Scientism Quotes

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Quotes About Scientism

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Insofar as he makes use of his healthy senses, man himself is the best and most exact scientific instrument possible. The greatest misfortune of modern physics is that its experiments have been set apart from man, as it were, physics refuses to recognize nature in anything not shown by artificial instruments, and even uses this as a measure of its accomplishments. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Scientism quotes by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
I am critical of modernity giving science and technology a blank check as if it were the fountain of all truth. That is not true. And I think I may have introduced a word which has now caught on quite a bit, scientism. Science is good. It simply reports a discovery. ~ Huston Smith
Scientism quotes by Huston Smith
For Dawkins, atheism is a necessary consequence of evolution. He has argued that the religious impulse is simply an evolutionary mistake, a 'misfiring of something useful', it is a kind if virus, parasitic on cognitive systems naturally selected because they had enabled a species to survive.

Dawkins is an extreme exponent of the scientific naturalism, originally formulated by d'Holbach, that has now become a major worldview among intellectuals. More moderate versions of this "scientism" have been articulated by Carl Sagan, Steven Weinberg, and Daniel Dennett, who have all claimed that one has to choose between science and faith. For Dennett, theology has been rendered superfluous, because biology can provide a better explanation of why people are religious. But for Dawkins, like the other "new atheists" – Sam Harris, the young American philosopher and student of neuroscience, and Christopher Hitchens, critic and journalist – religion is the cause of the problems of our world; it is the source of absolute evil and "poisons everything." They see themselves in the vanguard of a scientific/rational movement that will eventually expunge the idea of God from human consciousness.

But other atheists and scientists are wary of this approach. The American zoologist Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) followed Monod in his discussion of the implications of evolution. Everything in the natural world could indeed be explained by natural selection, but Gould insisted that s ~ Karen Armstrong
Scientism quotes by Karen Armstrong
The moment men begin to care more for education than for religion they begin to care more for ambition than for education. It is no longer a world in which the souls of all are equal before heaven, but a world in which the mind of each is bent on achieving unequal advantage over the other. There begins to be a mere vanity in being educated whether it be self-educated or merely state-educated. Education ought to be a searchlight given to a man to explore everything, but very specially the things most distant from himself. Education tends to be a spotlight; which is centered entirely on himself. Some improvement may be made by turning equally vivid and perhaps vulgar spotlights upon a large number of other people as well. But the only final cure is to turn off the limelight and let him realize the stars. ~ G.K. Chesterton
Scientism quotes by G.K. Chesterton
It is this claim to a monopoly of meaning, rather than any special scientific doctrine, that makes science and religion look like competitors today. Scientism emerged not as the conclusion of scientific argument but as a chosen element in a worldview - a vision that attracted people by its contrast with what went before - which is, of course, how people very often do make such decisions, even ones that they afterwards call scientific. ~ Mary Midgley
Scientism quotes by Mary Midgley
The temptation to overreach, however, seems increasingly indulged today in discussions about science. Both in the work of professional philosophers and in popular writings by natural scientists, it is frequently claimed that natural science does or soon will constitute the entire domain of truth. And this attitude is becoming more widespread among scientists themselves. All too many of my contemporaries in science have accepted without question the hype that suggests that an advanced degree in some area of natural science confers the ability to pontificate wisely on any and all subjects.
