Science Distinguished from Scientism

See the thoughtful comments of Chris K. His post deserves a more extended answer than I can put in a comment. Here it is.

I appreciate the care applied to the reasoning of the argument. We agree on our “overreliance on western medicine,” the need for “holistic” health care and, perhaps, the possibility of "alternatives" to Western medicine. My response to the ethical question of withholding medical treatment of children for religious grounds is to say that “alternative medicine” is too strong a word. I do reject the notion of substitute methods of healing but I do propose “complementary” methods. The dilemmas that arise from cases involving Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian Science are the result a regrettable and unnecessary hostility of religious believers to Western science.

But to go on, I think that we can too easily accept Western medicine as tested and “alternative” ("complementary") medicine as untested and therefore inferior. In the light of your comments about science (“nothing is guaranteed thru utilizing the scientific method”), I think that we should be circumspect in talking about tested medical treatments. Melvyn Werbach (Psychiatry: University of California, LA,) points out the flaws of the randomized controlled trial that is the best medical test procedure now available. Among these are the difficulties of finding the right placebo, making the test truly double-blinded, and ruling out the bias of the researcher (Melvyn R. "Medical Science and Scientism: When Is Belief in Science a Religion?" Alternative therapies in Health & Medicine 10, no. 3 (2004): 14-92). These flaws do not warrant the replacement of Western medicine. But to say that “modern medicine is … the most effective approach to health care” is to make a generalization. In practical cases, complementary therapies may achieve better results than Western medicine alone.

This gets to your initial and the crucial question. I was speaking of “our cultural attitudes” when I said, “Science claims to be the sole guarantor of truth.” The title of the piece was “Scientism…” You are right to suggest that science must be distinguished from scientism. You know the field of philosophy and the intricate arguments surrounding this topic better than I do. But I can refer to the field of religious studies. In a recent book, Huston Smith distinguishes science from scientism. Scientism as an ideology has two founding principles: 1) The scientific method is the only (or most reliable) method of arriving at truth; 2) Material entities that are accessible to science are the “must fundamental things that exist” (Huston Smith. WHY RELIGION MATTERS. Harper: 2001, 59-60).

When we analyze these principles, we find that scientism is a form of reductionism that narrows down our notions of reality (metaphysics) and knowledge (epistemology) to what is material. Now the scientific method rightly accepts a “methodological naturalism” that circumscribes the proper field of study to “material entities.” But it becomes an ideology when it makes claims about reality and knowledge beyond the limitations of its methodology.

I hope that you are right that scientists who are true to science avoid scientism. However, you know that science is so privileged in the academy as well as society that scientism is a real temptation. In an insightful article P. J Dawson (Research Nurse: Psychiatric Nursing Institute, Melbourne, Australia) states, “The success in increasing our knowledge and control of the world has tended to reinforce the perception that science provides the only valid tools of knowledge” (Dawson, P. J. "A Reply to Goddard’s ’Spirituality as Integrative Energy’." In the Journal of Advanced Nursing, 282-89: Blackwell Publishing Limited, 1997. 286).

That observation leads me to believe that my reference to scientism was more than a “straw man.” Dawson states that science (as opposed to scientism) is coming to realize the role of creativity in scientific investigation in addition to rigorous empirical methods. Moreover, she says that science acquiring an appreciation (in a Kantian sense) that the world it analyzes is a mental construct (287). These developments lead science in a promising direction away from scientism and toward a promising integration of science with the humanities.

I cannot help but quote Dawson when she says that “religion, like science is a form of knowledge, a legitimate and comprehensive method of understanding the world, of investing it with meaning” (287).

In that spirit she says that religion may have evolutionary benefits and that “our present fascination with, and mystification by, positivistic naturalism, the scientific outlook, may constitute a fatal aberration” (287). Like my article, Dawson suggests that religion has a role in health care. Again, I was asserting that religion should claim that historic role.

These comments, of course, have to do with the nature and limits of science. When we speak of health care, we are speaking of applied science. I am arguing that our cultural attitudes toward medicine are a kind of applied scientism. I think that this is the public’s attitude to medicine and it fuels the insatiable demand for Western medical care in America. But that view is not limited to the masses. The medical establishment acts, for all the world, as if it and it alone holds the keys to the kingdom of health. It does so as the priestly caste that alone has authority to mediate the favors of the god of scientism.

Thanks again for your stimulating response to the original post.