In their attempt to defend philosophy from accusations of uselessness made by prominent scientists, such as Stephen Hawking, some philosophers respond with the charge of ‘scientism.’ This charge makes endorsing a scientistic stance, a mistake by definition. For this reason, it begs the question against these critics of philosophy, or anyone who is inclined to endorse a scientistic stance, and turns the scientism debate into a verbal dispute. In this paper, I propose a different definition of scientism, and thus a (...) new way of looking at the scientism debate. Those philosophers who seek to defend philosophy against accusations of uselessness would do philosophy a much better service, I submit, if they were to engage with the definition of scientism put forth in this paper, rather than simply make it analytic that scientism is a mistake. (shrink)

It has often been suggested that people’s ordinary capacities for understanding the world make use of much the same methods one might find in a formal scientific investigation. A series of recent experimental results offer a challenge to this widely-held view, suggesting that people’s moral judgments can actually influence the intuitions they hold both in folk psychology and in causal cognition. The present target article distinguishes two basic approaches to explaining such effects. One approach would be to say that the (...) relevant competencies are entirely non-moral but that some additional factor (conversational pragmatics, performance error, etc.) then interferes and allows people’s moral judgments to affect their intuitions. Another approach would be to say that moral considerations truly do figure in workings of the competencies themselves. It is argued that the data available now favor the second of these approaches over the first. (shrink)

Background Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) are federally mandated to include both nonscientific and unaffiliated representatives in their membership. Despite this, there is no guidance or policy on the selection of unaffiliated or non-scientist members and reports indicate a lack of clarity regarding members’ roles. In the present study we sought to explore processes of recruitment, training, and the perceived roles for unaffiliated and non-scientist members of IRBs.Methods We distributed a self-administered REDCap survey of members of the Association for (...) the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs familiar with IRB member recruitment. The survey included closed and open-ended questions regarding: the operation of the HRPP/IRB(s), how unaffiliated and non-scientist members are recruited, whether they had faced challenges recruiting for these roles, and training and mentorship offered. The survey also collected information regarding the perceived value and roles of unaffiliated and non-scientist members.Results 76 responses were included in the analysis (38% completion rate). The most common approach for recruitment was referral from current IRB members, with almost half of respondents indicating challenges recruiting unaffiliated members. Over 75% indicated no additional training was provided to unaffiliated or non-scientist members compared to affiliated or scientist members. Most common supports provided were travel/parking expenses and honoraria. Commonly perceived roles were to provide an independent voice from the participant perspective, notably regarding consent processes and materials.Conclusions Respondents indicated challenges in defining unaffiliated and non-scientist members and limited practices toward recruitment and support. Future work should more closely examine the challenges in defining these roles and applying the definitions in practice, as well as strategies that may improve recruitment and retention of unaffiliated and non-scientist members. (shrink)

Written by the man considered the "Person of the Century" by Time magazine, this is not a glimpse into Einstein's personal life, but an extension and elaboration into his thinking on science. Two of the great theories of the physical world were created in the early 20th century: the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. Einstein created the theory of relativity and was also one of the founders of quantum theory. Here, Einstein describes the failure of classical mechanics and the (...) rise of the electromagnetic field, the theory of relativity, and of the quanta. Written in German by Einstein himself, the book is faced, page-by-page, with a translation by the noted Professor of Philosophy Paul Arthur Schilpp. (shrink)

This book draws upon a wealth of archival material to present the life and achievements of Pietro Blaserna, a “gentleman scientist” whose greatest legacy is considered to be the Institute of Physics on the Via Panisperna in Rome, of which he was the creator and first director. Both in this role and as President of the Accademia dei Lincei, Blaserna contributed enormously in establishing a sound institutional base for the further development of physics in Italy. Starting from an accurate (...) historical reconstruction of the scientific, social, and political context, the author presents the different phases of Pietro Blaserna’s life and career. As a multifaceted intellectual and a scientist holding several institutional positions, Blaserna worked ceaselessly to promote an effective policy in science and technology, which was critically important in stimulating the development of Italy as a modern nation. Blaserna may not have left scientific works that made history, but what he created in Rome was a real "house of physics", equipped with modern laboratories and instruments. In tracing his important legacy, this book will be of interest for all historians of science and for historians of nineteenth and twentieth century Italy. (shrink)

