more important, voices on the science side such as Richard Feynman and others that are much more humble and pragmatic in their approaches and declarations.
I still don’t see how science tries to do away with cultural conflict. Aristotle did not end the discussion on what great art is, and neither does science seem likely to do that, or even have that project in its sights.
So yes, their might be less war, less economic conflict, and more homoegeneity on certain base principles like non-contradiction and the golden-rule, but I hardly see how that would have bearing on a friend and I arguing about music or the latest Zack Snyder travesty.
I’ll add that, while there might be a lot of people calling for us to expand the scope of science, whether that includes doing FMRI’s on people reading books or inquirng into how empirical facts can inform ethical socail behavior, I’m not sure how many of those same people are saying that ONLY science has a claim to study those phenomena.
Comments like “philosophy is dead,” being the crude and fringe exception (though how many philosophers haven’t attempted to do just that each generation?)
Aces, Wes.
Thanks!
I am sorry to interrupt the discussion, but this made me laugh…
Can it really be said that scientism is more pernicious than Mark? Time will tell.
lol, yes — you know that sentence bugged me and I never figured out why — that’s a mandatory edit.
so that has become “than does Mark.” I really couldn’t figure that out last night (granted, at 2am after a very long day).
My pernicion level is growing higher by the day, while scientism’s is steady, so it’s very possible.
When you get to PERNCON 2 I will start worrying.
I vaguely remember (maybe Pat Churchland said this) that Quine told all his students of philosophy to go work for a scientist.
Anybody know anything about this?
@ Burl:
Quine: “philosophy of science is philosophy enough.” — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Van_Orman_Quine
I’m elated to see this conversation happening. I went to a small Midwestern liberal arts college and really surprisingly never found either the dogmatic scientism or closed-minded anti-science religious zealotry among the faculty and trained intellectuals (many students in the latter group, though), but after leaving i have found this “science worship” prevelant to the point of causing my acquaintances regular and tangible harm. (I prefer Rorty’s term science worship because in my experience this metaphor is not lost on its victims/supporters).
Sometimes it is possible to disabuse the reflective thinkers of their scientistic presumptions with a little help from modern continental thought. Forty has already been mentioned, but some of his statements make his bolder proposals very uncomfortable for science worshippers. Instead, i like to focus on a multi-faceted deconstruction of scientific presuppositions. First, make apparent the vagaries of scientific study…this is not to remove faith in science, but to emphasize that even with evolving technique and standards, there always remains a human layer framing the experiments and interpreting results. Richard j. Bernstein has a great book that frames this insightfully in terms of the Gadamer and Kuhn (neither figure seems to have much love today,sadly). Bernstein succeeds where rorty fails in that he provides a pragmatic replacement for scientistic epistemology which is not too scary for everyone but literatre and anthropology professors. (I also enjoy asking science worshippers to explain what naturalism and falsifiability have to say about whether forces exist, how they interact, and what it what unproved presuppositions their answers require. That usually allows them to question some old assumptions).
It seems to me Peirce was right about the irritation of doubt. If you are going to get people to venture outside the comfortable realm of all-knowing, all-powerful science/God, you’re going to have to give them something else to believe in. I think pragmatism has a viable path here (deweyian or peirce’s pragmaticism perhaps–not fifty’s).
Thanks for the post again. I would love to hear this as an episode. Sorry about mistakes; i had to post this all from my tiny phone.
The Bernstein book tmi referred to is “Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: science,hermeneutics, and Praxis” (1983)
Also, i want to go on record saying that Sam Harris is not he worst. Dawkins may be. Harris has said a few insightful things and even reflected on some of the weaknesses of scientism, at times. His latest work ought to have the drivel in the first 1.5 chapters and final chapter gutted from its contents to save the reader the strawmen and ignored counterarguments, but it is otherwise pretty good. He even hints (halfway in chapter 3) at those weaknesses later in the book.
Rather than blasting scientism, this guy takes it straight to the scientists faces http://www.rebelscience.org/Crackpots/notorious.htm
Intriguing. I get what he says about the time is merely change.
This is interesting. Thanks Burl. It looks like they are identifying the same problem in contemporary physics that was discovered by Zeno: you can’t mathematically represent movement — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes#The_Paradoxes_of_Motion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno%27s_paradoxes#The_Paradoxes_of_Motion
And Alfie’s role in all this spacey-timey talk http://www.ctr4process.org/publications/SeminarPapers/30_2-DesmetR.pdf
Wow, I just finished the paper I just linked to. It describes how ANWs friendships shaped his work, and how he thinks as a generalist in deriving his physical and metaphysical conclusions. It shows how his persistent warning against abstractions led him to argue with Einstein to drop the link w/ abstract geometry and natural physical entities (which gives curved space-time and a weird theory of gravity). He wore poor Albert out and he had to go sleep it off, (kinda like I do to you guys over ANW in these comboxes!)
Wonder what the record is for most replies to a post? This topic appears to generate not a small amount of interest.
Yea, Wes. That’s what you get for being so articulate on a topic that thinking people care about. It only serves you right and I hope you get 50 more comments. That’ll learn ya.
