---
title: "Scientism"
chunk: 4/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:45:51.099471+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Thomas M. Lessl argued that religious themes persist in what he terms scientism, the public rhetoric of science. There are two methods of describing this idea of scientism: the epistemological method (the assumption that the scientific method trumps other ways of knowing) and the ontological method (that the rational mind represents the world and both operate in knowable ways). According to Lessl, the ontological method is an attempt to "resolve the conflict between rationalism and skepticism". Lessl also argued that without scientism, there would not be a scientific culture.

== Rationalization and modernity ==

In the introduction to his collected works on the sociology of religion, Max Weber asked why "the scientific, the artistic, the political, or the economic development [elsewhere] ... did not enter upon that path of rationalization which is peculiar to the Occident?" According to the German social theorist Jürgen Habermas, "For Weber, the intrinsic (that is, not merely contingent) relationship between modernity and what he called 'Occidental rationalism' was still self-evident." Weber described a process of rationalisation, disenchantment and the "disintegration of religious world views" that resulted in modern secular societies and capitalism.

"Modernization" was introduced as a technical term only in the 1950s. It is the mark of a theoretical approach that takes up Weber's problem but elaborates it with the tools of social-scientific functionalism ... The theory of modernization performs two abstractions on Weber's concept of "modernity". It dissociates "modernity" from its modern European origins and stylizes it into a spatio-temporally neutral model for processes of social development in general. Furthermore, it breaks the internal connections between modernity and the historical context of Western rationalism, so that processes of modernization ... [are] no longer burdened with the idea of a completion of modernity, that is to say, of a goal state after which "postmodern" developments would have to set in. ... Indeed it is precisely modernization research that has contributed to the currency of the expression "postmodern" even among social scientists.
Habermas is critical of pure instrumental rationality, arguing that the "Social Life–World" of subjective experiencing is better suited to literary expression. Where the sciences select experiences that can be expressed in formal language using general definitions, the literary arts select private, unrepeatable experiences where definitions are generated through "intersubjectivity of mutual understanding in each concrete case". Habermas quoted writer Aldous Huxley in order to juxtapose the "social life-world" and the "worldless universe of facts" underscoring the duality of literature and science:

The world with which literature deals is the world in which human beings are born and live and finally die; the world in which they love and hate, in which they experience triumph and humiliation, hope and despair; the world of sufferings and enjoyments, of madness and common sense, of silliness, cunning and wisdom; the world of social pressures and individual impulses, of reason against passion, of instincts and conventions, of shared language and unsharable feelings and sensations.
[...]

[The scientist] is the inhabitant of a radically different universe--not the universe of given appearances, but the world of inferred fine structures, not the experienced world of unique events and diverse qualities, but the world of quantified regularities.

== See also ==

== References ==

== Bibliography ==
Feyerabend, Paul (1993) [First published 1975], Against Method (3rd ed.), Verso, ISBN 978-0-86091-646-8.
Haack, Susan (2012). "Six Signs of Scientism". Logos & Episteme. 3 (1): 75–95. doi:10.5840/logos-episteme20123151. We need to avoid both under-estimating the value of science, and over-estimating it. ... One side too hastily dismisses science; the other too hastily defers to it. My present concern, of course, is with the latter failing. It is worth noting that the English word 'scientism' wasn't always, as it is now, pejorative.
Mizrahi, Moti (July 2017). "What's So Bad About Scientism?". Social Epistemology. 31 (4): 351–367. doi:10.1080/02691728.2017.1297505. S2CID 151762259. I have argued that scientism should be understood as the thesis that scientific knowledge is the best knowledge we have, i.e., weak scientism. I have shown that scientific knowledge can be said to be better than non-scientific knowledge both quantitatively and qualitatively.
Peterson, Gregory R (2003), "Demarcation and the Scientistic Fallacy", Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 38 (4): 751–61, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9744.2003.00536.x, the best way to understand the charge of scientism is as a kind of logical fallacy involving improper usage of science or scientific claims.
Ridder, Jeroen de; Peels, Rik; Woudenberg, René van, eds. (2018). Scientism: Prospects and Problems. Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780190462758.001.0001. ISBN 978-0190462758. OCLC 949911467. This collection is one of the first to develop and assess scientism as a serious philosophical position.

== External links ==

CS Lewis: Science and Scientism, Lewis society, 9 April 2018.
Burnett, "What is Scientism?", Community dialogue, American Association for the Advancement of Science, archived from the original on 2012-07-02.
"Science and Scientism", Monopolizing knowledge (World Wide Web log), The Biologos Foundation, archived from the original on 2015-04-27, retrieved 2012-07-29.
Martin, Eric C. "Science and Ideology § Science as Ideology: Scientism". In Fieser, James; Dowden, Bradley (eds.). Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ISSN 2161-0002. OCLC 37741658.