Concept
Scientism
Overview
belief that science is the best or only means to truth
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Scientism is discussed.
Indeed, the scientist himself carries with him in the whole procedure the confidence that the fact-structure of reality is unchanged, however varied are the forms of the observations which refer to the same entities.[35]
John Dewey, Creative Intelligence
names the idea; opens on it
The outcome of such a process, of course, cannot be predicted--and for the same reasons as make unpredictable the scientist's factual hypothesis. Just as the scientist's data are incomplete and ill-assorted and unorganized, for the reason that they have, of necessity, been collected, and must at the outset be interpreted, in the light of present concepts, whose inadequacy the very existence of the problem at issue…
John Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory
names the idea; opens on it
And this is best shown by a comparison of his philosophy with the others of greatest repute among the Greeks. For the similar parts of Anaxagoras, the atoms of Leucippus and Democritus, the heaven and earth of Parmenides, the discord and concord of Empedocles,[26] the resolution of bodies into the common nature of fire, and their condensation according to Heraclitus, exhibit some sprinkling of natural philosophy…
Francis Bacon, Novum organum
author linked in the graph
It is therefore a very prevalent but perverted opinion that the scientific character of knowledge consists in its greater certainty, and just as false is the conclusion following from this, that, strictly speaking, the only sciences are mathematics and logic, because only in them, on account of their purely _a priori_ character, is there unassailable certainty of knowledge. This advantage cannot be denied them, but…
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
In case, however, of both being necessary, much trusting _and_ much distrusting, whence then should science derive the absolute belief, the conviction on which it rests, that truth is more important than anything else, even than every other conviction? This conviction could not have arisen if truth _and_ untruth had both continually proved themselves to be useful: as is the case.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom
Philosophers who discussed Scientism
- Lev Shestov
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Seyyed Hossein Nasr
- Murray Rothbard
- Richard Rorty
- Leo Strauss
- John McDowell
- Frithjof Schuon
- Jacques Maritain
- Hilary Putnam
- Liang Shuming
- Mary Midgley
- Graham Harman
- Alexander Rosenberg
- Joseph Margolis
- Michel Henry
- Wolfgang Smith
- Aleksander Świętochowski
- Petre P. Negulescu
- Paul Copan
- Henryk Hiż
Related ideas
- Empiricism
- Essay
- John Gray (philosopher)
- History
- Formal language
- Francis Bacon
- Friedrich Hayek
- World Scientific
- Anglicanism
- Genetics
- Jonathan Haidt
- Philosophy
- Springer Science+Business Media
- Cult of personality
- Atheism
- Jürgen Habermas
- Massachusetts
- Karl Popper
- University of Toronto Press
- Contingency (philosophy)
- Seyyed Hossein Nasr
- Massimo Pigliucci
- Logical positivism
- Modernity
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Outline of philosophy.
Narrower topics:
- BioScience
- Cult of personality
- Massimo Pigliucci
- Sociology of religion
- Terry Eagleton
- World Scientific
- Tzvetan Todorov
- Essays (Francis Bacon)
- Malcolm Gladwell
- The New Atlantis (journal)
- Breaking the Spell (Dennett book)
- Taner Edis
- A Guide for the Perplexed
- Literature and Science
- Ernesto Sabato
- Michael W. Austin
- Mikael Stenmark
- T. J. Jackson Lears