Science or Scientism?

By now, we ought to have gotten beyond scientism. Science is one thing. Scientism is another. Science is a mode of enquiry that determines a certain number of facts about the natural world. Scientism takes the knowledge generated by science and applies it willy-nilly to all other areas of human activity and endeavor.

Science runs on skepticism. There is, as we have occasionally mentioned, no such thing as settled science. Anyone who thinks otherwise is not doing science. 

Scientism turns science into dogma. It insists that the science is settled and that the policy proposals that derive from it must be adopted instantly. Evidently, much of what passes as climate science is scientism. And this is true, as we have also pointed out on numerous occasions, because there is no such thing, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out, as a scientific fact about tomorrow.

Hockey sticks and computer driven projections are just that-- projections, predictions, hypotheses and prophecies. Unless you are a schoolgirl who knows nothing about science, you should not insult everyone by claiming that your dogmatic beliefs are science.

Now, libertarian thinker Sheldon Richman has explained with exemplary clarity how certain politicians and intellectuals are trying to enhance their prestige and power by pretending that their theories and policies are based on scientific truth.

As Richman points out, we have been here before. Friedrich Hayak denounced scientism in 1941. By now, we should have had enough time to process his thought:

Here’s the relevant distinction: while we ought to favor science, we ought to reject scientism, the mistaken belief that the only questions worth asking are those amenable to the methods of the natural sciences and therefore all questions must either be recast appropriately or dismissed as gibberish. F. A. Hayek, in The Counter-Revolution of Science, defined scientism as the "slavish imitation of the method and language of Science."

Richman identifies an important point, one that we have remarked. What do you do when scientists disagree? We know that many scientists attend regular services at the Church of Global Warming-- it's a branch of the Church of the Liberal Pieties-- but we also know that important climate scientists like Richard Lindzen and, more recently, Steven Koonin, disagree with them about the dogmas of so-called climate science:

The clearest problem with the admonition to "believe in science" is that it is of no help whatsoever when well-credentialed scientists–that is, bona fide experts–are found on both (or all) sides of a given empirical question.

Dominant parts of the intelligentsia may prefer we not know this, but dissenting experts exist on many scientific questions that some blithely pronounce as "settled" by a "consensus," that is, beyond debate. This is true regarding the precise nature and likely consequences of climate change and aspects of the coronavirus and its vaccine. Without real evidence, credentialed mavericks are often maligned as having been corrupted by industry, with the tacit faith that scientists who voice the established position are pure and incorruptible. It’s as though the quest for government money could not in themselves bias scientific research. 

Moreover, no one, not even scientists, are immune from group-think and confirmation bias.

Fancy that, scientists are human beings. They suffer the influence of the crowd, but also the influence of those who fund them. If your grant application and the continuation of your laboratory depended on your belief in the apocalyptic predications about climate change, you have a personal interest in jumping on the bandwagon.

Those who practice scientism have granted special credence to certain scientists. In truth, they are more likely to be bureaucrats than scientists, but that simple fact is often obscured by the media:

Apparently, under the believers' model of science, truth comes down from a secular Mount Sinai (Mount Science?) thanks to a set of anointed scientists, and those declarations are not to be questioned. The dissenters can be ignored because they are outside the elect. How did the elect achieve its exalted station? Often, but not always, it was through the political process: for example, appointment to a government agency or the awarding of prestigious grants. It may be that a scientist simply has won the adoration of the progressive intelligentsia because his or her views align easily with a particular policy agenda.

But that’s not science; it’s religion, or at least it’s the stereotype of religion that the "science believers" oppose in the name of enlightenment. What it yields is dogma and, in effect, accusations of heresy.

So, it’s not really scientific research that wins the day. What wins the day is the ability to gin up scientific results that appear to satisfy the terms of the prevailing leftist ideology. Then, you can pronounce it all settled, and you can declare that anyone who disagrees is either ignorant or heretical. You might not be able to launch the Holy Inquisition, but you do not have to do so if you have Twitter, Facebook and Youtube doing the dirty work for you.

Richman continues, defining what science really does:

Real science is a rough-and-tumble process of hypothesizing, public testing, attempted replication, theory formation, dissent and rebuttal, refutation (perhaps), revision (perhaps), and confirmation (perhaps). It’s an unending process, as it obviously must be. Who knows what’s around the next corner? No empirical question can be declared settled by consensus once and for all, even if with time a theory has withstood enough competent challenges to warrant a high degree of confidence. (In a world of scarce resources, including time, not all questions can be pursued, so choices must be made.) The institutional power to declare matters settled by consensus opens the door to all kinds of mischief that violate the spirit of science and potentially harm the public financially and otherwise.

Of course, those who practice scientism are convinced that there is only one solution, only one set of policies that will demonstrate the one true faith in science:

Another problem with the dogmatic "believers in science" is that they assume that proper government policy, which is a normative matter, flows seamlessly from "the science," which is a positive matter. If one knows the science, then one knows what everyone ought to do–or so the scientific dogmatists think. It’s as though scientists were uniquely qualified by virtue of their expertise to prescribe the best public-policy response.

How does it happen, Richman continues, that scientists suddenly become policy experts?

But that is utterly false. Public policy is about moral judgment, trade-offs, and the justifiable use of coercion. Natural scientists are neither uniquely knowledgeable about those matters nor uniquely capable of making the right decisions for everyone. When medical scientists advised a lockdown of economic activity because of the pandemic, they were not speaking as scientists but as moralists (in scientists’ clothing). What are their special qualifications for that role? How could those scientists possibly have taken into account all of the serious consequences of a lockdown–psychological, domestic, social, economic, etc.–for the diverse individual human beings who would be subject to the policy? What qualifies natural scientists to decide that people who need screening for cancer or heart disease must wait indefinitely while people with an officially designated disease need not? (Politicians issue the formal prohibitions, but their scientific advisers provide apparent credibility.)

Again, we concur entirely. Scientists might know what will happen to the virus if we lock down the country. In truth, they seem not to know, but put that to the side for now. The important point, as we have noted here, is that scientists do not evaluate the side effects of the policies they promote-- whether on human psychology, the state of the economy, or the minds of schoolchildren. After all, policy analysis is not their business.

Richman quotes a leading philosopher from the British analytic school, one Gilbert Ryle.

I like how the philosopher Gilbert Ryle put it in The Concept of Mind: "Physicists may one day have found the answers to all physical questions, but not all questions are physical questions. The laws they have found and will find may, in one sense of the metaphorical verb, govern everything that happens, but they do not ordain everything that happens. Indeed they do not ordain anything that happens. Laws of nature are not fiats."

Q.E.D.