Scientistic Heresy

Also see Thoughts on the Outline of a Unified Science.

The value and power of the scientific method when applied properly is plain to see, however too often it is used for political purposes, to suppress enquiry into areas that challenge unquestioned beliefs and to push certain agendas. This is a clear abuse of the scientific method, one that not only the scientific community must address, but the whole of humanity because science has become a fundamental guiding principle in our civilisation.

There is a prevailing belief that science is somehow immune to human weakness, that scientists somehow have "minds washed clean from opinions" (Francis Bacon) but this is a very unscientific approach to science. Such an obvious self-deception at the core of the scientific community leaves it (and our entire civilisation) open to disaster.

This obvious contradiction in science is largely a result of the particulars of the origins of modern western science, as a reaction to the trauma of previous abuses of reason (see Naïve Realism and Empiricism). But one cannot fight un-reason with un-reason, and science must question the motives behind its entrenched position in regards to many subjects. There is no place for the politics of manipulation within a genuine scientific method.

There has been for some time a propaganda-war between politicised-science (Scientism) and politicised-Christianity and many minds have been caught in the cross-fire. For those who have been deceived into believing that science is actually what it claims to be, below are a few links that illustrate some of the cracks in the otherwise smooth façade of self-deceptive propaganda.

If we are to reclaim genuine science for humanity then we must slip through cracks such as these and escape the fools debate. (also see Reclaiming Genuine Religion for Humanity and Virtual Reality Analogy Alongside Science and Mysticism)

To help those that are willing to help themselves, this is just a brief sample of documents on the subject to serve as a jumping off point for further research.

On Some Unfair Practices towards Claims of the Paranormal: The reception of unconventional or extraordinary claims in science has come under increasing attention by sociologists and historians. Scientific anomalies have sparked scientific revolutions, but such claims have had to fight prejudices within science. This essay offers scattered reflections on the adjudication process confronted by protoscientists (science "wannabes") wishing admission into the scientific mainstream. My comments here are not intended in support of proponents of the paranormal (for I remain a skeptic, as defined below) but to help produce a more level playing field and a greater fairness that might help all scientists.
The research of the skeptics: Charles Honorton, in his classic article Rhetoric Over Substance noted an important difference between the psi controversy and more conventional scientific disputes. Controversies in science normally occur between groups of researchers who formulate hypotheses, design experiments, and then collect data in order to test their hypotheses. But as Honorton wrote, “In contrast, the psi controversy is largely characterized by disputes between a group of researchers, the parapsychologists, and a group of critics who do not do experimental research to test psi claims or the viability of their counterhypotheses.” This lack of research may surprise anyone whose main source of information has been the skeptical literature.
Pride and Prejudice in Academia: ... a growing disenchantment with the intellectual community... I still believed that intelligence was a weapon in the war against evil, that my colleagues in academia (especially in philosophy and science) were committed to discovering the truth, and that intellectuals would be pleased to learn they had been mistaken, provided the revelation brought them closer to this goal. I now realize how thoroughly naive I was. I have encountered more examples of intellectual cowardice and dishonesty than I had previously thought possible. I have seen how prominent scholars marshal their considerable intellectual gifts and skills to avoid honest inquiry. I have seen how intelligence can be as much a liability as a virtue in particular, how it sometimes affords little more than complicated ways of making mistakes, entrenching people in views or opinions they are afraid to scrutinize or abandon. I have seen, in effect, how intelligence often expands, rather than limits, a person's repertoire of possible errors. I have also come to realize that members of academic and other professions tend to be strikingly deficient in the virtue that, ideally, characterizes their field. I have seen how scientists are not objective, how philosophers are not wise, how psychologists are not perceptive, how historians lack perspective...
