The use of or appeal to the authority of science to legitimate some particular claim or policy. The Fontana Dictionary of Modem Thought defines scientism as \u201cThe view that the characteristic induction methods of the natural sciences are the only source of genuine factual knowledge and, in particular, that they alone can yield true knowledge about man and society This stands in contrast with the explanatory version of Dualism which insists that the human and social subject-matter of history and the social sciences can be fruitfully investigated only by a method, involving sympathetic intuition of human states of mind, that is proprietary to those disciplines.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the modern Western science, science and scientists have come to be regarded with great respect and authority. To be scientific is to be accepted; to be unscientific is seen as unacceptable, of dubious merit, if not wrong or wrongheaded. \u201cScientific\u201d is a badge of merit, since science has great authority in the modern world. Much of the dis\u00ac course of our society conversation, newspapers, radio, and television makes frequent use of appeals to science and its terms; there are constant references to such ideas as evolution, the environment, DNA, genetics, and so on. In their proper place they play important roles, but they are often applied and appealed to in quite different contexts to those from which they originate. This misplaced application of science, scientific, and the terminology of science is what is described by the term scientism.<\/p>\n
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The use of or appeal to the authority of science to legitimate some particular claim or policy. The Fontana Dictionary of Modem Thought defines scientism as \u201cThe view that the characteristic induction methods of the natural sciences are the only source of genuine factual knowledge and, in particular, that they alone can yield true knowledge […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-s"],"yoast_head":"\n