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SCIENTISM
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iii
SCIENTISM
Prospects and Problems
Edited by
Jeroen de Ridder, Rik Peels,

and René van Woudenberg
1
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1
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Contributors ix
Introduction: Putting Scientism on the Philosophical Agenda—R ené

van Woudenberg , Rik Peels , and Jeroen de Ridder 1
1. A Conceptual Map of Scientism—R ik Peels 28
2. Scientism and Its Rivals—M ikael Stenmark 57
3. Philosophical Challenges for Scientism (and How to Meet

Them?)—A lex Rosenberg 83
4. Scientism with a Humane Face—James Ladyman 106
5. Philosophy, Science, and Common Sense—H ilary Kornblith 127
6. Is Scientism Epistemically Vicious?—I an James Kidd 149
7. An Epistemological Critique of Scientism—R ené van

Woudenberg 167
8. Kinds of Knowledge, Limits of Science—J eroen de Ridder 190
9. Scientism: Who Needs It?—A lvin Plantinga 220
10. Cognitive Science and Moral Philosophy: Challenging Scientistic

Overreach—W illiam FitzPatrick 233
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vi • Contents
11. Physicalism, Not Scientism—A lyssa Ney 258
12. Moderate Scientism in Philosophy—W esley Buckwalter

and John Turri 280
Index 301
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The editors would like to thank the Templeton World Charity Foundation
for their generous support for the research project Science Beyond Scientism,
of which this book is a major result. Without it, work on this publication
would not have been possible. The opinions expressed in this publication are
those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Templeton
World Charity Foundation. We are grateful to the speakers and participants at
the 2014 conference All You Need Is Science? at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,
who provided invaluable input for several of the contributions to the present
volume. We are also thankful to all our colleagues, collaborators, and students
in the Science Beyond Scientism project—Gijsbert van den Brink, Gerrit Glas,
Leon de Bruin, Kelvin McQueen, Miriam Kyselo, Terence Cuneo, Russ Shafer-
Landau, Lieke Asma, Hans van Eyghen, Naomi Kloosterboer, Josephine
Lenssen, and Scott Robbins—for many hours of excellent discussions, pro-
ductive collaboration, and philosophical companionship. Our consecutive
project and event managers, Marije Zeldenrijk and Irma Verlaan, deserve a
big thank you. Without them, we would almost certainly have gotten lost
in the practicalities of running a project of this size. Finally, we’re grateful to
Peter Ohlin, Emily Sacharin, and Isla Ng at Oxford University Press for their
unfailing support (and patience) in making this volume possible.
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CONTRIBUTORS
Wesley Buckwalter, University of Pittsburgh

Jeroen de Ridder, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
William FitzPatrick, University of Rochester
Ian James Kidd, University of Nottingham
Hilary Kornblith, University of Massachusetts
James Ladyman, University of Bristol
Alyssa Ney, University of California, Davis
Rik Peels, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Alvin Plantinga, University of Notre Dame/Calvin College
Alex Rosenberg, Duke University
Mikael Stenmark, Uppsala University
John Turri, University of Waterloo
René van Woudenberg, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
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SCIENTISM
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1
INTRODUCTION
Putting Scientism on the

Philosophical Agenda
René van Woudenberg, Rik Peels, and Jeroen de Ridder
I.1 Riddles of Scientism
This book discusses prospects and problems of scientism.
Scientism is, roughly, the view that only science can provide
us with knowledge or rational belief, that only science can tell
us what exists, and that only science can effectively address our
moral and existential questions.1 As Alex Rosenberg says, sci-
entism “is the conviction that the methods of science are the
only reliable ways to secure knowledge of anything,” the view
that “science provides all the significant truths about reality”
(Rosenberg 2011: 6–7). Or, as Leslie Stevenson and Henry
Byerly have it, it is “the view that knowledge obtainable by sci-
entific method exhausts all knowledge . . . that whatever is not
mentioned in the theories of science does not exist or has only
a subordinate, secondary kind of reality” (Stevenson and Byerly
2000: 246–247).2 Scientism can thus stand for a number of ex-
clusivity claims about science.
1. Rik Peels’s chapter in the present volume identifies several versions of scientism
in more systematic detail.
2. Similar definitions abound in the literature: “Scientism is the belief that all valid
knowledge is science. Scientism says, or at least implicitly assumes, that rational
knowledge is scientific, and everything else that claims the status of knowledge
is just superstition, irrationality, emotion, or nonsense” (Hutchinson 2011: 1).
And: “A totalizing attitude that regards science as the ultimate standard and ar-
biter of all interesting questions; or alternatively that seeks to expand the very def-
inition and scope of science to encompass all aspects of human knowledge and
understanding” (Pigliucci 2013: 144).
2
2 • René van Woudenberg, Rik Peels, and Jeroen de Ridder
More often than not, scientism is adopted implicitly and at best half-wittingly.
The view is usually not proposed or adopted on the basis of carefully crafted and
explicitly formulated arguments in its favor. It is a view that appears to be more
“in the air” than pinned down on paper as a philosophical position.3 Moreover,
friends of the view (or rather family of views) only rarely embrace the label “sci-
entism.” Thus, we have a view, scientism, which is widely but often implicitly
adopted, that is rarely stated explicitly or defended rigorously, and that mostly
does not go by the name “scientism.” These are the riddles of scientism.
Fortunately, there is a ready solution to at least the last of these riddles.
“Scientism” used to figure exclusively as a term of abuse. Labeling a view as
“scientistic,” or a person an advocate of scientism, was to issue an accusation,
or worse, to make an insult. Susan Haack, for example, describes “scientism”
as “an exaggerated kind of deference towards science, an excessive readiness
to accept as authoritative any claim made by the sciences, and to dismiss
every kind of criticism of science or its practitioners as anti-scientific prej-
udice” (Haack 2007: 17–18). It is clear that no one will accept this notion
of “scientism” as an adequate characterization of their own views, as no one
will think that their deference to science is exaggerated, or their readiness to
accept claims made by the sciences is excessive.
Haack surely latches on to a standard, pejorative, use of “scientism.”
Sometimes, however, active attempts are made to rid words of their pejora-
tive overtones and to re-appropriate them as badges of honor. An example is
“impressionist,” a term once used to express abhorrence about a characteristic
style of painting, but soon consciously self-applied with pride. What we see
nowadays—and this is the solution for one of the riddles of scientism—is that
something similar is happening with “scientism.” Various philosophers self-
consciously present themselves as advocates of scientism, for instance, Alex
Rosenberg and James Ladyman—both of whom contribute to this volume. It
is in this use that we are interested: the problems and prospects of scientism
as a serious philosophical position, rather than a derogatory label used to dis-
miss one’s opponents with a quick gesture.4,5
3. The subtitle of another recent collection of essays devoted to a critical discussion of scien-
tism even goes so far as to label scientism “the new orthodoxy” (Williams and Robinson 2015).
4. We do not mean to accuse Haack of this. Her carefully argued criticisms of scientism are
anything but a quick dismissal of it.
5. This recent use of scientism as a more neutral term or a badge of honor is one reason why
we think scientism merits attention now. While older pioneering works on the topic (such as
3
Introduction • 3
This volume aims to contribute to understanding scientism as an explicitly

formulated position by giving an overview of the claims and ideas that con-
stitute the view, by signaling the varieties of scientism and their interrelations,
by presenting and discussing arguments in favor of scientism, as well as by
presenting criticisms of the view(s).
In this introduction, we explain why scientism is an important and timely
topic, both inside and outside of philosophy, and both inside and outside
of academia. Next, in order to bring scientism into sharper focus, we sketch
some of the (pre)history of scientism, explain what advocates of scientism
take science to be, summarize the most important argument that is used to
buttress scientism, and give an overview of how critics have responded to it.
Finally, we present an overview of the coming chapters.
I.2 Why Scientism Should Be on the