The Branding of a Heretic - The Wall Street Journal: ... one scientist has had his career all but ruined over it. The scientist is Richard Sternberg, a research associate at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington. The holder of two Ph.D.s in biology, Mr. Sternberg was until recently the managing editor of a nominally independent journal published at the museum, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, where he exercised final editorial authority. The August issue included typical articles on taxonomical topics -- e.g., on a new species of hermit crab. It also included an atypical article, "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories." Here was trouble. The piece happened to be the first peer-reviewed article to appear in a technical biology journal laying out the evidential case for Intelligent Design. According to ID theory, certain features of living organisms -- such as the miniature machines and complex circuits within cells -- are better explained by an unspecified designing intelligence than by an undirected natural process like random mutation and natural selection. ... his future as a researcher is in jeopardy -- and that he had not planned on at all. He has been penalized by the museum's Department of Zoology, his religious and political beliefs questioned. He now rests his hope for vindication on his complaint filed with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) that he was subjected to discrimination on the basis of perceived religious beliefs. A museum spokesman confirms that the OSC is investigating. Says Mr. Sternberg: "I'm spending my time trying to figure out how to salvage a scientific career." The offending review-essay was written by Stephen Meyer, who holds a Cambridge University doctorate in the philosophy of biology. In the article, he cites biologists and paleontologists critical of certain aspects of Darwinism -- mainstream scientists at places like the University of Chicago, Yale, Cambridge and Oxford. Mr. Meyer gathers the threads of their comments to make his own case.
The Pathology of Organized Skepticism: Ordinary or individual skepticism... is "a useful and important human trait, the ability to recognise that any claim or theory, no matter how well established or authoritatively propounded, may turn out to be wrong." It is also "an important scientific tool especially when it is liberally applied to one's own work" and it "acts to refine and improve scientific enquiry". Organised skepticism, or... pseudoskepticism, is another matter... some of them not only to be ignorant about the subjects they were claiming to debunk, but to have something of a phobia about even reading anything containing views opposed to theirs, as if afraid of contamination... they had joined "much as one might join any other support group, say, Alcoholics Anonymous" in search of "comfort, consolation and support among their own kind". "Each one who has disclosed personal details of their formative years... HAS HAD AN UNFORTUNATE EXPERIENCE WITH FAITH-BASED PHILOSOPHY, MOST OFTEN A CONVENTIONAL MAJOR RELIGION." (His emphasis). Often this had been imposed on them by family or community so forcefully that they could not wait to break free and "throw off this philosophy with a vengeance". Thus, Leiter says, "they gravitate to what appears to them to be the ultimate non-faith-based philosophy, Science." However, "they do so with the one thing no true scientist can afford to possess - a closed mind". Organised skeptics, he concludes, are "scientifically inclined but psychologically scarred". They have "a strong inclination towards ridicule and ad hominem criticism of those with differing viewpoints". They have "an obvious and well-known bias towards disbelief" which makes them "far more comfortable on the trailing edge of science than on the leading edge".
The Perspective of Anomalistics: The term "anomalistics" was coined by anthropologist Roger W. Wescott (1973 and 1980) and refers to the emerging interdisciplinary study of scientific anomalies (alleged extraordinary events unexplained by currently accepted scientific theory). Its concerns are purely scientific. It deals only with empirical claims of the extraordinary and is not concerned with alleged metaphysical, theological or supernatural phenomena. As such, it insists on the testability of claims (including both verifiability and falsifiability), seeks parsimonious explanations, places the burden of proof on the claimant, and expects evidence of a claim to be commensurate with its degree of extraordinariness (anomalousness). Though it recognizes that unexplained phenomena exist, it does not presume these are unexplainable but seeks to discover old or to develop new appropriate scientific explanations. As a scientific enterprise, anomalistics is normatively skeptical and demands inquiry prior to judgement, but skepticism means doubt rather than denial (which is itself a claim, a negative one, for which science also demands proof). Though claims without adequate evidence are usually unproved, this is not confused with evidence of disproof. As methodologists have noted, an absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence. Since science must remain an open system capable of modification with new evidence, anomalistics seeks to keep the door ajar even for the most radical claimants willing to engage in scientific discourse... While recognizing that a legitimate anomaly may constitute a crisis for conventional theories in science, anomalistics also sees them as an opportunity for progressive change in science. Thus, anomalies are viewed not as nuisances but as welcome discoveries that may lead to the expansion of our scientific understanding.
Who's Who of "Media Skeptics" (Dogmatists): A list of prominent "media skeptics" (or dogmatists) and their resumes. Susan Blackmore, Richard Dawkins, David Deutsch, Chris French, Martin Gardner, Nicholas Humphrey, Mike Hutchison, Ray Hyman, Paul Kurtz, David Marks, James Randi, Michael Shermer, Richard Wiseman, Lewis Wolpert, Tony Youens.