[The folly of scientism] ~ Austin L. Hughes
Scientism quotes by Austin L. Hughes
Henceforth the Cartesian surgical operation in which spirit and matter become totally separated dominated scientific and philosophic thought The domain of science was matter which was a pure "it" divorced completely from any ontological aspect other than pure quantity. Although there were protests here and there especially among English and German thinkers, this view became the very factor that determined the relationship between man and nature, scientifically and philosophically. Thus seventeenth-century rationalism is the unconscious background of all later scientific thought up to the present day. Whatever discoveries are made in the sciences and whatever changes are brought about in conceptions of time, space, matter and motion, the background of seventeenth-century rationalism remains. For this very reason, other interpretations of nature, especially the symbolic, have never been seriously considered and accepted. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Scientism quotes by Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Distortion and suppression of the truth is encouraged by a prevailing attitude of scientism, not science itself but rather a certain attitude of veneration toward science as the exclusive means of obtaining truth ~ Angus J.L. Menuge
Scientism quotes by Angus J.L. Menuge
Seduced by the spectacular theoretical and practical successes of the objective sciences into thinking that the methods and criteria of those sciences were the only means to truth, philosophers sought to apply those same methods and criteria to questions relating to the meaning of life and the values that give meaning to life. Philosophy, especially the Analytical species prevalent in the English-speaking world, was broken up into specialized disciplines and fragmented into particular problems, all swayed and impregnated by scientism, reductionism, and relativism. All questions of meaning and value were consigned to the rubbish heap of 'metaphysical nonsense'. ~ D.R. Khashaba
Scientism quotes by D.R. Khashaba
Despite my admiration for scientific knowledge, I am not an adherent of scientism. For scientism dogmatically asserts the authority of scientific knowledge; whereas I do not believe in any authority and have always resisted dogmatism; and I continue to resist it, especially in science. I am opposed to the thesis that the scientist must believe in his theory. As far as I am concerned "I do not believe in belief," as E. M. Forster says; and I especially do not believe in belief in science. I believe at most that belief has a place in ethics, and even here only in a few instances. I believe, for example, that objective truth is a value - that is, an ethical value, perhaps the greatest value there is - and that cruelty is the greatest evil. ~ Karl R. Popper
Scientism quotes by Karl R. Popper
You need something more than just the scientific method to explain the world in which we live. Beware of false dichotomies (either/or situations) that proponents of scientism assume. You should never have to choose whether or not you believe in either a plane's engine or gravity. You can have both. You shouldn't have to accept the existence of Steve Jobs or the iPhone; nor should you have to decide whether you believe in God or science. Those who insist that scientific discoveries disprove God are mistaken. ~ Jon Morrison
Scientism quotes by Jon Morrison
To speak of the 'properties of matter' while asserting at the same
time that 'matter is inert' is an insoluble contradiction; and, by a
strange irony, modern 'scientism', which claims to eliminate all
'mystery', nonetheless appeals in its vain attempts at explanation
only to the very thing that is most 'mysterious' in the popular sense
of the word, that is to say most obscure and least intelligible! ~ Rene Guenon
Scientism quotes by Rene Guenon
It is always more fun to play a bad guy than to be yourself as you can create a character unlike your own and be someone you are not for a change. ~ Richard Kiel
Scientism quotes by Richard Kiel
Religion knew the truth of metaphor and symbol for almost all of history until the past few hundred years, and especially until the wrongly named Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries. Then we started confusing rational and provable with real. We actually regressed and went backward. In trying to defend its ground in the face of rationalism and scientism, religion tried to become "rational" itself and lost its alternative consciousness, which many of us call contemplation. It's as though we tried to deal with Mystery with the entirely wrong "software". We lost access to the higher levels of consciousness, the transrational, the transpersonal, the transcendent itself. Most tragic, we lost most inner experience of our own outer belief systems. That is the heart of religion's problem today, and it is indeed a deep and serious problem for upcoming generations. My generation took the symbols to literally, and now the following generation is just throwing them all out as useless. We are both losing. It might surprise you, but both religious fundamentalism and atheism are similar in that they are self-contained rational systems. Such a system works if you stay inside its chosen logic and territory. ~ Richard Rohr
Scientism quotes by Richard Rohr