Philosophical Agenda
There are at least five reasons why an in-depth discussion of scientism is
needed. First, scientism, if true, has devastating epistemic consequences. If
science is our only source of knowledge or rational belief, we do not know and
do not rationally believe many of the things that we take ourselves to know
and rationally believe. Most people take themselves to know and rationally
believe lots of things about their mental life through introspection; and they
also assume they know and rationally believe a great number of things about
their everyday experiences; and many also presume they have rational beliefs
or even knowledge about political, moral as well as religious matters. To the
extent that such presumed knowledge and rational belief is not supported by
science—nor capable of being so supported—it would all have to go. Much of
our ordinary epistemic self-understanding is at stake here.
Second and related, if only science provides rational belief and knowledge,
then the humanities don’t have anything to offer that is of epistemic value.
Thus, no rational belief or knowledge is to be found in the interpretations
of texts; in accounts of historical developments; in philosophical theories
about, for example, value, personhood, and rationality; in aesthetics or art
theory, linguistics, and so on. At the very least, then, scientism should lead to
a radically different self-interpretation of the humanities. For what is it one
Sorrell 1991, Trigg 1993, and Stenmark 2001) contain much that is valuable and interesting,
they did not anticipate this development.
4
is doing in studying and analyzing something when one holds that there is
no knowledge or rational belief to be gained from doing so? But maybe sci-
entism implies that more drastic measures are in order. Since these academic
disciplines don’t deliver knowledge or rational belief, they should perhaps
be banned from universities altogether. Obviously, that would have radical
implications for future research and higher education.
Third, the truth of scientism would have severe repercussions for a number
of well-established social practices. We single out two: the legal and the psy-
chiatric practice. Common sense tells us that psychologically healthy human
beings have free will and bear responsibility for their freely performed actions.
However, a vocal minority urges that science has given us strong reason to
deny that we have free will. But if belief in free will lacks positive epistemic
standing, then it is high time for us to revisit our legal practice of holding
people responsible for at least some of their actions, and of assessing their
behavior on the basis of common-sense beliefs about freedom and respon-
sibility. Perhaps we should treat humans as beings whose behavior is to be
manipulated so that the odds of good behavior are maximized and those of
bad behavior minimized and abandon our talk of crime and punishment.
Second, in psychiatry scientism finds expression in how the DSM (Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is sometimes applied. The DSM
describes the criteria of a few hundred psychiatric disorders. Often, different
criteria are given, not all of which have to be satisfied in order to diagnose
someone with an illness. In addition, criteria for different types of illness fre-
quently overlap, so that patients can easily be diagnosed with more than one
illness. Psychiatrists thus have to tread carefully when working with the DSM
and apply its criteria judiciously. While most psychiatrists are acutely aware
of this, in other contexts the DSM is treated very differently. DSM diagnoses
sometimes play a crucial role in forensic contexts or in decisions about med-
ical insurance. In those contexts, DSM categories are treated in much the same
way as the categories of the periodic system of elements, viz. as descriptions of
fixed realities. Whoever satisfies the criteria of an illness is considered to “re-
ally” have it. This scientistic use of the DSM has real-world effects: It may or
may not exculpate someone before a jury or judge and it may or may not lead
to compensation for psychiatric treatments or medication.
Fourth, scientism used to be advocated by scientists or philosophers in
academic venues. Nowadays, however, scientistic ideas are made available to
a much larger audience in popular venues, such as popular science books,
newspapers, blogs, and online discussion forums, which has led to what we
could call a scientistic “pop-epistemology.” By that, we mean a somewhat
5
Introduction • 5
simplified scientistic epistemology that is articulated and embraced by many

non-academics. This has led to public debates in favor of and against scien-
tism. Some of the more visible contributions include the following:
• Sam Harris’s book The Moral Landscape;

• Alex Rosenberg’s book The Atheist’s Guide to Reality;
• Curtis White’s book The Science Delusion;
• Steven Pinker’s essay “Science Is Not Your Enemy” in The New Republic;6
• Leon Wieseltier’s and Philip Kitcher’s replies in The New Republic: “Crimes
against Humanities” and “The Trouble with Scientism”;7
• Adam Frank’s essay “The Power of Science and the Danger of Scientism”
at NPR;8
• Gloria Origgi’s essay “The Humanities Are Not Your Enemy” in The Berlin
Review of Books;9
• Oliver Burkeman’s column “ ‘Scientism’ Wars” in The Guardian;10
What is lacking in these discussions, however, is a careful and systematic eval-

uation by professional philosophers. Since scientism is essentially a philo-
sophical position, philosophers should rise to the occasion.11
Fifth, scientism can affect the prestige of and public trust in science.
Adherents of scientism obviously have a great deal of faith in science and
recommend this attitude for everyone. While this may be a good thing,
the worry is that it may also backfire. To the extent that scientism raises the
expectations of what science can deliver too high, it paves the way for dis-
illusionment and frustration, which can easily contribute to undermining
public trust in science. This might happen in a number of ways. By prema-
turely presenting provisional scientific results and theories as if they have
6. http://newrepublic.com/article/114127/science-not-enemy-humanities
7. Wieseltier: http://newrepublic.com/article/114548/leon-wieseltier-responds-steven-pinkers-
scientism; Kitcher: http://newrepublic.com/article/103086/scientism-humanities-knowledge-theory-
everything-arts-science
8. http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/08/13/211613954/the-power-of-science-and-the-
danger-of-scientism
9. http://berlinbooks.org/brb/2013/09/the-humanities-are-not-your-enemy/
10. http://web.archive.org/web/20150527003228/http://www.theguardian.com/news/
oliver-burkeman-s-blog/2013/aug/27/scientism-wars-sam-harris-elephant
11. This increasing airtime of scientistic views in public discourse is another reason why scru-
tiny of scientism is called for now. Cf. note 5 above.
6
been established beyond doubt, some adherents of scientism risk having to

backpedal on earlier claims. This can give the false impression that scientific
ideas are more in flux than they in fact are and that there is hardly any prog-
ress in science—that it’s all “just theories.” Also, some adherents of scien-
tism entangle scientific results with naturalistic or physicalistic worldviews
in which humans are “nothing but” the atoms that make them up, their
brains, their unconscious impulses, etc., and in which the universe is devoid
of meaning and purpose. Even if such worldviews should ultimately turn out
to be correct, it is too early now to proclaim that we know so for sure. Since
many people find these worldviews unattractive, they become distrustful of
the science from which it allegedly follows.
So, there is more than enough reason to put scientism on the philosoph-
ical agenda.12
I.3 Scientism’s (Pre)History
Science has left its marks all over the world. We see the stamp of science
on technological artifacts like computers and bombs; on institutions like
hospitals, armies, and journalism; on the physical face of the world: roads,
islands on the coast of Dubai, skyscrapers, polluted rivers, destroyed natural
sites; and on what we think about the world and ourselves: We no longer
believe in geocentrism and we think our bodies are composed of countless
small and complex cells. Without science, the world would have looked very
different from the way it in fact looks, its history over the last 500 years would
have been very different from its actual history, and we wouldn’t have thought
and believed a vast array of things that we now think and believe. All of this
can be taken to indicate that from the scientific revolution onwards science
has been spectacularly successful.
The perceived success of science has inspired many philosophers,
scientists, policy makers, and proverbial “men in the street” to put ever
higher hopes on science and its deliverances. This isn’t scientism, but it can
herald it. Glimmerings of scientism can be found in shattered remarks of
many philosophers. We single out David Hume, August Comte, and the
12. Indeed, it appears that we were not the only ones sensing the urgency. The current volume
has been a long time in the making and since its initial inception, three other collections of
essays devoted to analyses and discussions of scientism have appeared: Williams and Robinson
(2015), Beale and Kidd (2017), and Boudry and Pigliucci (2018), as well as a new e-book by
Susan Haack (2017).
7
Introduction • 7
logical positivists. In a famous exhortation in his Enquiry Concerning Human

