An epistemological critique of scientism - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Skip to main navigation Skip to search Skip to main content An epistemological critique of scientism René van Woudenberg * * Corresponding author for this work Epistemology and Metaphysics Research output : Chapter in Book / Report / Conference proceeding › Chapter › Academic › peer-review 161 Downloads (Pure) Abstract This chapter examines two recent views that have self-consciously been labeled by their authors as “scientism.” Alexander Rosenberg’s scientism is the view that the methods of science are the only reliable ways to secure knowledge of anything. This view faces many counterexamples, Rosenberg’s arguments in its favor are weak, and the view is self-referentially incoherent. Don Ross, James Ladyman, and David Spurrett’s scientism as propounded in Every Thing Must Go is the view that science is our only guide to the objective features of the world. It includes an institutional criterion that demarcates bona fide science from non-science, a non-positivist form of verificationism, and the notion that scientism is not a thesis but a stance. The chapter argues that this view, too, faces counterexamples. It also points to problems with the institutional demarcation criterion, the proposed verificationism, as well as the notion that scientism is a stance. Together they form a unique fingerprint. Science Social Sciences 100% Criterion Social Sciences 50% Problem Social Sciences 25% Knowledge Social Sciences 25% Authors Social Sciences 25% Scientism: Prospects and Problems. editor / Jeroen de Ridder ; Rik Peels ; Rene van Woudenberg. Oxford University Press, 2018. pp. 167-189 @inbook{b46db60421fe43969760b23f4312d0f5, title = "An epistemological critique of scientism", abstract = "This chapter examines two recent views that have self-consciously been labeled by their authors as “scientism.” Alexander Rosenberg{\textquoteright}s scientism is the view that the methods of science are the only reliable ways to secure knowledge of anything. This view faces many counterexamples, Rosenberg{\textquoteright}s arguments in its favor are weak, and the view is self-referentially incoherent. Don Ross, James Ladyman, and David Spurrett{\textquoteright}s scientism as propounded in Every Thing Must Go is the view that science is our only guide to the objective features of the world. It includes an institutional criterion that demarcates bona fide science from non-science, a non-positivist form of verificationism, and the notion that scientism is not a thesis but a stance. The chapter argues that this view, too, faces counterexamples. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190462758.003.0008 An epistemological critique of scientism. / van Woudenberg, René . Scientism: Prospects and Problems. ed. / Jeroen de Ridder; Rik Peels; Rene van Woudenberg. Oxford University Press, 2018. p. 167-189. Research output : Chapter in Book / Report / Conference proceeding › Chapter › Academic › peer-review TY - CHAP T1 - An epistemological critique of scientism AU - van Woudenberg, René PY - 2018/8 Y1 - 2018/8 N2 - This chapter examines two recent views that have self-consciously been labeled by their authors as “scientism.” Alexander Rosenberg’s scientism is the view that the methods of science are the only reliable ways to secure knowledge of anything. This view faces many counterexamples, Rosenberg’s arguments in its favor are weak, and the view is self-referentially incoherent. Don Ross, James Ladyman, and David Spurrett’s scientism as propounded in Every Thing Must Go is the view that science is our only guide to the objective features of the world. It includes an institutional criterion that demarcates bona fide science from non-science, a non-positivist form of verificationism, and the notion that scientism is not a thesis but a stance. The chapter argues that this view, too, faces counterexamples. It also points to problems with the institutional demarcation criterion, the proposed verificationism, as well as the notion that scientism is a stance. AB - This chapter examines two recent views that have self-consciously been labeled by their authors as “scientism.” Alexander Rosenberg’s scientism is the view that the methods of science are the only reliable ways to secure knowledge of anything. This view faces many counterexamples, Rosenberg’s arguments in its favor are weak, and the view is self-referentially incoherent. Don Ross, James Ladyman, and David Spurrett’s scientism as propounded in Every Thing Must Go is the view that science is our only guide to the objective features of the world. It includes an institutional criterion that demarcates bona fide science from non-science, a non-positivist form of verificationism, and the notion that scientism is not a thesis but a stance. The chapter argues that this view, too, faces counterexamples. It also points to problems with the institutional demarcation criterion, the proposed verificationism, as well as the notion that scientism is a stance.

