|
Scientism is belief in the universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most "authoritative" worldview or the most valuable part of human learning - to the exclusion of other viewpoints. Accordingly, philosopher Tom Sorell provides this definition of scientism: "Scientism is a matter of putting too high a value on natural science in comparison with other branches of learning or culture."〔.〕 It has been defined as "the view that the characteristic inductive methods of the natural sciences are the only source of genuine factual knowledge and, in particular, that they alone can yield true knowledge about man and society".〔Allan Bullock & Stephen Trombley (Eds), ''The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought,'' London: Harper Collins, 1999, p.775〕 The term "scientism" frequently implies a critique of the more extreme expressions of logical positivism〔.〕 and has been used by social scientists such as Friedrich Hayek, philosophers of science such as Karl Popper, and philosophers such as Hilary Putnam and Tzvetan Todorov〔"Scientism does not eliminate the will but decides that since the results of science are valid for everyone, this will must be something shared, not individual. In practice, the individual must submit to the collectivity, which "knows" better than he does." Tzvetan Todorov. ''The Imperfect Garden: the legacy of humanism''. Princeton University Press. 2001. Pg. 20〕 to describe (for example) the dogmatic endorsement of scientific methodology and the reduction of all knowledge to only that which is measurable.〔.〕 Philosophers such as Alexander Rosenberg have also appropriated "scientism" as a name for the view that science is the only reliable source of knowledge. Scientism may refer to science applied "in excess". The term ''scientism'' can apply in either of two senses: # To indicate the improper usage of science or scientific claims. This usage applies equally in contexts where science might not apply, such as when the topic is perceived as beyond the scope of scientific inquiry, and in contexts where there is insufficient empirical evidence to justify a scientific conclusion. It includes an excessive deference to claims made by scientists or an uncritical eagerness to accept any result described as scientific. This can be a counterargument to appeals to scientific authority. It can also address the attempt to apply "hard science" methodology and claims of certainty to the social sciences, which Friedrich Hayek described in ''The Counter-Revolution of Science'' (1952) as being impossible, because that methodology involves attempting to eliminate the "human factor", while social sciences (including his own field of economics) center almost purely around human action. # To refer to "the belief that the methods of natural science, or the categories and things recognized in natural science, form the only proper elements in any philosophical or other inquiry", or that "science, and only science, describes the world as it is in itself, independent of perspective"〔 with a concomitant "elimination of the psychological dimensions of experience". The term "scientism" is also used by historians, philosophers, and cultural critics to highlight the possible dangers of lapses towards excessive reductionism in all fields of human knowledge. For social theorists in the tradition of Max Weber, such as Jürgen Habermas and Max Horkheimer, the concept of scientism relates significantly to the philosophy of positivism, but also to the cultural rationalization of the modern West.〔 British writer and feminist thinker Sara Maitland has called scientism a "myth as pernicious as any sort of fundamentalism."〔 〕 ==Overview== Reviewing the references to scientism in the works of contemporary scholars, Gregory R. Peterson detects two main broad themes: # It is used to criticize a totalizing view of science as if it were capable of describing ''all'' reality and knowledge, or as if it were the ''only'' true way to acquire knowledge about reality and the nature of things; # It is used, often pejoratively,〔.〕 to denote a border-crossing violation in which the theories and methods of one (scientific) discipline are inappropriately applied to another (scientific or non-scientific) discipline and its domain. An example of this second usage is to label as scientism any attempt to claim science as the only or primary source of human values (a traditional domain of ethics) or as the source of meaning and purpose (a traditional domain of religion and related worldviews). Mikael Stenmark proposes the expression ''scientific expansionism'' as a synonym of scientism.〔.〕 In the ''Encyclopedia of science and religion'', he writes that, while the doctrines that are described as scientism have many possible forms and varying degrees of ambition, they share the idea that the boundaries of science (that is, typically the natural sciences) could and should be expanded so that something that has not been previously considered as a subject pertinent to science can now be understood as part of science (usually with science becoming the sole or the main arbiter regarding this area or dimension).〔 According to Stenmark, the strongest form of scientism states that science has no boundaries and that all human problems and all aspects of human endeavor, with due time, will be dealt with and solved by science alone.〔 This idea has also been called the Myth of Progress.〔.〕 E. F. Schumacher, in his A Guide for the Perplexed, criticized scientism as an impoverished world view confined solely to what can be counted, measured and weighed. "The architects of the modern worldview, notably Galileo and Descartes, assumed that those things that could be weighed, measured, and counted were more true than those that could not be quantified. If it couldn't be counted, in other words, it didn't count."〔.〕 Intellectual historian T.J. Jackson Lears argues there has been a recent reemergence of "nineteenth-century positivist faith that a reified 'science' has discovered (or is about to discover) all the important truths about human life. Precise measurement and rigorous calculation, in this view, are the basis for finally settling enduring metaphysical and moral controversies." Lears specifically identifies Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker's work as falling in this category. Philosophers John N. Gray and Thomas Nagel have leveled similar criticisms against popular works by moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, neuroscientist Sam Harris, and writer Malcolm Gladwell. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「scientism」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|