Understanding Hume says:
When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc

must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or
school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask Does it contain any abstract
reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any exper-
imental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit
it to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.13
Although there is no explicit use of the term here, a number of chords are
struck that are close to the heart of scientism, and that, we will see, recur over
and over: opposition to theology and metaphysics, and allegiance to empir-
ical modes of inquiry. To be sure, Hume was by no means an advocate of sci-
entism; the skeptical ferment in his work is far too strong for it. Also, his
remarks about abstract reasoning concerning quantity and number don’t sit
well with scientism’s concentration on empirical modes of inquiry. Still, the
Hume quotation does convey part of the spirit that animates scientism.
More than a glimmering of scientism can be found in the works of
the French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798– 1857), who formulated
his famous Law of Three Stages: “The law is this: that each of our leading
conceptions—each branch of knowledge—passes through three different
theoretical conditions: the Theological, or fictitious; the Metaphysical, or
abstract; and the Scientific, or positive” (Comte 2009 [1853]: 1). The theo-
logical condition, Comte explains, is the stage in which humans, in search of
first and final causes, explain the universe and its constituents by reference to
supernatural agents. This stage, which is the necessary starting point of the
human cognitive endeavor gradually develops into the metaphysical stage in
which supernatural causes are replaced by “abstract forces” as the items that
perform explanatory functions: final causes, form and matter, etc. The second
stage, Comte tells us, is merely transitional, as the human mind is unable to
jump directly from the theological to the positive mode of thinking. The
third, positive stage, which Comte thought was breaking through in his own
days, is the stage in which humans realize that laws govern both nature and
human behavior, and that these laws can be discovered through observation
13. Quoted by Alfred J. Ayer in his introduction to a volume with key papers from the logical
positivist movement (Ayer 1959: 10). The quotation is taken from the concluding paragraph of
Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1975 [1777]: 165).
8
and reasoning. In this stage it is believed that science is key to all our cogni-
tive endeavors. Comte did acknowledge that there is a hierarchy between the
sciences, ranging from mathematics, being the most perfect science, through
astronomy, to terrestrial physics, chemistry, and physiology. He conceived
of physiology as the basis of sociology, which studies social structures, and
which he held will enable us to terminate the crises in which many civilized
countries found themselves.
These Comtean ideas cry out for stage setting, precisification, and
comment. But this is not the occasion. We want to draw attention to some
themes close to the heart of scientism: averseness to theology and metaphysics
(conceived of as the study of what lies “behind” what can be experienced),
and a concentration on “positive facts,” that is, facts that are revealed in direct
sense experience. Comte saw mathematics as the most perfect science, as it
delivers theorems that, if true, are necessarily true. Comte thus acknowledged
the validity of a priori reasoning, which fits poorly with scientism’s concen-
tration on the empirical sciences. Friends of scientism, traditionally, have
problems with mathematics and logic—as these appear to have non-empirical
subject matters. Yet, the spirit of scientism animates Comte’s works.14
A next phase in the (pre)history of scientism is the logical positivist’s
movement associated with the Vienna Circle that started in the 1920s.
Among its many well-known members were Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap,
Hans Hahn, and Felix Kaufmann. The logical positivists, famously, made
a distinction between two classes of significant propositions, reminiscent
of Hume’s exhortation quoted above. On the one hand, there are factual
propositions, the hallmark of which is that they are empirically verifiable.
On the other, there are formal propositions (of logic and mathematics), the
hallmark of which is that they are tautological in the sense that they are true
in virtue of the meaning of the words that compose them, and not in virtue
of the way the world is. This bifurcation was held to be exhaustive. If a sen-
tence expresses neither a formal truth or falsehood, nor something that is
verifiable, it was held to express no proposition at all. Such sentences were
deemed literally nonsensical, even though some of them give the impres-
sion of expressing factual propositions. The positivists held that the prime
examples of factual propositions are the propositions of science, while prime
examples of nonsensical propositions are the propositions of metaphysics,
14. Or it did so up to the time that he started devising a new world religion, of which he him-
self would be the high priest—that project is much less congenial to scientistic tenets, to say
the least.
9
Introduction • 9
ethics, and religion—so propositions such as that the world is spiritual, that
torturing others for the fun of it is morally wrong, or that the actual world is
the best of all possible worlds. Whatever merits such nonsensical statements
may have on an emotional level, as they don’t state facts, they have no truth
value. The famous Verification Criterion was proposed as an instrument to
reliably distinguish between factual and nonsensical statements. It said that
no statement is meaningful unless it is either a tautology or in principle em-
pirically verifiable.15
One of the most-recounted parts of 20th-century philosophy is how log-
ical positivism developed and ran into problems (see, e.g., Godfrey-Smith
2003: 19–121; Losee 2001: 143–196). It did so, first, because the positivists,
in staying true to the spirit of empiricism, tended to be suspicious of theories
that posit unobservable entities (such as electrons, quarks, or positrons), as
such theories go beyond what can be observed. Such antirealist tendencies
did not square well with the widespread realism among actual practitioners
of the sciences. Scientists normally think of themselves as trying to find out
what the structures and mechanisms behind the observable phenomena
are. Positivist antirealism doesn’t seem true to scientific practice. Relatedly,
positivism’s focus on the observable arguably leaves little room for what many
think is the glory and singular significance of science: providing explanations.
Science describes phenomena, it doesn’t explain them, the positivists said.
Second, logical positivism ran into trouble because of at least three
problems that beset the Verification Criterion. A first problem is that a number
of principles that seem basic to science are not empirically testable (and nei-
ther are they tautologies). That nature is uniform, for example, cannot be es-
tablished by experiment, as it must be presupposed by every experiment. This
means that a principle that is essential to science is classified as meaningless
by the Verification Criterion that was supposed to demarcate scientific from
metaphysical statements. A second problem is that the Criterion declares
many statements cognitively empty that seem perfectly meaningful and pos-
sibly even true, such as moral statements. This raised a dilemma: Should the
Criterion be discarded, or should moral and other seemingly meaningful
statements be declared meaningless? Many have maintained that it is more
rational to think that moral statements are cognitively meaningful than to
think that the Criterion is correct. Third and most devastating, the Principle
15. Ayer (1946: 35–4 0) offers a formulation of the criterion. An informative discussion of the
vicissitudes of its various formulations is Hempel (1950).
10
was argued to be self-referentially incoherent: If one accepts it, one thereby

