scientism

English

Etymology

From science + -ism

Noun

scientism (countable and uncountable, plural scientisms)

  1. The belief that the scientific method and the assumptions and research methods of the physical sciences are applicable to all other disciplines (such as the humanities and social sciences), or that those other disciplines are not as valuable.
    • 2007, Ted Cabal, The Apologetics Study Bible, B&H Publishing Group (→ISBN)
      This claim, espoused by scientific naturalists, is called scientism, the view that science is the paradigm of truth and rationality. There are two forms of scientism: strong and weak. Strong scientism []
    • 2008, Peter Meusburger, Michael Welker, Edgar Wunder, Clashes of Knowledge: Orthodoxies and Heterodoxies in Science and Religion, Springer Science & Business Media (→ISBN), page 111
      This is the view of scientism. The historical roots of scientism can probably be traced to the Enlightenment with its ideology of progress and perfectibility. Perhaps its best-known historical advocate is the French social philosopher Auguste []
    • 2013, William Outhwaite, Habermas: A Critical Introduction, John Wiley & Sons (→ISBN)
      Habermas's work of the middle and late 1960s is centrally concerned with the philosophical and sociological issues raised by scientism, the reduction of all knowledge to that furnished by the empirical sciences, where these are conceived as []
    • 2013, David Held, Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas, John Wiley & Sons (→ISBN)
      'Scientism means ... that we no longer understand science as one form of possible knowledge, but rather identify knowledge with science.' Habermas's critique of scientism focuses on its relation to positivism, since positivism provides []
    • 2014, Raymond Tallis, Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity, Routledge (→ISBN), page 15
      First, I want to make clear that what I am attacking is not science but scientism: the mistaken belief that the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology and their derivatives) can or will give a complete description and even explanation of []

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