Science Quotes: A collection of quotes about science. E.g. - "Shall I refuse my dinner because I do not fully understand the process of digestion?" Oliver Heaviside 1850-1925) English physicist. - OR - "The mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with similar energy. It would not perhaps be too fanciful to say that a new idea is the most quickly acting antigen known to science. If we watch ourselves honestly we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even before it has been completely stated." Wilfred Batten Lewis Trotter (1872-1939) English surgeon. - OR - "If any student comes to me and says he wants to be useful to mankind and go into research to alleviate human suffering, I advise him to go into charity instead. Research wants real egotists who seek their own pleasure and satisfaction, but find it in solving the puzzles of nature." Albert Szent-Györgi (1893-1986) U. S. biochemist.
Book: The Counter-revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason: F.A. Hayek: Amazon: Early in the last century the successes of science led a group of French thinkers to apply the principles of science to the study of society. These thinkers purported to have discovered the supposed 'laws' of society and concluded that an elite of social scientists should assume direct control of social life. The Counter-Revolution of Science is Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek's forceful attack on this abuse of reason.
Book Review: The Counter-revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason by F. A. Hayek| The Foundation for Economic Education: The Freeman, Ideas on Liberty: The late professor Ludwig von Mises, leading spokesman for many years of the “Austrian School” of economics, used to emphasize the importance of analyzing seriously any economic “fashion” or “fad,” no matter how unrealistic or utopian it might appear. Mises’ fellow- countryman, economist and personal friend, Nobel Prize Laureate F. A. Hayek, has carefully analyzed one of the most “fashionable” and yet one of the most destructive doctrines of modern economic thought—the idea that the methods of the physical sciences are applicable also to the study of society. In his The Counter-Revolution of Science, first published in 1952 and now reissued in a beautifully printed and bound new edition, Hayek carefully dissects and systematically analyzes positivism and historicism—two sociological doctrines which helped provide the basis for modern socialistic theories. This critique is profound and well worth the while of anyone seriously interested in the methodology of the social sciences and the history of economic thought.
The New Inquisition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: The New Inquisition (ISBN 1-56184-002-5) is a book written by Robert Anton Wilson and first published in 1986. The New Inquisition is a book about ontology, science, paranormal events, and epistemology. Wilson identifies the "Fundamental Materialism" belief and compares it to religious fundamentalism. It is intended to be deliberately shocking, Wilson states that he "does not want its ideas to seem any less startling than they are."
SCIENTISM VERSUS LEARNED IGNORANCE - BOOKS - C&EN: Wade Rowland sees the heresy trial of Galileo by the Inquisition in 1633 as a turning point in history, but not for the same reason that most other people do. In his new book, "Galileo's Mistake: A New Look at the Epic Confrontation between Galileo and the Church," Rowland aims to shatter the modern perception of an authoritarian, anti-intellectual Catholic church's Pyrrhic victory over Galileo, the humanist voice of science and freethinking, whose ultimate vindication ushered in the Age of Reason. Rather, Rowland contends that the trial marked a turning point in the Western intellectual tradition away from its Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical underpinning toward a destructive overreliance on mathematics and science as the only way to understand the universe and arrive at the truth.
The Austrian Economists: Scientism: The effort by economists to ape the scientific methodology of the natural sciences is one of the most intellectually dangerous ideas of the 20th century. Unfortunately, despite the rise in the 1980s and 1990s of serious philosophical challenges to the hegemony of scientism, economists in the 21st century seems to be moving along unaffected by this critique. At least in the 1940s and 1950s, economists sought philosophical justification for their practice of model and measure. Now-a-days, the focus is on conventionalism. The only justification is that economists do what other economists do, and what they do is build models and test for statistical significance.
TTRSTF = Them There Real Scientifical Type Fellers: Why do I pick on science so severely? Well, maybe because science as predominantly practiced today so richly deserves to be picked on. Science today is so severely secularized and divorced from it's ancient roots in philosophy that much of it directly opposes even the notion of any non-material causes or realities, including even the first cause of matter itself. Critical thinking and even the scientific method have been virtually eliminated from the field, having been replaced by "generally accepted" axioms on almost everything. Examples abound.