Sweeping in scope, penetrating in analysis, and generously illustrated with examples from the history of science, this new and original approach to familiar questions about scientific evidence and method tackles vital questions about science and its place in society. Avoiding the twin pitfalls of scientism and cynicism, noted philosopher Susan Haack argues that, fallible and flawed as they are, the natural sciences have been among the most successful of human enterprises-valuable not only for the vast, interlocking body of knowledge they (...) have discovered, and not only for the technological advances that have improved our lives, but as a manifestation of the human talent for inquiry at its imperfect but sometimes remarkable best. This wide-ranging, trenchant, and illuminating book explores the complexities of scientific evidence, and the multifarious ways in which the sciences have refined and amplified the methods of everyday empirical inquiry; articulates the ways in which the social sciences are like the natural sciences, and the ways in which they are different; disentangles the confusions of radical rhetoricians and cynical sociologists of science; exposes the evasions of apologists for religious resistance to scientific advances; weighs the benefits and the dangers of technology; tracks the efforts of the legal system to make the best use of scientific testimony; and tackles predictions of the eventual culmination, or annihilation, of the scientific enterprise. Writing with verve and wry humor, in a witty, direct, and accessible style, Haack takes readers beyond the "Science Wars" to a balanced understanding of the value, and the limitations, of the scientific enterprise. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The paper is aimed at identifying the ways of scientist’s influence on the development of modern society as compared to those of intellectuals. _Theoretical basis._ The socio-anthropological approach to the role of scientists in post-industrial society shows the leading role of people of science as a social group in present-day society. However, philosophical axiology reveals that scientists in today’s society do not have the appropriate social status: neither in state governance nor in the sphere of forming public opinion. (...) The classical doctrine concerning intellectuals has suffered a crisis in recent decades, which is due to the growing gap between the group of intellectuals recognized by society and the sphere of science. A new theoretical approach to determining the role of present-day research scientists as intellectuals is necessary. _Originality._ Successful development of modern society in conditions of growing social turbulence necessitates the access of research scientists to the sphere of public communication. This is required both by the needs of science advancement itself – to receive its adequate funding and win wide public recognition, and by society’s needs – as it is scientists who can provide reliable diagnostics of social problems and formulate well-grounded programs for overcoming them. _Conclusions._ For overcoming social barriers and getting access to public space, scientists themselves have to recognize themselves as a destitute social group – those who are unfairly deprived of making principal decisions in today’s society. For that, scientists should become modern intellectuals. Unlike media intellectuals, scientists are to interact not with social masses but, first and foremost, with public elites. The scientist has to gain his/her independent status by achieving the recognition of his/her own ideas among social elites rather than by winning wide personal popularity. Hence, scientists must aim at obtaining the status of the elite for elites – this would reveal in scientists the deepest potential of a modern man. (shrink)

Science is among the most crucial factors for the functioning of modern democracies, yet we tend to conceive of the science-system as mainly driven by its own internal logic and connected with the rest of society via input-output-relations. But does that mean that science is independent from the political system and the cultural life-form into which it is embedded, or is science intrinsically related to democracy? While authors like Hilary Putnam and Philip Kitcher have already tackled these questions, an important (...) part of the problem has hitherto been largely neglected: how is science related to the worldviews one may justifiably hold in a pluralistic society? Arguing with Dewey’s emphasis on the irreducible multitude of human experience, the paper defends a conception of wide “democratic experimentalism” (Frega), in which compatibility with science is crucial for the rational acceptability of worldviews and religions, but scientism is vigorously rejected. (shrink)

