Word of the Day

Commenter Neil taught me a new word yesterday: scientism. It's not a word I can like. Scientism, it seems, is a religio-philosophical (rp) belief system. It's not the belief system I have a quarrel with, though, it's the word. The problem is that it creates a potential ambiguity for the word scientist, which traditionally and universally describes someone engaged in doing science, regardless of their rp belief system.

I also have to take strong exception to Neil's claim that economic progress is largely due to "scientism." Actually, most economic progress is due to science, by which I mean both the methodology of science and more importantly, the body of results that science has revealed. No doubt many scientists would largely agree with the supposed tenets of scientism - many more would not. Scientists with all sorts of attitudes have made big contributions to science.

I'm not a big believer in "the scientific method." Aside from honesty and respect for the results of experiment, lots of strategies work, including ruthless intellectual opportunism.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

Uneasy Lies The Head

Book Review: Anaximander By Carlo Rovelli