SSRN-Scientism in the Way of Science: Hope for Heterodoxy in Modern Economics by Gene Callahan, Peter Leeson: This paper argues that the long-standing predominance of a particular approach to science neither makes it uniquely "scientific" nor superior to rival approaches. In particular we argue this in the context of the current economic orthodoxy. We first examine the dominant scientific explanation of the 17th century: "the mechanical philosophy". The constraints this approach imposed on science were eventually abandoned, but only after having stifled progress in several areas. We show how in several important respects, today's mainstream, neoclassical approach to economics is analogous to the mechanical philosophy. Historical precedent suggests that however secure the mainstream monopoly on "economic science" may appear at present, its continued dominance should not be taken as a given. Our analysis demonstrates the fragility of even the most entrenched scientific wisdoms and provides hope for heterodox economists everywhere.
Scientism - ESSAYS ON OUR TIMES: I have discovered that this useful word, “scientism,” appears in too few English dictionaries, so let me play lexicographer for a moment. The purveyor of scientism is not necessarily an incompetent, or irresponsible, or even a mediocre scientist, in his own narrow field of specialization; always supposing he has some genuine expertise in any field at all. While he is frequently all of these things, too, they are not what define his pronouncements as “scientistic.” Rather, the label “scientism” applies to all who imagine that natural science, and the methods of natural science, take precedence before, and have authority over, every other field of human reasoning and perception. To a truly “scientistic” worldview, not only philosophy and theology, but psychology, art, culture, law, and general morality, are answerable not to their own terms of reference, but to some authority in a lab coat who has bred clouds of deformed fruitflies, and killed a lot of mice. The philosophical position corresponding to scientism is called “Positivism,”and was systematized by Auguste Comte (the man who coined the term “sociology”), in the 19th century. He was building upon the revolutionary heritage of the French Enlightenment; but he was also expressing the God-like aspirations of parlour atheism in the Victorian age -- its “determinism,” or faith that once everything is known, everything can be predicted.
In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History: Michael Shermer: Books - Amazon: Wallace is nearly unknown today, but he was revered as one of the preeminent naturalists of the Victorian age. Accorded the rank of "codiscoverer" of the theory of natural selection (ranking second only to Charles Darwin), Wallace spent twice as much time as Darwin collecting specimens during ocean voyages and in remote jungles. What he didn't do was devote years formulating his observations into evolutionary theory; instead, he started with the theory of natural selection and then set about finding the data to prove it. It was his initial draft that spurred Darwin to publish, without further delay, his first paper outlining the theory of evolution. This new biography details the distinct differences in their viewpoints of natural selection. Despite Wallace's tremendous intellect and contributions to science, his foray into and support of spiritualism, seances, and phrenology tarnished his credibility and standing. Shermer is founding publisher and editor in chief of Skeptic magazine, the author of several popular science books, and considered an authority on the heretical personality. His expertise in analyzing the life and paradoxical beliefs of this complex man elevate "the last great Victorian" to a position of prominence as one of the significant leaders in modern science.
The Objectivity of Science: Does it stand examination?: The traditional view of science is that scientists are searching for the truth in a disinterested and objective way. It is generally admitted that there are occasional dishonest scientists, but these are regarded as highly exceptional... This self-image of scientists has been subject to much skeptical analysis in recent years. Sociologists of science studying scientific controversies have found that evidence is only one of many factors that influence what is accepted as authoritative. These other factors include funding, prestige, rhetoric and political influence.
Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Skepticism: The unfortunate reality is that there is a complex sociology of science. Scientific truth is frequently not determined by right or wrong, but by ego, prestige, authority of claimants, conflicts of interests and economic agendas. Scientists who propose research that threatens the viability of basic theories on which authorities in the field have built their careers, and governments and corporations have bet lots of money will find themselves out of a job very soon. The list of great scientists who became scientific outcasts after they published research that contradicts establishment dogma is long.
Scientism on the March: Science is a method of obtaining and applying information. In that sense, it is amoral. It cannot tell us right from wrong, good from evil, or indeed, set policy priorities. Scientism, however, can. Scientism is akin to religious belief in that it presumes that science is the only legitimate source of Truth. As such, it has its own views of right and wrong, and indeed, heresy and apostasy. (Just try to be a scientist with a heterodox view on issues such as cloning or global warming and you will feel like you are facing the Inquisition.) What the Center for Inquiry-Transnational is really after is the supplanting of Judeo/Christian values as the primary basis of public policy with the utilitarian mindset of religious/philosophical scientism.