Positivism has had a tremendous impact on the development of the social sciences over the past two centuries. It has deeply influenced method and theory, and has seeped deeply into our broader understandings of the nature of the social sciences. Postmodernism has attempted to loosen the grip of positivism on our thinking, and while it has not been without its successes, postmodernism has worked more to deconstruct positivism than to construct something new in its place. Psychologists today perennially wrestle to find and retain their intellectual balance within the methodological, theoretical, and epistemological struggles between positivism and postmodernism. In the process, pre-postmodern criticisms of positivism have been largely forgotten. Although they remain deeply buried at the core of psychology, these early alternatives to positivism are rarely given explicit hearing today. The current piece explores some of the early critiques of positivism, particularly of its scientism, as well as early suggestions to tip the scales (back) in favor of <i>sapientia</i> ("wisdom"). This third option, largely overlooked within mainstream psychology, is of tremendous value today as it is both deconstructive and constructive relative to the shortcomings of positivism. It avoids the overly reductionistic "trivial order" of positivism, as well as the deeply unsatisfying and disorienting "barbaric vagueness" of postmodernism, while simultaneously embracing important core elements of both currents of thought. It avoids the overly reductionistic “trivial order” of positivism, as well as the deeply unsatisfying and disorienting “barbaric vagueness” of postmodernism, while simultaneously embracing important core elements of both currents of thought. Keywords: science, scientism, positivism, postmodernism, sapientia, wisdom, epistemology status released display-pdf yes is-olf no is-manuscript no is-preprint no is-journal-matter no is-scanned no is-retracted no Received 2020 Sep 24; Accepted 2020 Nov 20; Collection date 2020. Introduction Psychological science is – for pragmatic considerations – mostly oriented toward positivism, which is perceived as a modern but not postmodern epistemology. By way of the processes of conceptualization and operationalization that grant it its power, positivistic epistemology artificially limits the person (in its Menschenbild ) to the empirical and measurable, and disregards or even denies all else. Positivism in psychology has been linked with our “almost neurotic need to be seen as scientific” and “to reject the subjective world” ( Baker, 1992 , p.13). While the label of positivism is rarely explicitly used today, and even less so as a form of self-identification, exploring its influence on current psychology is in no way to “kick a dead horse,” as the expression goes, precisely because the “horse is far from dead. Positivist thinking is too powerful, even today, to go away by itself” ( Tolman, 1992 , p.7). It is for this reason, as reflected in the call for papers, that psychology remains largely wedded to a modern epistemology that is simply deeply unsatisfying; we have developed an epistemological Stockholm syndrome, whereby we claim to be fleeing from a philosophy we simultaneously actively profess. Finally, we examine a handful of pre-postmodern positions based on sapientia that have been buried under the weight of our predominantly positivistic worldview. “Decide on the basis of facts alone” became a mantra in modern times, and it remains so for many today, even among research psychologists. The continued dominance of positivism within psychology ( Steinmetz, 2005 ), both as method and philosophy, shows that such thinking is widespread among social scientists who are aware of postmodern objections to positivistic epistemology. Within psychology, “the post-modernism avalanche has been the replacement of inquiry by an epistemological battlefield” ( Valsiner, 2009 , p.2). However, the failure of postmodernism is not necessarily sui generis : what proved to be the undoing of postpositivism was not its departures from the positivist orthodoxy that preceded it. Rather, what has doomed postpositivism to amount to little more than a hiccup in the history of epistemology is the fact that it has carried to their natural conclusion several tendencies indigenous to positivism itself—tendencies that, once one sees their full spelling out, turn out to be wholly self-defeating. How can we consciously and conscientiously reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of positivistic epistemology when that has become the dominant epistemological language we have come to speak? Wittgenstein (1953) expressed something similar when he wrote: “The existence of the experimental method makes us think we have the means of solving the problems which trouble us; though problem and method pass one another by” (p.232). Numerous breakthroughs in psychology occurred in precisely this manner (e.g., memory research with patient “H.M.”), as has been the case in other fields as well (e.g., studying individual planets or other cosmic bodies that are not easily replicable). The strength of this epistemology-of-the-aggregate is also reflected in postmodernism in at least two interesting ways. On the one hand, as a reaction to positivism, postmodernism explicitly attempts to negate the epistemological certainty it affords. Boesch, “a broom is a broom is a broom,” by which he meant there are many different ways of Positivism is powerful as method; however, it is problematic as philosophy. To return to a metaphor used earlier, positivistic epistemology can help us identify the tools and the methods of their use by which we may build a more solid house, but it cannot make it a home nor even help us to better understand what that might require. In other words, positivism cannot fully capture the psychosocial meaning-making processes that should constitute the core focus of psychology ( Bruner, 1990 ).

A strong version of scientism, such as that of Alex Rosenberg, says, roughly, that natural science reliably delivers rational belief or knowledge, whereas common sense sources of belief, such as moral intuition, memory, and introspection, do not. In this paper I discuss ten reasons that adherents of scientism have or might put forward in defence of scientism. The aim is to show which considerations could plausibly count in favour of scientism and what this implies for the way scientism ought to be formulated. I argue that only three out of these ten reasons potentially hold water and that the evidential weight is, therefore, on their shoulders. These three reasons for embracing scientism are, respectively, particular empirical arguments to the effect that there are good debunking explanations for certain common sense beliefs, that there are incoherences and biases in the doxastic outputs of certain common sense sources of belief, and that beliefs that issue from certain common sense doxastic sources are illusory. From what I argue, it follows that only a version of scientism that is significantly weaker than many versions of scientism that we find in the literature is potentially tenable. I conclude the paper by stating what such a significantly weaker version of scientism could amount to.