But seriously, I like to think that scientism is the inappropriate application of scientific methods or perspectives. Then we can say that science-worship is just one of many motives for or causes of scientism. Physicalism is a metaphysical stance also motives scientism – and this premise usually gives us a scientism that’s also tangled up with reductionism. And just to add something completely different, there is the scientism of former fundamentalists. In this case, the content of their belief has shifted in a very positive direction but the thought style of fundamentalism remains.
One of my favorite ways to describe the relationship between science and philosophy is to say that natural philosophy grew up to be bring and strong and went off on his own and became science as we know it. He is the child of philosophy and she is the kind of mother that keeps all the problem children at home. Her domain is to watch over the most troubled, unsettled, and immature offspring until they’re ready for prime time.
Or we could simply say that science is the most successful branch of philosophy.
Well, since everyone else is putting in their two cents, I feel compelled to wade in.
Over the years, I have moved in Wes’ direction on these matters. Science has taken quite a pounding over the last century (Quantum physics, Heisenberg, Goedel, etc.) culminating in the skeptical position promoted by Kuhn that resonates with many. But then we’re in danger of “stopping science” as Mark commented. What do we do?
I think the majority of us like and accept both stories to lesser or greater degrees. On one end are Dennett and Dawkins who want to put everything in a bell jar and on the other end are a few postmodernists claiming science is just a another narrative.
Personally, I don’t have a real problem in the middle appreciating science and what it’s revealed about the natural world, while at the same time accepting that life and the world that I experience are ultimately mysterious and paradoxical. Maybe it’s personal preference, but I don’t see giving that up.
To tie back to previous comments about the Austrian school and the definition of “scientism”, check out this quote from FA Hayek’s “The Counter-Revolution of Science”:
“During the first half of the nineteenth century a new attitude made its appearance. The term science came more and more to be confined to the physical and biological disciplines which at the same time began to claim for themselves a special rigorousness and certainty which distinguished them from all others. Their success was such that they soon came to exercise an extraordinary fascination on those working in other fields, who rapidly began to imitate their teaching and vocabulary. Thus the tyranny commenced which the methods and technique of the Sciences in the narrow sense of the term have ever since exercised over the other subjects.”
His concern is for the social sciences, aka Economics but it applies just as well to philosophy. Also, he closes the book with a discussion of Compte & Hegel, which I haven’t gotten to yet.
–seth
Borrowing from an essay on moq.org discussing the levels of patterns of Quality that Pirsig identifies as inorganic, biological, cultural, and intellectual, the essay’s author linked each to an associated science or academic field – something like physics and chemistry, biology, behavioral sciences, and mathematics and the liberal arts respectively.
The paper follows Pirsig’s thinking that each upper level is supported by its predecessor, but each level represents specific Quality patterns of process that are orthogonally independent from each other. So perhaps their associated sciences and academic fields reflect such mutual independence (they certainly seem to be isolated stand alone fields in academe).
Perhaps a job for philosophy is to match up the appropriate philosophical system to its science. (Alfie, please don’t be mad!) Physics gets pan physicalismand chemistry gets a mix of process and physicalism; biology is epistemology and Aristotelian substance metaphysics; the behavioral sciences, especially economics, are process and ethics’ and the intellectual level, where things can be abstract representations of other things (math, language, law, etc.), appear to be matters of aesthetics.
Not a TOE, I realize, but a pragmatic admission that Kant and Rorty appear to be right in our epoch – we got no clear mirrors.
As for Brites v Supers, Science v God – Go Agnostic and bet heavily on your hunches.
I’m checking out the Absence of Mind book by Robinson
Cool let me know what you think.
I have been having discussions with my son, who is 14, about the role and limitations of scientific inquiry, about how correlation is not causation, and about how whole areas of human experience exist which science may illuminate but will never wholly explain. My son’s attitude is scientistic, and I am looking for something that will help illustrate scientistic fallacy to him. He is a big Radiolab fan, and while I doubt Radiolab has expressly addressed scientism, I’ll bet someone else has done so adeptly in a podcast. Does anyone know of one? Or a Youtube video?
Scientism and Indigestion: “Eating the Whole Thing” Part 2; A Supplemental Podcast for Social Research:
http://podbay.fm/show/490267185/e/1349617740
Conversations Beyond Science and Religion – The Cult of Scientism:
http://webtalkradio.net/internet-talk-radio/2012/11/12/conversations-beyond-science-and-religion-the-cult-of-scientism/
Max, I haven’t reviewed these, but give them a try:
RS134 – Michael Shermer on: “Science drives moral progress”:
http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/
SpaceTimeMind podcast 011 – Scientism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHDHGInkpgc
PCM Podcast 272 – Scientism and Our Over-Reliance on Science :
http://www.str.org/podcasts/please-convince-me/pcm-podcast-272-%E2%80%93-scientism-and-our-over-reliance-on-science#.VWqQK1KWa6E
Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Scientism and the Scapegoating of Philosophy:
http://rantswithintheundeadgod.blogspot.com/2014/05/neil-degrasse-tysons-scientism-and.html