The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science - Book: This study of the popularity of phrenology in the second quarter of the nineteenth century concentrates on the social and ideological functions of science during the consolidation of urban industrial society. It is influenced by Foucault, by recent work in the history and sociology of science, by critical theory, and by cultural anthropology. The author analyses the impact of science on Victorian society across a spectrum from the intellectual establishment to working-class freethinkers and Owenite socialists. In doing so he provides the first extended treatment of the place and role of science among working-class radicals. The book also challenges attempts to establish neat demarcations between scientific ideas and their philosophical, theological and social contexts.
The “Postmodern” Heresy in Special Education: A Sociological Analysis: The special education profession has witnessed a recent struggle between researchers who defend a positivistic approach to knowledge and practice and “postmodern” special educators who challenge that approach. In this analysis I utilize a sociological theory of heresy to examine the conflict between postmodern heresy and positivist orthodoxy. I also investigate the cultural model of the special education profession, a discursive definition of ideology and heresy, characteristics of heresy in an organization, and the presence of deep contradiction within agreement between orthodoxy and heresy. I conclude with an examination of the limitations of heresy theory and the democratic challenge facing the multiparadigmatic field of special education.
Science and Rhetoric - The Galilean Library: In interview with Thomas M. Lessl, who is among other things the author of the articles "Heresy, Orthodoxy, and the Politics of Science." (Quarterly Journal of Speech, 74 (1988): 18-34) He says "There is a popular and widespread misconception in the world that scientific communication is distinctly different from other forms of public communication, but this is not really so. Its persistence is explained by an old adage in my field, which I think comes from Roderick Hart at the University of Texas, which says that rhetoric is most effective which disguises itself as something else. And I would have to say that science is the master of disguises. This is a pattern that began to manifest very early on in scientific history, I would say in the rhetoric of Francis Bacon in the seventeenth century. Bacon idealized scientific thinkers as ones with "minds washed clean from opinions", as if to suggest that scientific method is an alternative to debate."
Scientism: Philosophy and the Infatuation with Science: Scientism is a matter of putting too high a value on science in comparison with other branches of learning or culture. It is an occupational hazard in philosophy, for since the time of Descartes philosophers have not only been interested in the nature of science; they have often sided with science in its conflicts with religion, mysticism and even philosophy itself. In this book two forms of scientism in philosophy are criticized: one is relatively new and narrowly philosophical; the other is relatively old and much wider in scope. The new scientism is a reaction against those who write philosophy in ignorance of science, and who defer too much to prescientific intuition or common sense. It is also a reaction against the supposed metaphysical excesses of traditional philosophy, with its irreducible mental substances and events, its Platonic forms, and its transcendental egos. Philosophy in keeping with the new scientism only recognizes the existence of objects that science is already committed to, and it conveys a familiarity with the findings and habits of mind of practising physicists, biologists and psychologists. Sometimes it even reclassifies itself as a branch of science, as when epistemology is redefined as a chapter of psychology. I come to the new scientism at the end, in Chapters 6 and 7. The rest of the book is devoted to the older scientism and the antidote to it. The older scientism insists on the need not only for philosophy, but for the whole of culture, to be led by science. This form of scientism has a history stretching back at least to the 1600s; in this century its spokesmen have included Carnap, Reichenbach, Neurath and other ‘scientific empiricists’.
The Consciousness Paradigm: Scientists who bristle at the notion that faith and mythology govern their thinking need to ask themselves why they accept the basic precepts of their work as sacrosanct. Is there any empirical justification for considering reductionism and materialism as inviolable? We assert they are not, because reductionistic materialism has brought us to a dead end—a fragmented view of a holistic cosmos that doesn't even allow life and consciousness, much less explain them. This blindness was deliberately inflicted on science at the beginning of Scientism. --The Birth of Scientism-- Scientism originated as a truce in a clash of two cultures—emerging science and the established Church. Copernicus and Newton provided the ideas necessary to move cultures from a theological to a scientific world-view. By explaining the apparent motion of celestial bodies, the heliocentric theory and the theory of universal gravitation replaced the long-standing Ptolemaic theory advocated by the Church. Scientists and nonscientists alike gained two major insights from this paradigm shift, one theoretical and the other cultural: The earth isn't at the center of the universe, and the Church isn't the ultimate authority on Nature. This accentuates the irony that it was the scientific community—not a theological religion—that was to outlaw the scientific exploration of consciousness.