obtains a good reason to reject it. The Criterion itself is a statement. But it is
not a statement that is empirically testable. And statements that are not empir-
ically testable, says the Criterion, are meaningless unless they are tautologies.
But the Criterion surely is no tautology either. Hence the statement that
states the Criterion is meaningless (cf. Plantinga 1967: 162–168).
The spirit of logical positivism lives on the anti-metaphysical and anti-
theological stance of scientism, as is obvious in both Rosenberg’s and Ross
and Ladyman’s scientism.16 And even though the Verification Criterion has
been given up, new occupants for its role have been proposed, for example
Ross, Ladyman, and Spurrett’s pragmatic verificationism (Ross, Ladyman, and
Spurrett 2007: 29) and Herman Philipse’s Principle R (Philipse 2013: 97).17
Also, ethical and other normative statements continue to look problematic to
adherents of scientism—and for much the same reason as they were deemed
problematic by the logical positivists.
In many ways, then, scientism harks back to older philosophical movements
and ideas. It has a history.
I.4 Scientism’s Science
Scientism gives pride of place to science: Science is supposed to be our abso-
lute authority in the cognitive domain and leaves no room for competitors.
This thus puts a lot of pressure on the notion of science and, by implication,
on the issue of how science is to be demarcated from non-science. In what
follows we will try to clarify the notion of science as it figures in scientism.
We do this by, first, contrasting it with what others have held are epistemically
upstanding but nonscientific modes of cognition, and next by contrasting it
with a millennia-old conception of science.
As indicated above, scientism issues exclusivity claims about science.
These claims primarily concern the natural sciences, with physics taking a
unique place among them.18 The first thing to note about this claim is that the
complement of the natural sciences—that is, all cognitive endeavors that are
not natural science—is a very mixed bag. It contains rather obviously dubious
16. This point is discussed in more detail in René van Woudenberg’s chapter in this volume.
17. For discussion of this principle, see Van Woudenberg and Rothuizen–van der Steen (2016).
18. This is explicitly the case in Ross, Ladyman, and Spurrett’s scientism, which involves the
Principle of the Primacy of Physics (see their 2007: 38–45). This is also true of Rosenberg
(2011: 45–70).
1
Introduction • 11
“fields” and “methods” such as alchemy, astrology, the reading of tarot cards or
tea leaves, and crystal ball gazing. But it also contains fields and methods that
are held in high regard by many and have a venerable tradition within aca-
demia, such as the various branches of the humanities, ethics, philosophy, and
theology. It contains, moreover, perception, proprioception, introspection,
memory, and other (alleged) everyday sources of knowledge. The contents
of this mixed bag are all supposed to fall short of some (possibly complex)
standard that the natural sciences don’t fall short of. It is in virtue of this that
they, in contrast with the sciences, are supposed not to give us knowledge or
rational belief. But what is this standard, and in virtue of what do the sciences
satisfy it, while all these other things don’t? The natural sciences, or rather
their products (so: empirical generalizations, statements of laws, predictions,
theories, explanations, etc.) have been claimed to possess a number of charac-
teristics that are unique to them. For instance, they have been supposed to be:
(a) theoretical and explanatory as opposed to practical (Nagel 1961: 1–14);

(b) abstract as opposed to concrete (Dooyeweerd 1953–1958);
(c) general and lawlike, as opposed to individual and singular (Windelband
1894);
(d) objective or value free, as opposed to value laden (Weber 1919);
(e) obtained by the application of validated research methods, as opposed to
rhapsodically obtained by common sense (Mill 1974 [1843]).
We can think of this list as posing a challenge to scientism. For the features
in virtue of which the products of the natural sciences are supposed to meet
the standard, are possessed by the products of many of the items in the mixed
bag (minus the dubious ones) as well. For instance, many explanations that
we think are sound explanations, are not scientific explanations. You ask why
the windows are wet; the explanation is that it has been raining. But that
hardly qualifies as a scientific explanation—unless we stretch the concept of
“scientific explanation” in such a way that even small children can provide
them. Also, non-science sometimes concerns something abstract. Counting
the natural numbers concerns abstract objects—that is, objects not located in
space-time and causally inert. Yet counting the natural numbers is not science.
Natural science is not limited to studying only what is general. The Big Bang
is a singular event, as is the evolutionary history of life on earth. And again,
science is by no means the value-free enterprise that it is sometimes held to
be. There are values that good scientific theories embody, such as simplicity,
explanatory power, fertility, etc. Arguably, social and ethical values play
12
important indirect roles in science, for instance, in choosing which problems

to study or in constraining acceptable methodological choices. And, finally,
there is much that is brought to light by the application of validated methods
of research but that isn’t science. Policing, calculating one’s share of a restau-
rant bill, figuring out how many rooms are rented out in a hotel by counting
the keys that are “in” (while the policy of the hotel is to have guests leave their
key at the counter when they go out), preparing a legal case to present for a
jury or judge. None of this qualifies as doing science unless we stretch the
meaning of science considerably. The point of saying all this is to re-emphasize
a point made forcefully by Larry Laudan (1983): It is well-nigh impossible to
demarcate science from non-science. Still, in order for scientistic exclusivity
claims to be more than innocuous rhetoric, the notion of “science” should
be demarcated reasonably sharply from its complement. This is a significant
challenge.19
This systematic challenge can be deepened by a historical challenge,
deriving from the fact that scientism’s use of “science” departs from a histor-
ically extremely influential ideal of science, codified in what has been called
the “classical model of science” (De Jong and Betti 2010). Let us explain. In
the Western world, the classical model dominated philosophical thinking
about science for at least two millennia. Three milestones in the model’s life
are Aristotle’s Analytica Posteriora, especially book 1; the very influential so-
called Logic of Port-Royal (1662), especially part IV on method, written by
Antoine Arnauld and relying in many respects on Pascal and Descartes; and,
finally, Bernard Bolzano’s Wissenschafslehre (1837). According to the model, a
science is a system S of propositions and concepts (or terms) that satisfies the
following conditions:20
(1) All propositions and all concepts of S are about a certain domain of
being(s).
(2a) S contains a number of so-called fundamental concepts.
(2b) All other concepts occurring in S are composed of these fundamental
concepts.
(3a) S contains a number of fundamental propositions.
(3b) All other propositions of S are provable or demonstrable from these
fundamental propositions.
19. See Pigliucci and Boudry (2013) for various attempts to meet the demarcation challenge.
20. This is a slightly revised version of the model as presented in De Jong and Betti (2010: 186).
13
Introduction • 13
(4) All propositions in S are true.

(5) All propositions in S are universal and necessary in some sense.
(6) All propositions in S are known to be true. A non-fundamental propo-
sition is known to be true through its proof in S.
(7) All concepts are adequately known. A non-fundamental concept is ade-
quately known through its composition.
De Jong and Betti present the model as a reconstruction of an influential way

of thinking about what a proper science is and what its methodology should
be. It aims to summarize an ideal of proper science that has been defended
by philosophers and scientists alike for over two millennia. Among its
champions were such luminaries as Newton, Spinoza, Leibniz, Wolff, Kant,
Husserl, Frege, and Lesniewski.
Even a quick glance at the model indicates that it does not pick out
current science, that is, it doesn’t pick out the referent of “science” as used
by the advocates of scientism. According to the model, science is a deduc-
tive system of propositions that are derived from first principles, but current
science, or the products thereof, don’t constitute such a system. Current
science acknowledges precious few first principles, and involves numerous
forms of non-deductive reasoning such as induction, inference to the best ex-
planation, probabilistic reasoning, statistical inference, and more.
A second reason why the classical model doesn’t refer to what advocates of
scientism have in mind when they refer to “science,” is that the model allows
metaphysics, ethics, and theology to be sciences. Or rather, the history of
metaphysics, ethics, and theology has seen many efforts to cast metaphysical,
moral, and theological systems in the format of the classical model. Some
examples are Christian Wolff ’s Philosophia Prima, sive Ontologica (1730);
Baruch de Spinoza’s Ethica, Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (1678); and
Gisbertus Voetius’s Synopsis Purioris Theologiae (1625).
When the friends of scientism speak about science, they typically focus
on the best and most established parts of science as we now know it as the
paragon of science.21 Our presentation of the classical model of science serves
a twofold purpose: (i) In focusing on current best science, an implicit choice
is made to understand science in a particular way; and (ii) while there may
be good reasons for this choice, it is incumbent on the friends of scientism to
present those reasons, for their preferred conception of science is historically
21. This is abundantly clear in Rosenberg (2011) and Ross, Ladyman, and Spurrett (2007).
14
contingent. There are other reasonable and historically prominent construals

of science.
The upshot of this section is that significant unclarity surrounds scientism’s
understanding of science. The demarcation problem remains as daunting as
ever, and it is historically far from obvious that we should accept what cur-
rently passes as science as the correct understanding. Both the proponents
and the friends of scientism thus have their work cut out for them.
I.5 Arguments for Scientism

