Against Scientism

Yesterday, The Guardian ran a piece called 'Philosophy v Science: which can answer the big question of life?'. This is an interesting debate between the philosopher Julian Baggini and the physicist Lawrence Krauss on the differences of approach - and of the questions - of philosophy and of the natural sciences.  Obviously, they are both intelligent thinkers, but their attitudes - Krauss boisterous and proud of his subject, Baggini much more cautious and defensive - are revealing of the dominant reverence towards science and its extraordinary practical results and tendency to dismiss philosophy as senseless bickering. This is only natural: after all, science has produced a wealth of results with successful practical application leading to vast, radical improvements in the length and comfort of our lives, while the abstract problems of philosophy remain unsolved. The result is an uncritical idolisation of science, an act of blind faith on the power of the scientific method to produce answers - scientism, the prevailing ideology of industrial societies. However, this stance is fundamentally wrong, encapsulating a strong component of irrationality which, paradoxically, goes against the spirit of the science.

The catch-22 here is that you need a philosophical approach to grasp why scientism is both wrong and harmful to science in particular, and to knowledge in general. It is extremely naive to suppose that we have direct access to the outside world and unlimited power to change it, as scientism encourages. Even if that turns out to be true, we can only know after careful rational reflection - and that is where philosophy inevitably comes in. 

But what is this philosophical approach? 

I think it is best described as relentless rational criticism, i.e. the rigorous application of self-evident logical principles on the way we ourselves view the world. It implies a brave self-consciousness and commitment to fighting against dogmas of all sorts; it also incorporates a willingness to go to the root of our understanding of the world, in particular to the way language is employed (which is at the very core of our thinking). In particular, a large component of philosophy is the rational criticism of different methods of acquiring knowledge, which should lead to the improvement of those methods and, thus, to the possible construction of a clearer picture of the world. 

If you wish, you may picture the full body of human knowledge as an ocean, with philosophy as the waves hitting uncharted shore and leading to the expansion of the ocean in all directions. Philosophy probes at the unanswerable - once a method is fully formed and questions are circumscribed in such a way that they are answerable by its application, the problems cease to be philosophical and become part of the piecemeal practice of scientific investigation. In the meanwhile, philosophy has advanced to new formulations, and considers them until they are similarly circumscribed. In this way, philosophy contributes immensely to science. Discarding philosophical thinking - which I believe to be impossible, so deeply rooted is it in our humanity - would thus eventually lead the end of science.

But the clarification of the body of scientific truths and expansion of the scope of science is not the single task of philosophy. As an all-encompassing form of probing the world, philosophy also comprises an enquiry into our very own humanity (based on the same rational principles that have already been mentioned), into questions such as 'What is the meaning of life?' or 'How are we to live?'. These questions - the ones we must strive to answer both in theory and in practice, the ones that are concerned with the value we place in our own lives - transcend science, because, in science, the human being may be studied as an object, but not as a subject. 

For example, even if science provided us with a description (with predictions) of human behaviour in biological terms (and thus in chemical and physical ones), that still wouldn't give us the reason for a person's behaviour, - only an explanation - and it certainly wouldn't include ethical judgement. That explanation would certainly be interesting and illuminating in relation to the functioning of our organism, but, if mistaken as giving us the subject's intentionality, it would lead to a dangerous objectification of the human being.

It is, of course, an open question - a philosophical question - whether such a determinist reduction can be made. Even if it can, there is space for free will - the agent causes the action, using reason, verbal ability, and human empathy, which may be described in simpler terms (the ones of science; I speak of simper as in more fundamental). In other words, the fact that we are physical creatures, that is, based on a physical hardware, doesn't make us any less human in the sense we use in our interpersonal dealings - i.e., in the sense in which we consider each individual as an end in himself, possessing a special dignity that comes from the possibility of communication and understanding between interlocutors.

Thus science is compatible with an infinite within us, the infinite that keeps us alive and searching for more (sometimes through science, others through art, others even through religion), the infinite that makes us look into each others' eyes and seek a way of tempering our loneliness in the other's infinite potential, the infinite that underlies the freedom and dignity that make us equals in our humanity.

But science does not explore that infinite. Science has nothing to say about the human nature of love, of beauty, of goodness; but these are still necessary concepts which mean something - the meaning coming from the way we employ them and do them justice in our actions. 

Wittgenstein wrote that "We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all". Science contributes to human life in many ways - from the pure joy of discovery and understanding to the great technological advances that allow us to live longer and better - but it is not enough. Attempting to reduce all the questions to hard-nosed scientific enquiry equates to jumping over the infinite within ourselves, the luscious gaping mouth of our humanity, the endless blossoming rose of our freedom.