The End of Science?: Another thing about Last and First Men that strikes me as impressively prescient is Stapledon’s description of the corruption of science. As he imagines it, the intellectual decline of the First Men causes the once fluid doctrines of science to crystallize into a fixed and intricate dogma. The distinctions between science and religion gradually fade away; scientists themselves develop into a priestly caste. To contemplate the follies of contemporary scientism is to certify the clarity of Stapledon’s vision. Countless people who scoff at the idea of God give their faith to Science (I capitalize intentionally)—yet few of them appear to have the smallest grasp of science as such. Indeed, the empirical mode of thought and the protocols of scientific method are anathema to such true believers as the followers of Al Gore. For to think critically about global warming is to commit an act of heresy—and the heretic is not to be debated. He is to be liquidated. Hence the shrill insistence that where global warming is concerned, “the debate is over.” Hence the frequent comparisons of global warming skeptics to Holocaust deniers... Thus in the name of Science, debate is quashed, criticism is suppressed and the heretic is persecuted. Or to put it another way, in the name of modern scientific religion, science is being destroyed.
The Enlightenment and Scientism advance at the expense of Western Civilization.: From Voltaire to Enlightenment and Scientism to Modernism, the ill-informed cheer the process along even as it destroys Western Culture.
Huxley’s Heresy: "Those conversant with the fabricated conflict between science and religion will be puzzled by John Durrant’s defence of Thomas Henry Huxley as a "mild mannered agnostic genuinely sympathetic with the religious spirit. "On the contrary, Sir Thomas Huxley exalted in the heretical nature of the theory of evolution precisely because "it occupies a position of complete and irreconcilable antagonism to that consistent enemy of the highest intellectual and moral life of mankind — the Catholic Church." "A century after Darwin, modern science has been unable to come up with a vaguely plausible explanation for the origin of life. "Huxley’s naturalistic atheism was not only defensive, but intellectually spurious."
Naïve Realism and Empiricism - Toward a Unified Metaphysical Understanding: Historical Context: Europe had suffered from many centuries of abuse from a totalitarian regime that caused massive regression of the collective consciousness thus giving rise to what is often called “the dark ages”. This began when the Roman empire co-opted the mystic teachings of a small but powerful Christian sect and reinterpret their subtle analogies in purely naïve realist, materialist terms. By taking certain analogies literally they created a fictional supernatural order that was only accessible via the Church. This was in order to create a politicized state religion to revitalise the crumbling empire and to defuse the growing mystic revolution that was under way. However the pseudo-religion outlived the empire and evolved into a totalitarian regime, which over centuries further misconstrued the teachings and fabricated a vast and elaborate propaganda front... It became a total institution supported by an intricate web of lies, conditioning, oppression and persecution. Throughout this time all real contact with reality was ruthlessly suppressed... It is within this highly charged political struggle that empiricism arose as a counter movement to the previous propaganda discourse. The previous regime had disseminated its propaganda under the guise of divine revelation and so natural philosophers immediately rejected the possibility of any knowledge that did not arise directly from sense perceptions. As an unconsciously political manoeuvre they declared that all “a priori” knowledge (prior to sense experience) was impossible and that only “a posteriori” knowledge (after sense experience) was possible. However this claim had no real basis in experience and was unwittingly accepted as an “a priori” fact. This insistence that the objects of the senses are real and indeed the only things that are real, is a deeply naïve realist assumption that denies even the consciousness by which we become aware of these objects. Due to the political climate it was impossible for anyone to question this assumption in a rational manner and even today it goes mostly unchallenged and is unquestioningly accepted by and espoused to the masses of all modern cultures. In this manner empiricism began as a counter propaganda movement that rapidly formed into a new regime that sought to impose its ideology into all aspects of the human condition.