The life and work of the German chemist and philosopher Wilhelm Ostwald is studied from the angle of scientism. In Ostwald's case scientism amounted to: the construction of a unified science of nature ; its use as the ‘scientific’ basis for an all-embracing philosophy or world-view ; the programme to realize this philosophy in practice, as a secular religion to replace Christianity. Energetics, a generalized thermodynamics, was proposed by Ostwald and others to replace mechanics as the fundamental theory in physical (...) science. Its contents and fortunes are briefly discussed. Ostwald's energeticist philosophy is illustrated by his classification of the pure sciences, his theory of happiness and his science-based ethics. Ostwald cherished a metaphysics in which energy and energy transformations were fundamental to all phenomena and processes. As a result, he transferred his optimism about science and technology to energeticism: philosophical, psychological and ethical questions were regarded as capable of solution by his scientistic philosophy. The practice of Ostwald's energeticism is illustrated by two of his ‘Sunday sermons’ , as well as by a public lecture on science. He considered science the modern and legitimate substitute for God and claimed that science was, or would soon be, omnipresent, eternal, almighty, omniscient and perfectly good. Ostwald's substitute religion of science suggests the question, discussed in the last section of this paper, to what extent and in what sense historians might fruitfully interpret scientism as a secular religion. (shrink)

Public health advocates, government agencies, and commercial organizations increasingly use nutritional science to guide food choice and diet as a way of promoting health, preventing disease, or marketing products. We argue that in many instances such references to nutritional science can be characterized as nutritional scientism. We examine three manifestations of nutritional scientism: the simplification of complex science to increase the persuasiveness of dietary guidance, superficial and honorific references to science in order to justify cultural or ideological views about food (...) and health, and the presumption that nutrition is the primary value of food. This paper examines these forms of nutritional scientism in the context of biopolitics to address bioethical concerns related to the misuse of scientific evidence to make claims regarding the effect of diet on health. We argue that nutritional scientism has ethical implications for individual responsibility and freedom, concerning iatrogenic harm, and for well-being. (shrink)

Reasons for the limited uptake of the clinician–scientist role within nursing are examined, specifically: the lack of consensus about the nature of nursing science; the varying approaches to epistemology; and the influence of post-modern thought on knowledge development in nursing. It is suggested that under-development of this role may be remedied by achieving agreement that science is a necessary, worthy pursuit for nursing, and that rigorous science conducted from a clinical perspective serves nursing well. Straddling practice and research is (...) a powerful strategy for ensuring relevant research while forging strong links with practice. The clinician–scientist role, typically requiring a 75:25 ratio between research and clinical activities, is well established in medicine. Nursing, however, has been slow to institute the role; it is rare within North America, Australia, and western European countries, and almost non-existent outside those areas. Beyond structural obstacles, philosophical issues may explain nursing's reluctance to implement the role. Following a survey of clinician–scientist roles throughout the world, the nature of nursing science and epistemology, and the influence of post-modern thought on nursing attitudes to research are examined with respect to their influence on this role. The nurse clinician–scientist role holds promise for making strides in clinically relevant research, and for accelerating the knowledge cycle from clinical problem to research question to change in clinical practice. (shrink)

In this paper, we outline a framework for understanding the different kinds of knowledge required for medical practice and use this framework to show how scientism undermines aspects of this knowledge. The framework is based on Michael Polanyi’s claim that knowledge is primarily the product of the contemplations and convictions of persons and yet at the same time carries a sense of universality because it grasps at reality. Building on Polanyi’s ideas, we propose that knowledge can be described along two (...) intersecting “dimensions”: the tacit–explicit and the particular–general. These dimensions supersede the familiar “objective−subjective” dichotomy, as they more accurately describe the relationship between medical science and medical practice. Scientism, we argue, excludes tacit and particular knowledge and thereby distorts “clinical reality” and impairs medical practice and medical ethics. (shrink)

