It’s amazing how many people are unable to conceptualise that some words are used very differently by scientists, scholars and philosophers of science than they are by religious apologists. How hard can it be to understand the concept that it is a criticism of
bad science, not of science in general?
It is not an attack on science, but on specific individuals who are overly credulous as to the scope and reliability of certain sciences or methodologies.
You could verify this yourself with some elementary research and a modicum of intellectual honesty and curiosity. That you choose not to is telling. You could even just read the Wikipedia to exponentially increase your knowledge on this issue.
As such I fear you are too far gone to be able to understand such a simple idea.
It’s odd to see people who think they are “defending” science and rationality competing to be the most affectedly ignorant and make up the most obviously untrue nonsense as soon as they are bewitched by the power of the magical term “scientism”.
What of the following do you disagree with or consider an “extreme anti-science agenda”? Given it is all objectively true and endorses rigorous scientific standards, it would be beyond inane to consider it “apologetics”. Let’s see if you have the intellectual honesty to accept this is a perfectly reasonable statement:
Some sciences are highly reliable, others, especially within the social sciences are much less so. In these, excessive trust in the methods of the natural sciences to achieve accurate and reliable results is unscientific and can lead to problems.
In addition, due to their abstraction, subjectivity, complexity and the inability to study them neutrally or objectively, there may be certain fields that cannot really be studied using the methods of the natural science at all. In these we must use other methods of enquiry.
Either you can point out something that is "extreme anti-science" in the above statement, or you accept scientism is a valid and meaningful concept as it is simply shorthand for the above (at least in one common usage).
If you are genuinely interested in becoming less wrong, you can look at the history of the term starting with Hayek (and later Popper). Do you think they had an "extreme anti-science agenda", or were criticising bad science and promoting rational scepticism?:
Hayek’s “Scientism” essay is not a barren mismatch of contradictory lines of thought; rather, it is a long piece, rich with innovative reflections on topics ranging from the philosophy of science to psychology, pregnant with fruitful suggestions
…
the aim and argument of Hayek’s essay is clear: the general success of modern natural sciences has led to the emulation of their methods in other fields, often without due consideration for the unique properties of their objects of study. He intends to show why the methods of the natural sciences are inappropriate for social scientific explanation, and the errors to which their adoption in the social or, to adopt his expression, moral sciences leads.
(Notice that it basically says what you noted earlier about how the methods of the natural sciences were not suitable for the social sciences.
As I said, “scientism” is this magical word that makes people obsessed with arguing against the very ideas they would support if only different terminology had been used. Thank you for continually proving this with every post).)
The confidence in the unlimited power of science is only too often based on a false belief that the scientific method consists of a ready-made technique, or in imitating the form rather than the substance of scientific procedure, as if one needed only to follow some cooking recipes to solve all social problems.
— Hayek, F. A., The Pretence of Knowledge, Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, December 11, 1974.
With respect to the
philosophy of science, the term
scientism frequently implies a critique of the more extreme expressions of
logical positivism[6][7] and has been used by social scientists such as
Friedrich Hayek,
[8] philosophers of science such as
Karl Popper,
[9] and philosophers such as
Mary Midgley,
[10] the later
Hilary Putnam,
[10][11] and
Tzvetan Todorov[12] to describe (for example) the dogmatic endorsement of scientific methods and the reduction of all
knowledge to only that which is measured or
confirmatory.
[13]
More generally, scientism is often interpreted as science applied "in excess". This use of the term
scientism has two senses:
- The improper use of science or scientific claims.[14] This usage applies equally in contexts where science might not apply,[15] 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 the claims of 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 attempts to apply natural science methods and claims of certainty to the social sciences, which Friedrich Hayek described in The Counter-Revolution of Science (1952) as being impossible, because those methods attempt to eliminate the "human factor", while social sciences (including his own topic of economics) mainly concern the study of human action.
Or if you want to go back to Hayek's original critique of naive scientism in the social sciences:
FA von Hayek - Scientism and the Study of Society
Are these a criticism of science, or of bad science? Come on, even you can get the answer right now I've spoon fed it to you.
Can only lead a horse to water though, so if you prefer to keep repeating the same errors that’s on you. in that case you can mitigate your cognitive dissonance by repeating the word “no” several more times in lieu of thinking
academic.oup.com