related-links

Gnostic Scientism and the Prohibition of Questions - Restricted Article: Scientism, the doctrine that all lines of inquiry must be held to a scientific standard, seems to come in two versions. The first and more pervasive version might best be called methodological scientism. It is a vocational or professional attitude that cultivates a strong prejudice against modes of inquiry that do not proceed according to sanctioned rules of scientific inquiry. Scientism of this kind is perhaps a species of what John Dewey once called an "occupational psychosis," the kind of vocational imperative that makes individuals choose biochemistry over literary criticism, presumably because they are disposed by personality or socialization to believe that the first can bring genuine knowledge and the second cannot. Although some of us might think this shortsighted, it seems to be little more than a kind of professional ethic, one that might in its nobler forms be called esprit de corps and in baser forms, chauvinism. Whatever our feelings about this attitude, scientists seem to gravitate to it, and this is perhaps for the better. If they did not harbor strong convictions about the unique importance of their work, they probably would not do what they do so well. The other kind of scientism, gnostic scientism, which is the subject...
Against Duelisms: A (Pro)gnosis for Critical Practice - Restricted Article: Lessl's passionate characterization of "gnostic scientism" provides a fascinating frame for thinking about ways in which contemporary advocates construct and maintain places of privilege. Despite its provocative suggestions, we are nonetheless cautious about his particular retelling of religious history and its implications for rhetorical criticism. I Lessl's nostalgic look at the second-century debate over "true Christianity" reveals a fairly uncomplicated distinction between the Church fathers and gnostic heretics. Gnosticism, according to Lessl, is "at the very center . . . an extreme form of dualism which regards immateriality as fundamentally good and materiality as fundamentally evil." Challenges to gnostic dualism were held in check by the self-proclaimed spiritual elite and enforced by the coercive "prohibition of questions." In the end, though, the doctrinal work of the Church fathers (namely Irenaeus, Tertullian, Justin Martyr, and later Origen and Augustine) rendered gnostic thought heretical. Thus orthodox (literally "straight thinking") Christianity was preserved for the ages. Lessl invites us to think of natural scientists in the same way -- heretics who...
A review of Alan Ebenstein’s Hayek’s Journey and Bruce Caldwell’s Hayek’s Challenge (PDF): Over the last twenty to thirty years, there has been an avalanche of scholarly and popular work on Hayek. The scholarly work was likely prompted by his having received the Nobel Prize in 1974 and the subsequent revival of Austrian economics (and the continuing criticisms of, and searches for alternatives to, the mainstream of modern economics). The popular work reflects the revival of classical liberalism more broadly, both in the world of ideas and in the events of the 1980s and 1990s, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of the global marketplace. Hayek’s name is invoked as the source of a great number of economic and political ideas these days, both for the better and the worse. Often times, these treatments, especially but not only the popular ones, misunderstand key Hayekian themes. The main reason they do so is that they forget that the entire edifice of Hayek’s social and political thought is built upon the foundations of the ideas he first engaged as a young man, those of the Austrian school of economics.
The Galileo Inquisition: Contemporary Icon for the Enlightenment and Scientism.: The Galileo Inquisition (investigation) came to mark a truly pivotal point in the history of Western Civilization. It was a fairly significant event at the time, but it would gain greater and greater importance in later centuries. Today any mention you see of the Galileo inquisition through the popular media will, in a broad-brush sort of way, write the whole thing off as a contentious issue of “science” that confronted a dogmatic Church in a dark, ignorant, superstitious era. In this long popularized “martyr” view, Galileo Galilei was a heroic scientist defending truth against a backward and oppressive Church that sought to stifle scientific progress. A very simple story, at least when the broad-brush is applied, But the true story of the Galileo inquisition is considerably more complex and multi faceted.
The Discovery of Kepler's Laws: The Interaction of Science, Philosophy, and Religion - Book: Despite having extreme interest and importance, the nature of scientific discovery has always been elusive and has remained an unsolved philosophico-scientific problem. How do scientists make their discoveries? Is there a logic of scientific discovery? If so, what is it? If not, then how can scientific discovery differ from luck or witchcraft? Again, what factors are involved in scientific discovery? Do extrascientific concerns, especially philosophical and religious principles, have a role to play? What specifically is that role? A detailed and in-depth study of Kepler's discovery of the first two laws of planetary motion, this book attempts to throw light on the above questions and related ones.