Scientism Debunked

 

لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا ٱللَّٰهُ مُحَمَّدٌ رَسُولُ ٱللَّٰهِ‎ 

Starting with the name of Allah (Subhanahu wa ta'ala) The Most Merciful, the Entirely Merciful!

2. Authored by Our Beloved Brother In Deen Hisham Al Hindi

3. What is scientism?
4. [5:48 PM]

   Scientism has been defined in many ways throughout its history. You can find many different definitions of scientism depending on who you ask about it. Merriam-Webster defines scientism as:

   "an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities)"

   In his article 'Science in modern culture, or the meaning of meaninglessness', Eric Weil defines scientism as a worldview in which

   "only what can be established scientifically is true, objective, and valid everywhere and for everybody"

   Haack (2012) conceives scientism as

   "a kind of over-enthusiastic and uncritically deferential attitude towards science, an inability to see or an unwillingness to acknowledge its fallibility, its limitations, and its potential dangers" (p. 76)

   Broadly speaking, scientism can be defined as the belief that science is the only method to derive truths about reality. Merriam-Webster defines the scientific method as:

   "principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses"

   Oxford English Dictionary defines the scientific method as:

   "consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses."

   Since atheism is insufficient to form a coherent worldview, atheists tend to blindly believe in and adopt certain worldviews such as scientism, philosophical naturalism and the like, but avoid belief in God without any irrefutable justifications.

1. Does science support atheism?
2. [5:49 PM]

   Before we move on, it would be interesting to see if the presupposition that 'science leads to atheism' is actually true or not. In the 'encyclopedia of science and religion' by Wentzel Van Huyssteen, under the title 'does science support atheism', it states: "The important question, then, is whether science, or the “scientific spirit,” provides an incontestable basis for atheism. Although many atheists claim that it does, strictly speaking science as such can in principle justify neither atheism nor theism. By definition scientific method places theological interests beyond the compass of its concerns. Science does not as such ask about values, meaning, or God. Consequently the assertion science sanctions atheism is logically spurious. Such a claim emanates not from science but from scientism, the belief that science is the only road to reliable knowledge. But one may legitimately ask whether this particular belief (scientism) orients the human mind reliably to the fullness of being or truth. Since it is impossible to conceive of an experimental situation that could in principle confirm or falsify the belief that science is the sole avenue to truth, it may be argued that scientism is a self-refuting proposition." (Encyclopedia of science and religion, pg.40-41) Science doesn't lead to atheism, but what leads to atheism is scientism which is just a philosophical position unrelated to science in which some people blindly believe. Although it doesn't matter if the majority of scientists are theists or atheists since we are only concerned about scientism as a worldview, it is interesting to note that the claim 'most scientists are atheists' is just a myth with little to no backing. There are studies that show that most scientists may actually be theists.
3. [5:49 PM]

   Ecklund and co conducted a study in 2016 in eight different regions namely UK, USA, France, India, Hong Kong, Turkey, Italy and Taiwan with 9422 scientists which yielded some interesting results. They found that majority of scientists believe in some form of God, that they don't believe science conflicts with religion and they see religion and science as operating in separate spheres. Click here to view the study

1. Scientism is self-refuting
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   One of the criticisms against taking science as a worldview is that it takes many things for granted even before it starts doing any science at all. Scientists must have to accept certain propositions as true in order to begin a scientific inquiry. These presuppositions are not discovered by methods of science. As scientific inquiry cannot be conducted without these unscientific propositions, scientism is a self-refuting worldview. some of these presuppositions are:

   1. The laws of nature are uniform throughout the physical universe.

   2. The natural world exhibits order and regularity.

   3. Our sense organs can be trusted.

   4. Our cognitive faculties are reliable.

   5. Laws of logic are valid.

   6. Species-Individual structure of nature.

   7. Boundary conditions: these cannot be discovered by the scientific method.

   8. What we observe are actually properties of the external world, and not defects inside our mind.

   9. Causality.

   10. Reductionism.

   These are just some of the presuppositions from a huge array of presuppositions. So just limiting knowlege to science is a self-refuting position to take since these presuppositions cannot be proven by science.

1. Methodological Naturalism
2. [5:52 PM]

   Some may ask, "If there are supernatural beings, then why doesn't science discover them?". This is a question that many people may have in their mind. And the simple answer is "It can't". This is because of a presupposition of science called Methodological Naturalism. Methodological Naturalism states that whenever we look at scientific phenomena, we are only going to look at it with a naturalistic lens. It basically states that for any study to qualify as "scientific", it cannot refer to God and that only natural causes will be considered in scientific explanations. So, science presupposes a form of naturalism even before it starts doing any science at all. It doesn't say God doesn't exist. It's just saying that for your conclusion to be scientific, you have to assume a naturalistic position eventhough it doesn't say that the supernatural doesn't exist. So, it doesn't say that the supernatural doesn't exist, but that the scope of science which presupposes methodological naturalism is limited to the natural world. This is not a problem for the muslim because the muslim believes that the whole universe is made up of physical causes and by these physical causes, God manifests his divine will. But the problem comes when some people conflate Methodological Naturalism with Philosophical Naturalism which is the blind faith that the natural world is all that exists. These are two different things. Methodological Naturalism doesn't say that the natural world is all that exists. It just says that the scope of science is limited to the natural world. So, no matter how much evidence there maybe for theories like intelligent design etc, it won't be scientific because science presupposes methodological naturalism. So it's an assumption that we are only going to look at physical causes and physical effects while engaging in a scientific inquiry.

