Front cover image for Scientism : philosophy and the infatuation with science

Scientism : philosophy and the infatuation with science

Tom Sorell
Since the time of Bacon, Galileo and Descartes, philosophers have identified strongly with the aims of natural science and the rationality of its methods. This is an in-depth study of scientism, the belief that science is the best and most important branch of learning. Although the text does not seek to denigrate science, it is critical of the scientistic tendency in philosophy and argues that the arts and humanities are undervalued. This book insists that philosophy is not science and condemns recent attempts in the name of "naturalism" to revive the project of scientific philosophy
Print Book, English, 1991
Routledge, London, 1991
History
xi, 206 pages ; 23 cm.
9780415033992, 9780415107716, 0415033993, 0415107717
24321740
1: Science and 'scientific empiricism'. What is scientism?
Scientism in twentieth-century philosophy. Five theses of scientific empiricism
Scientism in scientific empiricism
Beyond the exact sciences
Place for the humanities?
Difficulties
2: Roots of scientism?. Rorty on mirroring. Descartes and ideas fit for science
Ideas and veils of perception
Idols without veils of perception
Seventeenth-century philosophy and the benefits of science
Questionable pre-eminence for reason and science. Bacon and practical reason
3: Reason, science and the wider culture. Faculties of the mind and faculties of knowledge. Reason and the lower faculties of knowledge
Practical reason. Practical reason in history
Reason, culture and human nature
Other faculties. Aesthetic feeling
Genius
Fine arts and their value
Sciences and practical science
Difficulties. Kantian apparatus
Status of history and religion
Arts and the purposes of the arts
4: Moral criticisms of the arts and sciences. Five objections to science. Science and pride
Science and evil ends
Science and insensitivity
Science and the conditions of decadence
Science and meaninglessness
Conclusion, and a remark about moral bojections to the arts. Second thoughts about the ends of culture
5: Two cultures. Snow-Leavis controversy
Two cultures and one-sidedness
Arts, science and the mediation of the humanities
Danger of denying (or deconstructing) a difference. New monotony and the value of diversity
Rorty and 'dedivinization'
6: New scientism in philosophy. Pluralism about philosophical problems
Naturalized epistemology. Variations on a 'replacement' thesis
Unassimilated epistemology
Philosophy without folk psychology?. Folk psychologies
7: Naturalisms in the moral sciences. Ethics, objectivity and naturalism. Values and secondary qualities compared
A model for the subjectivity of value?
Asymmetry developed
'Darwinian ethics'
From morals to the moral sciences
Social studies, science and interpretation
'Critical naturalism'
Conclusion