I realized I adhered to scientism when I caught myself judging my family and friends for believing in Traditional Chinese Medicine and in general stuff like horoscopes, Tarot, Reiki and Qigong.
I now see my worldview as just that. Just because I tend to dismiss that which cannot be measured or seen as irrelevant or not real, doesn't mean everyone else should. Just how I was conditioned.
But something like Traditional Chinese Medicine is exactly something that needs to be measured. People may live or die depending on whether it does. Do some treatments from TCM work? Sure. But we only know this because they've undergone the same clinical testing Western treatments do. There's nothing magical about being "traditional". Many Western treatments have a basis in folk tradition as well. The issue is to figure out which traditions are valid and which are myths.
I wasn't sure what the poster was referring to there. Hard to understand it in good faith. The examples given are good examples of things which can and have been measured and tested empirically.
You are correct that people have the freedom to live in imaginary la-la fantasy land if they so wish.
But the rest of us also have the freedom to call them out on it.
The scientific method is a tool to reveal truth about reality. And no matter how much people believing in devine revelation want to claim otherwise, it is the only such tool humanity possess. People are free to ignore reality at their own peril.
Turning science into an "-ism", is just a deflection aimed at destroying dialogue, it is an attempt at nullifying objectivity. If everything is an opinion, I have mine and you have yours, and all oppinions are equal, dialogue is impossible and the only thing left is tribal warfare.
>“The health of science is in fact jeopardized by scientism, not promoted by it.
>Noting that most Americans enthusiastically welcome scientific advancements, particularly those in health care, transportation, and communications, Hutchinson suggests that perhaps what the public is rejecting is not actually science itself, but a worldview that closely aligns itself with science—scientism (14). By disentangling these two concepts, we have a much better chance for enlisting public support for scientific research...
>It is one thing to celebrate science for its achievements and remarkable ability to explain a wide variety of phenomena in the natural world. But to claim there is nothing knowable outside the scope of science would be similar to a successful fisherman saying that whatever he can’t catch in his nets does not exist (15). Once you accept that science is the only source of human knowledge, you have adopted a philosophical position (scientism) that cannot be verified, or falsified, by science itself. It is, in a word, unscientific.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 36.8 ms ] threadI now see my worldview as just that. Just because I tend to dismiss that which cannot be measured or seen as irrelevant or not real, doesn't mean everyone else should. Just how I was conditioned.
But the rest of us also have the freedom to call them out on it.
The scientific method is a tool to reveal truth about reality. And no matter how much people believing in devine revelation want to claim otherwise, it is the only such tool humanity possess. People are free to ignore reality at their own peril.
Turning science into an "-ism", is just a deflection aimed at destroying dialogue, it is an attempt at nullifying objectivity. If everything is an opinion, I have mine and you have yours, and all oppinions are equal, dialogue is impossible and the only thing left is tribal warfare.
>“The health of science is in fact jeopardized by scientism, not promoted by it.
>Noting that most Americans enthusiastically welcome scientific advancements, particularly those in health care, transportation, and communications, Hutchinson suggests that perhaps what the public is rejecting is not actually science itself, but a worldview that closely aligns itself with science—scientism (14). By disentangling these two concepts, we have a much better chance for enlisting public support for scientific research...
>It is one thing to celebrate science for its achievements and remarkable ability to explain a wide variety of phenomena in the natural world. But to claim there is nothing knowable outside the scope of science would be similar to a successful fisherman saying that whatever he can’t catch in his nets does not exist (15). Once you accept that science is the only source of human knowledge, you have adopted a philosophical position (scientism) that cannot be verified, or falsified, by science itself. It is, in a word, unscientific.