1. Utility vs Truth
2. [5:53 PM]

   some may argue that the success of science is the proof that all it's conclusions are true. What do they mean by success? That science works, that science has provided us with all these medicines, rockets, planes etc. Therefore they argue that since science has predictive and technological successes(or in other words, Utility), only scientific conclusions are true. While it's true that science has immense utility, this is just turning a blind eye on the fact that other disciplines of knowledge have immense utility in their respective domains as well. Regarding this, Feser (2017) observed:

   “A defender of scientism demands to know the predictive successes and technological applications of metaphysics or theology, and supposes he has won a great victory when his critic is unable to list any. This is about as impressive as demanding a list of the metal-detecting successes of gardening, cooking, and painting, and then concluding from the fact that no such list is forthcoming that spades, spatulas, and paintbrushes are all useless and ought to be discarded and replaced with metal detectors. The fallacy is the same in both cases. That a method is especially useful for certain purposes simply does not entail that there are no other purposes worth pursuing nor other methods more suitable to those other purposes. In particular, if a certain method affords us a high degree of predictive and technological power, what that shows is that the method is useful for dealing with those aspects of the world that are predictable and controllable. But it does not show us that those aspects exhaust nature, that there is nothing more to the natural world than what the method reveals.” (p. 282)

   It is also worthwhile noting that if a method or system has utility, it doesn't necessarily follow that the conclusions it provides are true. This is just an assumption. If something has utility, then that makes it useful, not true. useful and true are two different things.
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   We can observe the massive gap between utility and truth in the history of science itself. There have been false theories in the past which had immense utility. Tycho Brahe's Tychonic system is an example of this. This model of the universe was immensely successful in predicting the observed motions of planets. But now we know that this model is false. Other examples include Ptolemy's geocentric model which was helpful in understanding and accurately predicting celestial movements, which for 1400 years aided sailors to explore uncharted territories and accurate map making. The phlogiston theory led to the discovery of the elements nitrogen and oxygen. These are just some of the examples from the history of science which had immense utility despite being false. Even today, some falsified theories have more utility and practicality than the currently accepted theories. Newtonian physics is a good example of this which is used even today by engineers to design vehicles, build bridges etc. So it's not true that if a system or method has utility, then the conclusions it provides must be true.

1. Scientism refutes itself (again)
2. [5:56 PM]

   One of the problems in taking science as an epistemological framework or worldview is that it can't apply it's own standard on itself. It fails by it's own standard. Scientism says that "science is the only method to derive truths about reality". If that is that case, then can we prove the statement "science is the only method to derive truths about reality" using the scientific method? As proponents of scientism cannot accept anything that's not scientifically proven as true, then they can't take this statement as true since we can't prove the truth of this statement using the scientific method. So ultimately scientism is self-refuting.
3. [5:57 PM]

   Some other criticisms of scientism
4. [5:57 PM]

   There are many other criticisms against scientism that we have not mentioned in this post. Although we won't be going through every criticism of scientism, it would be interesting to look at some of them. One of the criticisms in taking science as a worldview is that it can house multiple contradictory theories at the same time. The proponent of scientism will be believing in logical contradictions while at the same time holding on to non-contradiction as an axiom of science and mathematics. An example of this would be the 'problem of time' in physics. While general relativity holds time as relative, quantum mechanics holds time as universal and absolute. While general relativity adopts a deterministic framework, quantum mechanics adopts a framework of randomness and unpredictability. These are clear contradictions and a problem for the proponent of scientism. Another criticism is regarding the inherent uncertain nature of scientific conclusions. As most theories are inductive or abductive inferences built on limited set of observations, science cannot produce an absolute conclusion. Note that science isn't a single thing. This criticism is directed at theories that use inductive and abductive reasonings for their conclusions. Scientists rely heavily on the testimonies of other scientists who came before them regarding the results of their experiments. proponents of scientism haven't done all the experiments by themselves, but rely on these testimonial evidences as well which is taken to be true without any scientific inquiry. Science cannot answer the "why" question. It answers the how question, but not the why question. If you were presented a cake, you can do scientific analysis to find out how it was made, what ingredients were used etc, but not why it was baked. It cannot prove intrinsic moral values. Moral statements like "Murdering an innocent person is wrong" "giving charity is good" etc cannot be scientifically proven.
5. [5:57 PM]

   These moral values are essential for a human being to live in a society and these are universal intuitive beliefs. But proponents of scientism would have to reject these which would, in their worldview, justify all vile crimes as "not wrong". So, scientism cannot prove moral values or any other intrinsic human value for that matter, and is also a threat to individual and social well-being. We have just looked at some of the criticisms against scientism from a wide array of criticisms and we can conclude that scientism fails to be a coherent worldview.

1. Conclusion
2. 1. We have provided more than enough reasons to reject scientism as a coherent worldview and we can clearly see that it fails to answer even some of the most fundamental questions that humans have encountered throughout history. Muslims aren't against science. Science is one of the best methods we have right now to learn about the natural world. But it's scope is limited and the conclusions it gives are limited to its domain. What this post is meant to refute is scientism, the exaggeration of the scope of science to include in it's scope domains it doesn't belong to. Scientism tries to make science as a worldview rather than letting science do it's thing. And we have seen how science as a worldview fails miserably. Islam as a worldview answers all the questions one might encounter while at the same time encouraging muslims to engage in scientific inquiry. So the best worldview we can adopt as human beings is Islam.

   
   

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