This paper explores the limitations of epistemic scientism for understanding the role the concept of race plays in assisted reproductive technology (ART) practices. Two major limitations centre around the desire to use scientific knowledge to bring about social improvement. In the first case, undue focus is placed on debunking the scientific reality of racial categories and characteristics. The alternative to this approach is to focus instead on the way the race idea functions in ART practices. Doing so reveals how the (...) race idea (1) helps to define the reproductive “problems” different groups of women are experiencing and to dictate when and how they should be “helped”; (2) helps to resolve tensions about who should be considered the real parents of children produced by reproductive technologies; and (3) is used to limit ART use where that use threatens to denaturalize the very sociopolitical landscape the race idea has created. In the second case, scientific knowledge regarding reproduction is thought to call for technological control over that reproduction. This leads to an overemphasis on personal responsibility and a depoliticization of racialized social inequalities. (shrink)

My aim in this chapter is to reconstruct Feyerabend’s anti-scientism by comparing it with the similar critiques of one of his main philosophical influences – Ludwig Wittgenstein. I argue that they share a common conception of scientism that gathers around a concern that it erodes a sense of wonder or mystery required for a full appreciation of human existence – a sense that Feyerabend, like Wittgenstein, characterised in terms of the ‘mystical’.

This paper attempts to develop an ethico-aesthetic framework for enriching one's life and ethical outlook. Drawing primarily from Nietzsche, Foucault, and Heidegger, an argument is made that Heidegger's understanding of this issue was mistaken. The ontological crisis of modernity is not the overt influence of mathematics as a worldview over poetics and more traditionally aesthetic approaches. It is the rampant mis-and over-application of abstraction within one's view of the world while denying the material realities of life as we live it. (...) This runaway abstractive worldview leads to the misapplication of mathematics and other sciences which in turn facilitate the dehumanization of life and those within it. When we try to solve the real problems of our material human lives through overly abstractive means, then we arrive at inauthentic arguments that fuel popular disdain for philosophy as irrelevant and nothing more than the purview of the elite. The goal is a recalibration of the argument toward addressing the denial of materiality within Modernism. (shrink)

Contribution to a symposium on Alan Chalmer's The Scientist’s Atom and the Philosopher’s Stone: How Science Succeeded and Philosophy Failed to Gain Knowledge of Atoms (Springer, Dordrecht, 2009).

In this article, we consider the possible application of the European General Data Protection Regulation to “citizen scientist”-led health research with mobile devices. We argue that the GDPR likely does cover this activity, depending on the specific context and the territorial scope. Remaining open questions that result from our analysis lead us to call for lex specialis that would provide greater clarity and certainty regarding the processing of health data by for research purposes, including these non-traditional researchers.

In this paper, we argue for a theoretical separation of the free-energy principle from Helmholtzian accounts of the predictive brain. The free-energy principle is a theoretical framework capturing the imperative for biological self-organization in information-theoretic terms. The free-energy principle has typically been connected with a Bayesian theory of predictive coding, and the latter is often taken to support a Helmholtzian theory of perception as unconscious inference. If our interpretation is right, however, a Helmholtzian view of perception is incompatible with Bayesian (...) predictive coding under the free-energy principle. We argue that the free energy principle and the ecological and enactive approach to mind and life make for a much happier marriage of ideas. We make our argument based on three points. First we argue that the free energy principle applies to the whole animal–environment system, and not only to the brain. Second, we show that active inference, as understood by the free-energy principle, is incompatible with unconscious inference understood as analagous to scientific hypothesis-testing, the main tenet of a Helmholtzian view of perception. Third, we argue that the notion of inference at work in Bayesian predictive coding under the free-energy principle is too weak to support a Helmholtzian theory of perception. Taken together these points imply that the free energy principle is best understood in ecological and enactive terms set out in this paper. (shrink)