It's actually not unlike Google at that stage of development. They had an up-and-running site. It wasn't losing very much money, it wasn't making very much money, but it was growing. ~ John Doerr
Scientism quotes by John Doerr
Many scientific disciplines begin by not observing any sort of vital spark or consciousness in material events and proceed to deny that these things exist in living things, including themselves. Because consciousness does not fit into their mechanistic schemes they declare it illusory. Magicians make exactly the reverse argument. Observing consciousness in themselves and animals, they are magnanimous enough to extend it to all things to some degree - trees, amulets, planetary bodies, and all. This is a far more respectful and generous attitude than that of religions, most of whom won't even give animals a soul. ~ Peter J. Carroll
Scientism quotes by Peter J. Carroll
The reviewer is a singularly detested enemy because he is, unlike the hapless artist, invulnerable. ~ Carroll O'Connor
Scientism quotes by Carroll O'Connor
If you want to expel religion from our European civilization, you can only do it by means of another system of doctrines; and such a system would from the outset take over all the psychological characteristics of religion - the same sanctity, rigidity and intolerance, the same prohibition of thought - for its own defence. You have to have something of the kind in order to meet the requirements of education. And you cannot do without education. ~ Sigmund Freud
Scientism quotes by Sigmund Freud
[ ... ] a view that we call "scientism" : and that is that science is the only way to truth, now that is just logically false, because the statement "science is the only way to truth" is not a statement of science, so if it's true, it's false. Perhaps it's too late at night for logic like that is it ?
[watch?v=lf1T8ouVQ-g - 14m50] ~ John C. Lennox
Scientism quotes by John C. Lennox
Of all the fads and foibles in the long history of human credulity, scientism in all its varied guises - from fanciful cosmology to evolutionary epistemology and ethics - seems among the more dangerous, both because it pretends to be something very different from what it really is and because it has been accorded widespread and uncritical adherence. Continued insistence on the universal competence of science will serve only to undermine the credibility of science as a whole. The ultimate outcome will be an increase of radical skepticism that questions the ability of science to address even the questions legitimately within its sphere of competence. One longs for a new Enlightenment to puncture the pretensions of this latest superstition.
[The folly of scientism] ~ Austin L. Hughes
Scientism quotes by Austin L. Hughes
Education is the most important thing you can have. ~ Torrey Smith
Scientism quotes by Torrey Smith
To say that science is the measure of all true knowledge is not a scientific truth but a philosophic claim about science. It's scientism posing as science. ~ Scott Klusendorf
Scientism quotes by Scott Klusendorf
An enlightened trust in the sovereignty of human reason can be every bit as magical as the exploits of Merlin, and a faith in our capacity for limitless self-improvement just as much a wide-eyed superstition as a faith in leprechauns. ~ Terry Eagleton
Scientism quotes by Terry Eagleton
In fact it might be said that the main reason why modern science never arose in China or Islam is precisely because of the presence of metaphysical doctrine and a traditional religious structure which refused to make a profane thing of nature. Neither the 'Oriental bureaucratism' of Needham nor any other social and economic explanation suffices to explain why the scientific revolution as seen in the West did not develop elsewhere. The most basic reason is that neither in Islam, nor India nor the Far East was the substance and stuff of nature so depleted of a sacramental and spiritual character, nor was the intellectual dimension of these traditions so enfeebled as to enable a purely secular science of nature and a secular philosophy to develop outside the matrix of the traditional intellectual orthodoxy. Islam, which resembles Christianity in so many ways, is a perfect example of this truth, and the tact that modern science did not develop in its bosom is not the sign of decadence as some have claimed but of the refusal of Islam to consider any form of knowledge as purely secular and divorced from what it considers as the ultimate goal of human existence. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Scientism quotes by Seyyed Hossein Nasr
I never felt a feeling that I knew or could know to be unlike the feelings of other people. I never consciously thought, except after patterns that the world or my fellows set for me. ~ Josiah Royce
Scientism quotes by Josiah Royce
It is a scientifically proven fact that all scientifically proven facts have originated from original and thereby unproven theories. ~ Silvia Hartmann
Scientism quotes by Silvia Hartmann
For Habermas, scientism means science's belief in itself: that is, 'the conviction that we can no longer understand science as one form of knowledge, but rather must identify knowledge with science'. ~ Simon Critchley
Scientism quotes by Simon Critchley
