Abstract
Science is a life-function, too. It developed out of ordinary inquiries but, in the course of its development, acquired a relative autonomy from it. Science is the most powerful tool for explaining and understanding the nature we have, but contrary to what is often believed, it is characterized by considerable internal plurality and exhibits no in-built logic of perpetually growing unification. For this reason and for the fact that it brackets first-personal meanings, it cannot provide us with a worldview. When mistaken for all-encompassing, science can easily degenerate into a quasi-religious ideology called scientism.
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Notes
- 1.
Obviously, mankind has existed without science (and also without elaborated worldviews) for the largest fraction of its existence, and in some remote parts of the world, science is still entirely unknown. Therefore, these two cultural phenomena cannot be conceived of as necessary developments of culture in any strict sense. They are contingent, path-dependent achievements. Still, the functional demands operative in their emergence can plausibly be seen to have existed since human beings have developed symbolic language: a certain degree of causal knowledge is crucial for survival, and so may be—though this is somewhat speculative—some, at least, incipiently articulated sense of being related to the basic structure of the world, which may help to create a sense of belonging that also facilitates survival.
- 2.
Cf. the late writings of philosopher, George Herbert Mead, particularly his Philosophy of the Present (Mead 1932/1959).
- 3.
A caveat: humans share many aspects of the life-process with other organisms. Supply with food, water, and shelter—to give some obvious examples—is essential for all living beings. But only human beings cannot escape asking themselves, individually and collectively, how to lead their life.
- 4.
The italics are supposed to emphasize that science aims at “innerworldly” knowledge, which is highly relevant for orientational questions about “it all,” but cannot be its solitary foundation.
- 5.
The whole issue is far more complex, since the “naturalistic fallacy”-verdict takes the existence of purely factual truth claims for granted. But to realize that it is impossible to infer norms or values from facts leaves open the question whether it is possible at all to arrive at factual truth claims without the prior involvement of values.
- 6.
The “entanglement”-metaphor goes back to Hilary Putnam’s essay “The Entanglement of Fact and Value” (Putnam 2002, 28–45).
- 7.
History shows that fierce resistance against the state of science may come from both religions and secular worldviews. Some of the most obvious examples from religion (Galilei, Darwin) have already been mentioned. One of the most devastating cases involving an explicitly anti-religious worldview (namely Soviet-Marxism) is provided by the so-called “Lysenko affair.” Stalin and Krushchev supported the misguided and scientifically refuted idea of the agronomist Lysenko that treating one generation of seeds for better growth would be inherited (Lamarckism) und thus lead to permanent improvement of crop yields. The experiments failed and food shortages ensued that led to the death of many people (cf. Barker/Kitcher 2014, 146f.).
- 8.
Notice how the operation of thinking, in Dewey’s account, includes not only mental, but also practical activities and, last but not least, distinctive feelings, without which no cognitive process would ever get off the ground.
- 9.
As Dewey clearly realizes, the terms “accommodation,” “adaptation” and “adjustment,” as used in colloquial English, do not yield the differences to which he wants to alert his readers. His remarks attempt to clarify a systematic point by suggesting a more terminological use of the words.
- 10.
Cf. Jung (2016).
- 11.
In Metzinger’s argumentation, two aspects are confusingly intertwined: his criticism of selfhood and his criticism of the self as a substance. The latter concept is rejected by pragmatists, too. But if we discard the idea of a substantial, bodyless, psychic unit, we can still retain the idea of a relational, embodied, dynamic reality of selfhood.
- 12.
- 13.
Schurz ’ book is a translation from the German original. Interestingly, the emphasis on unification and unity has only been added to the English headings.
- 14.
Wilson’s position is extreme and was met with fierce criticism from many sides (the conceptual problems, for example, are discussed succinctly in Jerry Fodor’s 1998 review of the book). But precisely in its extreme character, it serves as a fitting and instructive example for the widespread tendency to inflate science to a worldview, without acknowledging the ensuing loss of cognitive reputation.
- 15.
Cartwright is not a deconstructivist thinker. Her central argument is that physical laws apply only ceteris paribus, that is if one abstracts from all other influences. But in reality, other influences always exist and are manifold. Thus, fundamental laws apply only to models of reality, and insofar as every model is a simplification and can only be connected with reality by more specific descriptions, it lies if taken to determine reality in an immediate manner.
- 16.
Cf. Cartwright (1999, 17f.) for two powerful examples of this distortion, namely, breast cancer research and social welfare distribution.
- 17.
This is principle Nr. 5 in Leda Cosmides’ and John Tooby’s “Evolutionary Psychology. A Primer”: http://www.cep.ucsb.edu/primer.html. Over and above the deterministic role ascribed to genetic evolution in the Stone Age, it is massively reductionist to claim that the skull houses a mind at all. The brain is housed by the skull, but the mind? Research in embodied cognition has accumulated ample evidence that minds do not dwell in skulls, but rather are incorporated in the entire interactional cycles between brain, body, and environment, both physical, social and semantic.
- 18.
In his famous book A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking tells a story that vividly conveys the confusion involved in treating religious questions on the same level as scientific ones. In 1981, Hawking participated in a conference on cosmology at the Vatican. “At the end of the conference the participants were granted an audience with the Pope. He told us it was alright to study the evolution of the universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because that was the moment of Creation and therefore the work of God” (Hawking 1988, 122). Leaving aside questions about the historical authenticity of this episode, the story has a point. It pictures theology as being involved in a rearguard battle on the field of causally explaining reality. But interestingly, there is one thing Hawking seems to share with Pope John Paul II, namely, the idea that physical cosmology and the religious idea of a creator-God belong (at least partly) to the same language-game. Accordingly, in the famous last lines of his book, he sees the possible achievement of a unified and complete physical theory as “the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would know the mind of God” (Hawking 1988, 185)—metaphorically speaking, since he does not believe in such a God. If I get it right, the Pope’s confusing of physical and religious cosmology conveyed in the story is actually shared by Hawking, only from the opposite side.
- 19.
Take for example St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15f.: “For if the dead are not raised, then your faith is a delusion.”
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Jung, M. (2019). Science versus Scientism: Is There Such a Thing as the Scientific Worldview?. In: Science, Humanism, and Religion. Studies in Humanism and Atheism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21492-0_2
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