We have said that scientism is often adopted implicitly and only half-wittingly.
There are exceptions, however. Some friends of scientism have offered explicit
arguments in support of scientism.22 The most promising one, it seems to us,
draws on the impressive success of modern science when compared to other
attempts to find out truths about the world and ourselves.23 But we should try
to get clearer about what this means. After all, both “science” and “success”
have multiple senses. When the proponents of scientism state that science has
been successful, they don’t mean to stress that certain scientific institutions
have been around for a long time or that they operate effectively or effi-
ciently. Nor do they mean to draw attention to the fact that scientists have
conjured up so many hypotheses, theories, and explanations; or that they have
published an unbelievable amount of articles and books. Rather, the point is
to emphasize that science is epistemically successful; that it has succeeded in
uncovering and establishing important truths about the world and ourselves.
It has produced a great number of claims, theories, models, explanations, and
predictions that have significant positive epistemic status, which is to say that
they are justified, (likely to be) true, or empirically adequate. Typically, these
are claims that have been severely tested, survived critical experiments, are
supported by strong evidence, cohere with other results that have been tried
and tested, and so on.
Of course not everything that science produces has this elevated status,
but the argument for scientism turns on a comparative claim: Science has
a better track record in discovering and establishing truths than any other
method humans have employed, such as relying on common sense, trusting
religious or other authorities, a priori reasoning, etc. Note that spelling
22. Peels (2017) discusses 10 possible arguments for scientism.

23. Rosenberg (2011: 26) hints at such an argument.
15
Introduction • 15
out the precise sense in which science is epistemically more successful than
common sense, a priori reasoning, etc., would actually take serious work,
since a straightforward track record of science shows that most scientific
claims published in respectable journals and books simply turn out to be
false sooner or later. This is the basis for Laudan’s (1981) famous pessi-
mistic meta-induction and Samuel Arbesman’s (2012) somewhat mislead-
ingly phrased claim that scientific facts have a “half-life.” It may well be that
the track record of mundane common-sense claims looks much better in
such purely quantitative terms. Someone seeking to defend claims about
the comparative success of science will thus need to qualify (if not gerry-
mander) her claims. Perhaps science is particularly successful in the long
run in unearthing certain kinds of “deep,” “fundamental,” or significant
truths. We’ll assume for the sake of argument that this can be done in a
non-arbitrary or ad hoc manner.
In addition to its epistemic success, proponents of scientism also like
to stress what we can call science’s technological success. Many results
of science have contributed directly or indirectly to effective technical
applications: applications that successfully do the job for which they have
been designed and created.24 It is an open question to what extent all this
technology has had an overall positive effect on the world and our quality
of life, but this is something adherents of scientism can readily admit. To say
that science has often been successfully applied in technology that is effective
in the narrow sense of functioning properly, is not to be committed to naïve
optimism about the overall effects of technology.
Is the argument for scientism from the comparative success of science
compelling? As we noted at the very beginning of the chapter, scientism is
associated with a number of exclusivity claims about the role of science and
its deliverances: It maintains that only science can give us knowledge, ra-
tional belief, etc. Now it hardly needs saying that a claim about the compar-
ative success of science nowhere near implies that science is our only route
to knowledge, rational belief, etc. A smartphone is extremely successful in
doing quick calculations, but surely that doesn’t mean that only smartphones
should be used to calculate one’s share of the restaurant check. This is such an
obvious mistake that we should not dwell on it.
24. But note that the view that all technology just is applied science has fallen on hard times.
Technology often develops independently of science and the direction of influence is some-
times the other way around: Successful technological applications can also lead to new or better
scientific theories, explanations, etc. (Kline 1992; Kroes and Bakker 1992; Vincenti 1990).
16
What the proponent of scientism needs to plug the hole in this argument,
are further premises with the following features: (i) They should identify
other alleged sources of knowledge, rational belief; and (ii) they should make
the case that these sources either fail to deliver the required goods altogether
or are so much less successful than science that we would do best to avoid
them altogether. The challenge for the advocate of the argument from the
success of science is, first, to state these premises in detail; and, second, to
argue that they are plausible.
Friends of scientism have taken up this challenge in a number of ways.
First, they have marshaled psychological evidence indicating that our “pre-
scientific” or common-sense modes of thinking are riddled with biases and
hence their deliverances highly unreliable. These biases pertain partly to the
ways we think about ourselves (“folk psychology,” see, e.g., Wilson 2002).
Also, they argue that there is compelling scientific evidence against many
of our most cherished beliefs about ourselves, such as that we have free will,
and that when we act we mostly do so for reasons (ibid.). Science, so it is
suggested, shows these notions to be illusory. Moreover, they have offered
broadly science-based arguments against the reliability of our moral belief
formation. One prominent recent branch of this endeavor are evolutionary
debunking arguments ( Joyce 2006: 179–219; Street 2006). The core idea
behind these arguments is that evolutionary considerations provide a com-
plete satisfactory explanation of human moral behavior and belief formation.
Behaving and believing in certain ways—or possessing the tendencies to do
so—so the thought goes in a nutshell, was evolutionarily advantageous and
that is how morality evolved among humanoids. If this is correct, moral truth
doesn’t factor into the process at all and hence we have no reason to think
that our moral beliefs track the truth or constitute knowledge. Next, they
argue that religious belief results from dubious sources (Bering 2011). Also,
they argue that the humanities offer us nothing but entertaining illusions
(Rosenberg 2011: 299–308).
Whether or not these arguments are convincing is very much a topic of
ongoing debate.25 But for the argument for scientism from the success of
science to gain traction, its supporters must find ways of buttressing these
additional premises.
25. The literature on each of the topics mentioned above is vast, but some good starting points
include Wegner (2002), Schloss and Murray (2009), Bergmann and Kain (2014), and Mele
(2014). Hilary Kornblith’s and William FitzPatrick’s contributions to this volume also touch
on these issues.
17
Introduction • 17
I.6 Arguments against Scientism