This project explores vaccine hesitancy through an artist–scientist collaboration. It aims to create better understanding of vaccine hesitant parents’ health beliefs and how these influence their vaccine-critical decisions. The project interviews vaccine-hesitant parents in the Netherlands and Finland and develops experimental visual-narrative means to analyse the interview data. Vaccine-hesitant parents’ health beliefs are, in this study, expressed through stories, and they are paralleled with so-called illness narratives. The study explores the following four main health beliefs originating from the parents’ (...) interviews: perceived benefits of illness, belief in the body’s intelligence and self-healing capacity, beliefs about the “inside–outside” flow of substances in the body, and view of death as a natural part of life. These beliefs are interpreted through arts-based diagrammatic representations. These diagrams, merging multiple aspects of the parents’ narratives, are subsequently used in a collaborative meaning-making dialogue between the artist and the scientist. The resulting dialogue contrasts the health beliefs behind vaccine hesitancy with scientific knowledge, as well as the authors’ personal, and differing, attitudes toward these. (shrink)

The article investigates Cassirer's developing interest in the cultural sciences to display how his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms constitutes a philosophy of culture. The core concept in such a philosophy of culture is the symbolic formation that both possesses a structured-structuring dimension and appears as an historical process in which culture shows itself as a temporal creation. The philosophy of culture displays 'life in meaning', that is reality as it exhibits human reality manifested in and through the medium of linguistic, (...) artistic, religious, scientific "and so on" action and behaviour. This reality, therefore, is mediation between culture and nature through human spirit. Cassirer's philosophy of culture connects back to Kant's transcendental idealism by emphasizing that any concept of reality establishes itself through a modalization of reality, e.g. that reality constitutes itself in the mode of interpretation. This makes the basis for Cassirer's characteristic understanding of hermeneutics where cultural development is regarded as drama. (shrink)

This article examines the notion of the `scientist as a moral person' in the light of the early stages of the commodification of science and the transformation of research into a big enterprise, operating on the principle of the division of labour. These processes were set in train at the end of the 19th century. The article focuses on the concomitant changes in the public persona and the habitus of scientific entrepreneurs. I begin by showing the significance of the (...) professional networks that were built up and maintained to further a group's research ideas and the careers of its members, thus demonstrating one condition on which depended their practice of science and their ability to earn a living. This leads to a characterization of the changing styles of work, thought and life, and to a consideration of public perceptions and of the ways in which a new self-image of scholarship and science was fashioned. A critical discussion of the public role of these mandarin scientists follows in order to highlight the strains created by the commodification of science at a time of international tensions and conflicts, when shared beliefs in scholarly cosmopolitanism were subverted by appeals to science and scholarship to work in the service of one's own nation as its `courtiers'. Various considerations of peculiar analogies between national styles of research and the style of social organization are then noted. In the final section, the article queries the long-term impact of these developments on the ideal of the scientist as a `moral person'. Taking a cue from Max Weber and pursuing reflections by Zygmunt Bauman on `science moralized', I argue that the emergence of a type of `specialists without spirit' was an unintended but fatal consequence of the changes in research practices promoted by scientific entrepreneurs such as Du Bois-Reymond. I conclude that the temptation to sever the ties to a general ethos of civil virtues lay in the rationalization, specialization and potential de-humanization of the objectifying scientific outlook once advocated for its efficiency. (shrink)

My dissertation brings into conversation two thinkers who are seldom considered together and highlights previously unnoticed similarities in their critical responses to scientism, which was just as prevalent in the late nineteenth century as it is today. I analyze this attitude as consisting of two linked propositions. The first, which Nietzsche calls “the unconditional will to truth,” is that the aims of science, discovering truth and avoiding error, are the most important human aims; and the second is that no practice (...) other than science can achieve them. Both Nietzsche and James criticize the unconditional will to truth for privileging a transcendent ideal over the demands of human life. This unconditional will regards truth as valuable in itself and demands that we pursue it under all circumstances—even if that demand comes into conflict with other values. I lay out the ways in which Nietzsche and James view the value of truth and the imperative to pursue it as conditional on its promotion of human flourishing. In response to the second proposition of scientism, both philosophers argue that science can neither tell us what we should value, nor fully account for the value we in fact find in certain objects, activities, and experiences. And crucially, science cannot tell us whether or why its own goal of attaining truth is valuable. Nietzsche and James reach different conclusions about what is ultimately valuable, and whether traditional religious belief is defensible in light of the discoveries of science. Nonetheless, the hitherto unappreciated similarities I have uncovered in their arguments show that principled opposition to scientism need not be associated with any particular moral or religious viewpoint. This analysis is not only of historical interest: those who consider scientism to be ill-founded and intellectually confining can take some cues from our nineteenth-century predecessors’ strategies for combating it. (shrink)