The current implicit ideology that dominates the world, especially in the West, still continues to profess, officially, the utopia inherited from the egalitarian philosophy of the Enlightenment (Eighteenth century), positivism and scientism (Nineteenth century): to create a situation where, in a few decades, some eight billion people will live on the planet with a good standard of living and democracy for all. All this resembles the billiard player who imagines that after four or five rebounds his ball will automatically fall into the hole. These professors of ballistics are playing golf, but they do not know it. ~ Guillaume Faye
Scientism quotes by Guillaume Faye
We live in a time of twin credulities: the hunger for the miraculous combined with a servile awe of science. The mating of the two gives us superstition plus scientism
a Mongoloid metaphysic. ~ Edward Abbey
Scientism quotes by Edward Abbey
The claim that science can disprove God's existence is an honest ambition but it is a statement that is actually impossible to back up. This is because the task of proving something like science is unprovable by scientific methods. How do you prove an idea like "science"? What container do you use to measure it? What laws of science do you use to prove science? That's the first reason why the worldview of scientism, the belief that science proves everything, fails to work out in real life. Science cannot prove everything because it cannot even prove itself. ~ Jon Morrison
Scientism quotes by Jon Morrison
Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments ... ~ Julia London
Scientism quotes by Julia London
…science knows no boundary for those to whom it will serve. ~ Donald Stabile
Scientism quotes by Donald Stabile
The scientistic faith in a science that will one day not only fulfill, but eliminate, personal self-conception through objectifying self-description is not science, but bad philosophy. ~ Jurgen Habermas
Scientism quotes by Jurgen Habermas
The world,' he said, 'grows hourly more and more sceptical of all that lies beyond its own narrow radius; and our men of science foster the fatal tendency. They condemn as fable all that resists experiment. They reject as false all that cannot be brought to the test of the laboratory or the dissecting-room. Against what superstition have they waged so long and obstinate a war, as against the belief of apparitions? And yet what superstition has maintained its hold upon the minds of men so long and so firmly? Show me any fact in physics, in history, in archaeology, which is supported by testimony so wide and so various. Attested by all races of men, in all ages, and in all climates, by the soberest sages of antiquity, by the rudest savage of today, by the Christian, the Pagan, the Pantheist, the Materialist, this phenomenon is treated as a nursery tale by the philosophers of our century. Circumstantial evidence weighs with them as a feather in the balance. The comparison of causes with effects, however valuable in physical science, is put aside as worthless and unreliable. The evidence of competent witnesses, however conclusive in a court of justice, counts for nothing. He who pauses before he pronounces is condemned as a trifler. He who believes, is a dreamer or a fool. ~ Amelia B. Edwards
Scientism quotes by Amelia B. Edwards
Unlike the stage, I never found it helpful to be good in a bad movie. ~ Gene Tierney
Scientism quotes by Gene Tierney
Protestant Christianity, whether in its liberal or conservative garb, finds itself waking up each morning in bed with a deteriorating modern culture, between sheets with a raunchy sexual reductionism, despairing scientism, morally normless cultural relativism, and self-assertive individualism. We remain resident aliens, OF the world but not profoundly in it, dining at the banquet table of waning modernity without a whisper of table grace. We all wear biblical name tags (Joseph, David, and Sarah), but have forgotten what our Christian names mean. ~ Thomas C. Oden
Scientism quotes by Thomas C. Oden
We ask ourselves all kinds of questions, such as why does a peacock have such beautiful feathers, and we may answer that he needs the feathers to impress a female peacock, but then we ask ourselves, and why is there a peacock? And then we ask, why is there anything living? And then we ask, why is there anything at all? And if you tell some advocate of scientism that the answer is a secret, he will go white hot and write a book. But it is a secret. And the experience of living with the secret and thinking about it is in itself a kind of faith. ~ Vaclav Havel
Scientism quotes by Vaclav Havel
Being a philosophical naturalist does not mean that one thinks that science can provide all of the answers. That is scientism and that is wrong. I don't think a billion buckets of science could speak to the problems raised by the Tea Party. Being a philosophical naturalist does not mean that one thinks that the only truths are those of science. I think the claim just made in the last sentence is true but I don't think it is a claim of science. It means that you use science where you can and you respect and try to emulate its standards. ~ Michael Ruse
Scientism quotes by Michael Ruse
Scientism proposes that scientific investigation is nothing more than the accumulation of 'facts'. The question thus arises: what actually are 'facts'? They are not simply existing there, waiting for scientific investigation. Only a little phenomenological reflection reveals that they show themselves as facts because of the construction of, or at least the correlation with, what is usually called mind.