Let us now turn to arguments against scientism. Again, we will not attempt
to evaluate these arguments here. We merely sketch them. The reader will find
that several of these arguments return in one guise or another in various essays
in this volume. We look at four arguments.
First, scientism, at least on its stronger versions, has counterintuitive
consequences. Is it really true that I cannot know what my birthday is, merely
because I have never done any scientific research on it? Can I not know that
killing for fun is morally wrong just because that belief of mine is not based on
scientific research—and maybe cannot even be based on scientific research?
As one of us has pointed out, there are also many general things that we seem
to know even though they are not based on any kind of scientific research:
Next there are many very general truths that I happen to know, such
as: that there are very many people, that they live on the surface of
the earth, that they need food and liquids to keep themselves alive,
that they need love and respect, that there are very many countries in
which these people live, and that these countries have governments,
some of which are very bad, but others of which are tolerably good.
(Van Woudenberg 2011: 183)
To deny that we know such things seems to fly in the face of reason. This
counterintuitiveness might be taken to provide an argument against scien-
tism.26 Whether such an argument can be successful depends in large part
on the extent to which the proponents of scientism are able to establish the
unacceptability of extra-scientific sources of knowledge.
Second, one might worry that scientism is self-referentially incoherent.27
The thesis of scientism itself, it seems, is not based on scientific results. But
then it follows, on scientism, that it cannot be rationally believed or known.
But if it cannot be rationally believed or known, then how could a rational
person ever embrace it? We find short versions of this problem in the litera-
ture. One of us, for instance, writes:
Scientism suffers from self-referential problems. Not being a scientific

claim itself, it would seem scientism cannot be known by anyone. This
26. Another way of pursuing this point would be to argue that scientific knowledge has in-
herent limits and there are other modes of knowledge next to it. This is Rescher’s (1999) line;
cf. also Jeroen de Ridder’s contribution to this volume.
27. For more on this notion, see Mavrodes (1985).
18
raises the question of why anyone should assert or believe it in the first
place. (De Ridder 2014: 27)
And Mikael Stenmark reasons as follows:
How do you set up a scientific experiment to demonstrate that science

or a particular scientific method gives an exhaustive account of reality?
I cannot see how this could be done in a non-question begging way.
What we want to know is whether science sets the limits for reality.
The problem is that since we can only obtain knowledge about reality
by means of scientific methods . . ., we must use those methods whose
scope is in question to determine the scope of these very same methods.
If we used non-scientific methods we could never come to know the an-
swer to our question, because there is according to scientistic faith no
knowledge outside science. We are therefore forced to admit either that
we cannot avoid arguing in a circle or that the acceptance of [scientism]
is a matter of superstition or blind faith. (Stenmark 2001: 22–23)
The adherent of scientism may have replies available. She could argue that
there is scientific evidence for scientism; that we should make an exception
for scientism; that scientism is pragmatically rather than epistemically justi-
fied; or that scientism escapes self-referential incoherence because it is not
itself a belief, but rather a stance in Van Fraassen’s (2002) sense.28 One of us
has explored these options elsewhere.29
Third, there is what one of us has called the fundamental problem. Here,
the idea is that the basis or foundation of science is itself nonscientific. It
consists of all sorts of beliefs based on perception, memory, introspection,
and so on. If these beliefs were not rational, then the science that is based on
them could not be rational either. Hence, either they are rational and scien-
tism has to go, or both scientific and nonscientific beliefs are equally irrational
(and scientism has to go as well). One of us makes a similar point elsewhere:
Another response . . . might be to bite the bullet and deny that extra-
scientific beliefs ever amount to knowledge. This, however, would be
28. This is James Ladyman’s considered view; see Ladyman (2011) and his contribution to this
volume.
29. See Rik Peels (2019).
19
Introduction • 19
deeply problematic. For scientific knowledge depends in many ways

on extra-scientific knowledge, for instance, on what we know through
perception, such as that the thermometer now reads 118 degrees
Fahrenheit. Without such extra-scientific knowledge it is hard to see
how science could even get started. (Van Woudenberg 2013: 26)
Again, though, the adherent of scientism could push back. Following Otto
Neurath (1973: 199), she could argue that the results of science don’t need
to be based on nonscientific beliefs, for science systematically checks and
replaces any nonscientific beliefs on which it initially might depend, in the
process transforming them to scientific beliefs that are sufficiently reliable to
qualify as rational belief or knowledge. The idea is that we can use scientific
beliefs from one area to scientifically test nonscientific beliefs in another area.
In doing so systematically, we eventually make all of our beliefs more reli-
able, in the same way as we can replace the planks of a ship one by one, each
time relying on the other planks to keep us afloat. One of us has explored this
suggestion and similar ones elsewhere (Peels 2018).
Fourth, there is the argument from nonscientific assumptions and principles
in science. The basic idea is this: There are certain principles that are indispen-
sable for doing science, but that are not themselves the result of the science.
These principles are held to be indispensable for science in the sense that if
they cannot be rationally believed or known, then science cannot deliver ra-
tional belief or knowledge. According to Mary Midgley, for instance:
Science cannot stand alone. We cannot believe its propositions

without first believing in a great many other . . . things, such as the
existence of the external world, the reliability of our senses, memory
and informants, and the validity of logic. If we do believe in these
things, we already have a world far wider than that of science. (Midgley
1992: 108)
Among the basic assumptions and principles that scientists would seem to
have to embrace in order to do science are epistemic theses—for example, that
our cognitive faculties, such as perception or logical reasoning, are broadly re-
liable or that we should prefer those theories that exhibit virtues such as sim-
plicity, explanatory power, or broad scope to a greater extent—metaphysical
theses—for example, that the world behaves in a regular way, has done so for
times immemorial, and will continue to do so—and semantic principles—for
example, that if a name refers to a thing and another name refers to a thing,
20
and the things referred to have all the same properties, then the names refer
to numerically the same thing.30
I.7 Preview of the Chapters

Having explained why scientism should be on the philosopher’s agenda,
sketched its prehistory, discussed an argument in its favor, and mentioned
four challenges that it faces, in this final section we present a preview of the
coming chapters.
As we said above, scientism is an elusive participant in the intellectual life.
It is not only natural but also necessary, then, to try to pinpoint it more before
it is developed, defended, and assessed further. Hence, the first two chapters
lay the conceptual groundwork for the rest of the volume. Both Rik Peels
and Mikael Stenmark develop detailed overviews of what scientism is and
what it could be. Rik Peels’s chapter focuses on distinguishing a great variety
of scientistic theses and clarifying their logical and conceptual connections.
In doing so, it offers a conceptual roadmap to scientism. According to Peels,
a key scientistic thesis is that the boundaries of the natural sciences should
be expanded in order to include academic disciplines or realms of life that
are widely considered not to belong to the realm of the natural sciences. He
furthermore introduces a number of helpful distinctions that can serve to
specify different versions of scientism: (a) academic or universal scientism;
(b) eliminative, methodological, epistemological, ontological, moral, or ex-
istential scientism; (c) full or partial scientism; and (d) in the case of moral
and existential scientism: replacement or illusion scientism. Both would-be
proponents and critics of scientism can help themselves to these distinctions
to clarify their positions and targets.
In addition to surveying different versions of scientism and richly
illustrating them through quotations from the literature, Mikael Stenmark’s
chapter also widens the perspective by contrasting scientism to rival and
equally encompassing views. In particular, Stenmark suggests that that lib-
eral naturalism, humanism, social constructionism, religious naturalism, and
theism are all best understood as rivals to scientism. That does not mean that
they are necessarily incompatible with scientism on all accounts, but they
do contain elements that are in serious tension with the epistemological and
ontological commitments of many versions of scientism or with scientism’s
30. For these and similar examples, see Van Woudenberg (2011: 177).
21
Introduction • 21
tendency to be suspicious about everything in reality that cannot be described,

