Scientism’s inability to answer so many questions, including its inability to account for itself, clearly shows that a robust understanding of reality will rely on many disciplines of study, not just science.
Peter Atkins, scientist and fellow at Lincoln College, University of Oxford, recently wondered, “As a scientist, I am led to wonder whether [science’s] ability to provide understanding is unlimited. Can it in fact answer all the great questions, the ‘big questions of being’, that occur to us?” [1] Many would answer Atkins in the affirmative; those that would are said to subscribe to the idea of “scientism.”
Scientism can be defined as “the view that the hard sciences alone have the intellectual authority to give us knowledge of reality,” [2] and that “at some stage in the future, science will be able to explain everything, and answer all our needs.” [3] Essentially, scientism is the belief that science is the beginning and ending of knowledge. However, there are several critical problems with this belief.
First, and perhaps most importantly, scientism cannot meet its own standard. [4] The claim itself, that science is the sole manner in which one can gain knowledge, cannot be arrived at through scientific means. It is not through the use of the scientific method that one would end up at scientism; scientism is a philosophical belief which must be assumed prior to engagement with scientific inquiry. But if this belief is held without regard to scientific evidence, then it fails to live up to itself.
Secondly, there are a number important truths which cannot be measured or tested scientifically. [5] The existence of moral laws or the value of human life cannot be answered by science. If one adheres strictly to scientism, they then must conclude that these concepts are not real or true in an objective sense; there would be no good, no evil, no value, no purpose.