Mind thus is a fundamental fact. It is psychology that reveals this truth. ~ Polly Young-Eisendrath
Scientism quotes by Polly Young-Eisendrath
A very receptive state of mind ... not unlike a sheet of film itself - seemingly inert, yet so sensitive that a fraction of a second's exposure conceives a life in it. ~ Minor White
Scientism quotes by Minor White
I have to play as much of the game as I allow myself to get the music heard. But it's not unlike the rest of the world, so I'm not as up in arms about it as I could be. ~ Kristin Hersh
Scientism quotes by Kristin Hersh
Positivism stands or falls with the principle of scientism, that is that the meaning of knowledge is defined by what the sciences do and can thus be adequately explicated through the methodological analysis of scientific procedures. ~ Jurgen Habermas
Scientism quotes by Jurgen Habermas
The motives behind scientism are culturally significant. They have been mixed, as usual: genuine curiosity in search of truth; the rage for certainty and for unity; and the snobbish desire to earn the label scientist when that became a high social and intellectual rank. But these efforts, even though vain, have not been without harm, to the inventors and to the world at large. The "findings" have inspired policies affecting daily life that were enforced with the same absolute assurance as earlier ones based on religion. At the same time, the workers in the realm of intuition, the gifted finessers - artists, moralists, philosophers, historians, political theorists, and theologians - were either diverted from their proper task, while others were looking on them with disdain as dabblers in the suburbs of Truth. ~ Jacques Barzun
Scientism quotes by Jacques Barzun
Nineteenth-century inventors of the steam engine used a physical theory which today is considered as scientifically false . In fact most of the inventors up to very recent times have been, for the most part, ignorant of the science of their day and have applied theories that have proved to be false. Moreover, even today a physical or chemical theory can change while its application continues untouched. The success of applied science, therefore, is no reason for accepting the infallibility of the scientific theories involved. There should be an intelligent and conscious criticism of science and its implications, both for those involved in the sciences, and most of all for those who are the recipients of the popularized versions of scientific theories. The philosophy of science has in certain cases tried to point to the lack of logical consistency in some scientific definitions and methods. But having surrendered itself to the fruits of the experimental and analytical methods, it cannot itself be an independent judge of modern science. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr
Scientism quotes by Seyyed Hossein Nasr
The ufo is nothing more than an assertion of herself by the Goddess into history, saying to science and paternalistically governed and driven organizations: You have gone far enough. We are going to turn the world upside down. Your science is going to be shown up for what it is, nothing more than a pleasant metaphor usefully extrapolated into the production of toys for healthy children. That's what science is good for.
It is not some meta-theory at whose feet every point of view from astrology to acupressure to channeling need be laid to have the hand of science announce thumbs up or thumbs down. ~ Terence McKenna
Scientism quotes by Terence McKenna
[...] and I think (like you, by the way) that theory cannot be fabricated out of the results of observation, but that it can only be invented.
[Letter to Karl Popper; 11 Sep 1939] ~ Albert Einstein
Scientism quotes by Albert Einstein
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