The scientism is a point of view of appeared at the 19th century according to which the scientific Connaissance would make it possible to escape the Ignorance in all the fields and thus, according to the formula of Ernest Renan (1823 - 1892) to organize the Humanité scientifically. It is thus about a faith in the application of the Principe S of the Science in all the fields. From this point of view, the Politique is erased in front of scientific management “ ” of the social problems and any quarrel cannot since to raise of ignorance, the ideology, or a will to harm: there would exist a “good solution” which would be essential without the will, the desideratas or the subjectivity of a decision maker not having to intervene.

Scientism attaches a great importance to the education which, in releasing the greatest number of the illusions theological Métaphysique and , makes possible rational management of the company. For scientistic more the radical, the political Pouvoir must be entrusted to Savant S and not with Bureaucrate S. In extreme cases, this Concept ion leads to the negation of the Démocratie: a scientific solution “ ” worked out by qualified experts does not have to be discussed. This prospect filled with enthusiasm Renan, but worried Bernanos later seriously ( France against the robots ).

Description

Scientism returns to three ideas:

• the idea that science could replace the Philosophie or with the Métaphysique in the research solution with the major ethical or moral problems.

• the idea that science would carry in it all the solutions to the sufferings of humanity.
• the idea that the methods of the Exact sciences would be the only true scientific methods, and that it would be advisable to apply them including for the Social sciences

With these three meanings it is possible to add that of Popper, which considers that is scientistic that which, not including/understanding really the methods of the exact sciences, in fact a naive use in social science or social.

Under less technical meanings, scientism can be associated with the idea that only scientifically established knowledge is true, or return to the idea of a certain excess of confidence in the science which would be transformed into dogma.

Scientism should not be confused with the metaphysical Réalisme, which supports that the world is recognizable.

Quotation of Anatole France, hypnotism in the literature : “If science one day only reigns, the credulous men will have nothing any more but scientific credulities. ”

Criticisms

Liberal

Friedrich Hayek, in The Counter-Revolution off Science (written between 1940 and 1951, published in the form of book in 1952), Karl Popper with Misery of the historicism or the open Company and its enemies , or Michael Polanyi and the Logic of freedom (1951), opposed three criticisms congruent of the scientism, which in act the social engineers of the USSR put or besides, by showing some the political drifts (in particular, for the first, in the Road of the constraint , 1944). If science is one and the truth accessible to the men (or an elite which is given the responsability to represent it) then the way whom the company must follow one and indivisible does not have to suffer any dispute: scientism would necessarily lead to the Collectivisme. Propaganda/education, torture/rehabilitation, purification of the protestors/punishment of the plotters obscurantists and sold, will be then the armed wings of benevolent science, the mode being led to an ultimate politization of each sphere of the existence, of which the noxious effects on any rational activity are not long in being felt:

“To present the theory of relativity as “to dispute a Semitic attack against the bases of Christian and Scandinavian physics” or it because it is “in conflict with dialectic materialism and the Marxist dogma”, returns to same. To push back certain theorems of statistical mathematics by claiming “that they take part in the class struggle on the ideological border and that they are the product of the historical role of mathematics to the service of the middle-class” of the scientific Marxism or to as a whole condemn this discipline “because it is not sufficiently guaranteed that it serves the interests of the people”, here which returns about to same. Pure mathematics is not treated better and it appears that one can allot certain designs of continuity “to the middle-class prejudices”. According to Webb, the Review of the Natural science Marxist-Leninists claims following principles: “We represent the party in mathematics. We fight for the purity of the theory Marxist-Leninist in surgery”. We could not treat these aberrations, if incredible that they appear, like simple accidents (...): they derive from the same desire to see directing an elite lit by science each thing by “a overall concept of the whole”. ( the Road of the constraint , PUF, p.117-118.)

See too

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