understood, or explained by the natural sciences.
The next three chapters develop scientism and defend it against objections.
Alex Rosenberg, perhaps the most vocal champion of a strong version of
scientism, expounds his preferred version of scientism and then takes on
two major challenges to the view: the epistemology of mathematics and
eliminativism about cognition. While Rosenberg doesn’t claim to provide
definitive answers to how we can come to have knowledge of the necessary
truths of mathematics, he does sketch the contours of a possible fictionalist
solution that is consistent with scientistic commitments. According to
Rosenberg, the second challenge is just as important, but often goes unno-
ticed, even among those who endorse scientism, since they don’t recognize
their own commitment to eliminativism. To confront it, Rosenberg describes
the outlines for a thoroughly scientistic account of intentionality and se-
mantic evaluability. He admits that more work needs to be done to develop
his sketches, but that is as it should be for the adherent of scientism.
James Ladyman is on record as a defender of a scientistic stance in meta-
physics, according to which “serious metaphysics” shouldn’t rely on intuitions
and simplified toy examples and models, but should always have its starting
point in established physics. In his contribution to this volume, he proposes a
form of scientism as a belief-forming stance with universal scope. This version
of scientism, however, has a humane face. According to him, it is not dog-
matic or uncritical, nor does it ignore the actual limitations to current sci-
entific knowledge. There are other modes of inquiry that deserve epistemic
respect, and scientists should not be deferred to about matters beyond their
expertise. Nonetheless—and this is where scientism’s real bite is—no a priori
limits should be placed on what science can study and we cannot say in ad-
vance what the limits of future science will be. Where science conflicts with
common sense, religion, and tradition, science should be regarded as author-
itative for the purposes of education and public policy as well as objective
inquiry; and scientific knowledge is even relevant to moral and political de-
liberation. This is the core of Ladyman’s scientism.
Hilary Kornblith cashes out his preferred version of scientism in terms
of Wilfrid Sellars’s well-known distinction between “the scientific image”: of
our place in the world, and “the manifest image.” While Sellars wanted to join
these views together in spite of their apparent conflict, Kornblith thinks we
ought to endorse features of the manifest image only to the extent that they
are part of the scientific image. He then explores what this version of scientism
entails for how we should think of doxastic deliberation, that is, deliberation
2
about what to believe. He argues that the manifest image of such deliberation
is flatly in conflict with the best current scientific theorizing about the nature
of deliberative processes. Hence, he argues, we should embrace the scientific
account and reject our first-personal view of deliberation as illusory.
The next three chapters turn a critical eye to scientism. In popular
discussions of scientism, it is often suggested that adherents of scientism
are unduly dogmatic, closed-minded, or intellectually arrogant. Ian James
Kidd employs the framework of virtue epistemology to examine this charge
in more detail, arguing that it sticks. Like several of scientism’s proponents,
Kidd characterizes scientism as a stance and then argues that the epistemi-
cally vicious dispositions mentioned above are demonstrably among the
components of a scientistic stance, so that those who adopt it can be led to
manifest these vices. He concludes that determining whether or not any given
stance is indeed vicious requires sensitivity to the ontology of that stance and
the psychology of the agents who adopt them.
René van Woudenberg takes a critical look at two prominent phil-
osophical defenses of epistemological scientism in the literature, one by
Alex Rosenberg in his book The Atheist’s Guide to Reality; and the other by
Don Ross, James Ladyman, and David Spurrett in Every Thing Must Go.
Rosenberg’s scientism is the view that the methods of science are the only re-
liable ways to secure knowledge of anything. Van Woudenberg argues that the
view faces many counterexamples, that Rosenberg’s arguments in its favor are
weak, and that it is self-referentially incoherent. Scientism as propounded in
Every Thing Must Go is the view that science is our only guide to the objective
features of the world. The worked-out view includes, among other things, an
institutional demarcation criterion to distinguish bona fide science from non-
science, a non-positivistic form of verificationism, and the idea that scientism
should not be understood as a thesis but as a stance. Van Woudenberg argues
that this view, too, faces counterexamples. He also raises problems for the in-
stitutional demarcation criterion, the proposed neo-verificationism, and the
idea of scientism as a stance.
Jeroen de Ridder’s chapter embodies a more indirect approach to
criticizing scientism. He doesn’t take on a specific version of scientism, but
defends an idea that goes against the spirit of many forms of scientism, to wit
the idea that science has limits. He does so first by investigating the distinct
nature of scientific knowledge, as contrasted with other kinds of knowledge.
De Ridder develops two plausible and mutually compatible proposals for
understanding what’s special about scientific knowledge: the idea that scien-
tific knowledge is high-grade knowledge and Bas van Fraassen’s proposal that
23
Introduction • 23
scientific knowledge is objectifying knowledge. He then investigates what these

two proposals entail for whether scientific knowledge is limited. It turns out
that, on both proposals, there are various in-principle limits to what can be
known scientifically. This of course spells trouble for any form of scientism
denying this.
The final four chapters explore what scientism might mean for morality,
religious belief, and philosophy, and what the prospects and problems are for
scientistic views in these areas.
Alvin Plantinga considers the relation between scientism and religious,
particularly Christian, belief. After surveying several possible versions of sci-
entism and arguing that most of them are false, he homes in on an apparently
more moderate version of scientism: the idea that when any nonscientific be-
lief comes into conflict with a scientific belief, it is always the scientific belief
that should prevail. Plantinga argues that this form of scientism, too, fails.
Building on his well-known work in religious epistemology, he explains how
it can be reasonable to hold on to Christian belief even when it fits ill with
scientific orthodoxy. It turns out that the moderate scientism in question isn’t
so moderate on closer inspection, for it implies that Christian belief is false.
According to Plantinga, the right way to think about things is that science is a
wonderful institution and a wonderful source of knowledge or warranted be-
lief; but it is not our only source of knowledge about ourselves and the world.
William FitzPatrick explores how the scientific study of morality, as
carried out in cognitive science and moral psychology, is relevant to matters
in normative ethics and meta-ethics. For the proponent of scientism, there
can be no doubt that science is highly relevant here. After all, it is pretty
much all we have to go on, according to her view. But Fitzpatrick takes a
dimmer view. First, he looks at two prominent recent attempts to show
that experimental work in moral psychology debunks widely held ethical or
meta-ethical intuitions, one by Joshua Green, the other by Shaun Nichols.
Fitzpatrick argues that the cases they make for this sort of strong impact of ex-
perimental work on moral philosophy suffer from a problematic form of sci-
entism and ultimately fail; indeed, that they fail for reasons that likely apply
to other projects with similar ambitions as well. Next, he sets out to clarify the
nature of the dialectical situation with respect to empirically driven attempts
to debunk traditional philosophical views, which leads to a general challenge
to such debunking projects going forward. He ends by suggesting a more
modest and plausible role for experimental work in connection with moral
philosophy—one that is still significant, particularly for some audiences, but
which gives up the overreaching debunking ambitions.
24
While scientism has not received much sustained philosophical attention,