The remarkable transition from helpless infant to sophisticatedfive-year-old has long captured the attention of scholars interested inthe discovery of knowledge. To explain these achievements, developmentalpsychologists often compare children's discovery procedures to those ofprofessional scientists. For the child to be qualified as a ``littlescientist'', however, intellectual development must be shown to derivefrom rational hypothesis selection in the face of evidence. In thepresent paper we focus on one dimension of rational theory-choice,namely, the relation between hypothesis confirmation and evidencediversity. Psychological research suggests cultural (...) variability inappreciating evidence diversity and lack of such appreciation by youngchildren. Before reaching conclusions about the ``little scientist''thesis, however, it is essential to normatively analyze the diversityissue. We undertake such an analysis within a Bayesianperspective. (shrink)

Modern science is increasingly focused on research that solves specific technological problems. In the world literature there are different, but generally similar, names for such studies. For example, German and Russian researchers use the term «problem-oriented research», the names «mission-oriented research», research as a response to «great challenges» and «frontier research», «science mode 2» are also used. In Ukraine, particularly in the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the name «targeted research programs» and «targeted scientific (scientific and technical) projects» are (...) used. The article analyzes features of targeted research and the status of the obtained knowledge. It emphasizes their direct involvement in the social sphere — economic, political, social relations in general, because they are the basis of modern technology and their development is interested in the general public — producers and consumers of material goods. The knowledge obtained in these studies is knowledge «to order», which requires a solution to the relationship between basic and applied research, the principles of professional activity of scientists, «academic freedoms», changes in epistemological, socio-humanitarian principles of science as a social institution. In the professional activity of a scientist, the praxeologization of science requires an orientation on the humanity of the produced knowledge, which, in fact, is a combination of knowledge about nature with knowledge about human. In this case, the scientist must be an expert in related disciplines. The organizers of targeted research solve this situation through the collective implementation of research, or, as expressed by R. Florida, the use of «social intelligence». At the same time, the latter requires from the scientist, as a specialist, not only purely professional competencies but also individual psychological skills of work (creativity) in an interdisciplinary team (mutual assistance, tolerance, empathy, etc.) and interaction with the transdisciplinary community. Otherwise, the profession of a scientist becomes socially engaged in terms of competencies and activities, and the leader in the research team performs moderative rather than directive functions. Although targeted research programs are becoming widespread, leading in solving urgent practical problems, but in the scientific field, a balance must be maintained between research «to order» and research that will be the basis for future development of science and society. (shrink)

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Ludwik Fleck is known mainly for his pioneering studies of science as a social activity. This text investigates a different aspect of Fleck’s epistemological thought—his engagement with normative aspects of medicine and public health and their political underpinnings. In his sinuous professional trajectory, Fleck navigated between two distinct thought styles: fundamental microbiological research and practice-oriented investigations of infectious diseases. Fleck’s awareness of tensions between these two approaches favored the genesis of his theoretical reflections. At the same time, his close observation (...) of medical and epidemiological practices led him to the conclusion that collectively produced scientific facts are situated and fragile. Thought collectives, Fleck explained, can err or yield to external pressures, with potentially disastrous consequences. While Fleck the reflexive experimental scientist has been creatively translated into the science studies idiom, Fleck the reflexive practical microbiologist and public health expert still awaits inspired translation. (shrink)