a number of views in its neighborhood have, among them physicalism, mate-
rialism, and empiricism. In fact, these views have sometimes been accused of
being scientistic in the pejorative sense of putting too much trust in science.
In her chapter, Alyssa Ney investigates whether this charge is correct in the
case of physicalism. She shows how standard formulations of physicalism,
which take it to be something like the view that the world is in totality the
way physics says it is, can indeed make physicalism look like a reductionistic
form of scientism. But, she argues, more subtle formulations of physicalism,
which we have independent reason to prefer, reveal the difference between
physicalism and scientism. Physicalism neither entails imperialistic claims
about the scope of physics, nor exclusivist claims about science being our only
mode of discovery.
The final chapter considers what scientism might mean for philosophy.
In particular, Wesley Buckwalter and John Turri recommend a moderate
form of scientism in philosophy. Their moderate scientism is the view that
empirical science can help answer questions in nonscientific disciplines. The
chapter showcases several ways that science has contributed to research in
epistemology, action theory, ethics, philosophy of language, and philosophy
of mind; and it reviews several ways that science has contributed to our under-
standing of how philosophers make judgments and decisions. On the basis of
these rich inductive grounds, Buckwalter and Turri conclude that the case for
moderate philosophical scientism is strong: Scientific practice has promoted
significant progress in philosophy and its further development should be
welcomed and encouraged. Needless to say, such moderate scientism has no
tendency to support stronger imperialistic or exclusivist forms of scientism.31
References
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Expiration Date. New York: Current.
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31. This publication was made possible through the support of a grant from the Templeton
World Charity Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors
and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Templeton World Charity Foundation.
25
Introduction • 25
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Introduction • 27
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28
1 A CONCEPTUAL MAP OF SCIENTISM
Rik Peels
1.1 Introduction
Few people living in Western societies today would deny that
science has great value. It is also widely believed, though, that
the scope and value of science can be exaggerated; science has its
boundaries and those boundaries should not be crossed—below,
I say more about how this is to be understood. Philosophers or
scientists who do cross what are thought to be the boundaries are
often referred to as subscribing to or practicing scientism. Here is a
quote from the American historian of science William Provine that
many would consider as an instance—or even several instances—of
scientism:
Modern science directly implies that the world is organized

strictly in accordance with mechanistic principles. There
are no purposive principles whatsoever in nature. There are
no gods and no designing forces that are rationally detect-
able. . . . modern science directly implies that there are no
inherent moral or ethical laws, no absolute guiding princi-
ples for human society. . . . human beings are marvelously
complex machines. . . . when we die, we die and that is the
end of us. . . . Free will as it is traditionally conceived—the
freedom to make uncoerced and unpredictable choices
among alternative possible courses of action—simply does
not exist. . . . There is no ultimate meaning for humans.
(Provine 1988: 27–29)
I said that many would describe this as a clear case of scientism. But
precisely what is scientism? If we consider the passage just quoted,
29
A Conceptual Map of Scientism • 29
we discover a wide variety of different claims: Science implies that the world
is purely mechanistic; that free will, as traditionally conceived, is an illusion;
that there is no ultimate meaning for us; and so on. This gives rise to all sorts
of questions. Is each of these theses an instance of scientism? Are there other
kinds of scientism that are not found in this quote? Is there an underlying
basic idea in virtue of which these claims are widely considered to be instances
of scientism? How do different kinds of scientism relate to each other?
The aim of this chapter is to provide a framework for answering questions
like these by construing a conceptual map of scientism. By “scientism” I mean,
roughly, the view that the boundaries of science should be expanded in order
to encompass other academic disciplines and/or other realms of reality, such
as human cognition in general or morality. What such expansion amounts to
depends on the variety of scientism in question. It can mean, for instance, that
only science can tell us what exists or that science should replace common
sense in a domain like morality. In what follows, I confine myself to the natural
sciences, such as biology, physics, and cosmology, because paradigm instances
of scientism are cashed out in terms of these disciplines, even though one
could make similar claims for disciplines such as sociology and economics.
To get sharper into focus what I mean by “scientism,” let me formulate
three constraints on something to count as an instance of scientism. These
constraints are based on how words like “scientism” and “scientistic” are
widely used.
First, I treat scientism as a particular claim or thesis. This is not the only way
one could think of scientism. One might also think of scientism as some kind
of attitude, affection, stance, or still something else.1 For two reasons, I none-
theless prefer to treat scientism as a thesis. First, as evidenced by the quotations
given in this chapter, scientism as a thesis is frequently found in the writings
of scientists and philosophers. Second, it seems that every attitude, affection,
or stance, at least if it is to be up to discussion, can be translated into a thesis,
namely, the thesis that it is good to have that affection, attitude, or stance. No
matter how one understands “scientism,” then, it will always imply some sci-
entistic thesis or other.
Second, every instance of scientism puts the natural sciences or even a spe-
cific natural science, such as physics, center stage. Each case of scientism, then,
is a claim about the relation that should obtain between the natural sciences
1. See, for instance, Haack (2007: 17–18); Rescher (1999: 1); Ross, Ladyman, and Spurrett
(2007: 57–59).
30
30 • Rik Peels
on the one hand and something else—another academic discipline or an-

other realm of reality—on the other. This means that the claim that scientists
themselves are somehow superior to other people falls outside the scope of this
chapter, even though this claim might in some way be related to scientism
(see Snow 1972: 11, 48).
Third, even though the word “scientism” is often used pejoratively, it need
not be. For instance, Don Ross, James Ladyman, and David Spurrett, in Every
Thing Must Go say expressis verbis that they adhere to scientism and go on to
defend it (Ross et al. 2007: 1–65; see also Rosenberg 2011: 6). Thus, to claim
that something is an instance of scientism is not thereby to take a positive
or negative stance toward the relevant assertion.2 In fact, I think that most
philosophers and scientists will embrace at least some of the weaker versions
of scientism described in this chapter. Thus, a thesis is an instance of scientism
only if it is formulated in such a way that it is up to discussion.
When I say that I provide a conceptual map of scientism, I mean that I an-
alyze the varieties in which scientism comes and how these varieties relate
to each other, in order consequently to display the results of these analyses
in a diagram. In doing so, I contrast my view with that of others who have
written on scientism, especially Mikael Stenmark, since his valuable work on
scientism is both detailed and influential.3 It is not my aim to draw a map of
all possible instances of scientism. Rather, I aim to draw a map of the most
important varieties of scientism that we find in the literature. In construing
the map I use the words “variety,” “version,” and “instance” of scientism. By
a “variety of scientism” I mean a species of the genus scientism: The variety
entails scientism, but not vice versa. By a “version of scientism” I mean a par-
ticular way of understanding a variety of scientism. And by an “instance of
scientism” I mean a particular person’s written or spoken verbal expression of
her scientism.
The project of providing a conceptual map of scientism is important for at
least two reasons. First, the word “scientism” is often used in science, philos-
ophy, and in the wider culture and frequently in a pejorative sense. However,
it is often unclear what is meant when someone is labeled as an adherent of
scientism. We can judge whether such labeling is correct only if we have some
grip on the term “scientism” and the varieties in which it comes. Second, it
2. Stevenson and Byerly (1995: 212).

3. For a recent version of his views on the varieties of scientism and how scientism relates to
various alternatives, see chapter 2 of this volume.
31
A Conceptual Map of Scientism • 31
is important to see what an adherent of a particular variety of scientism is

committed to. If a particular variety of scientism commits one to another va-
riety with unpalatable implications, the position might be less plausible than
initially thought. Or an adherent of scientism might falsely assume that a par-
ticular kind of scientism commits her to another kind of scientism. Whether
this is indeed the case is something that the conceptual map will tell us.
This chapter is structured as follows. First, I sketch the main varieties of
scientism. I distinguish between academic and universal scientism. Academic
scientism comes in two varieties: methodological and eliminative scientism;
whereas universal scientism comes in four varieties: epistemological, ontolog-
ical, moral, and existential scientism. Subsequently, I show how these varieties
relate to each other. A defense of each of the entailments can be found in the
Appendix to this chapter. Next, I argue that there is a nontrivial set of neces-
sary and sufficient conditions that a claim should meet in order to count as an
instance of scientism. Finally, I draw the threads of this chapter together by
giving four conclusions.
1.2 Varieties of Scientism
1.2.1 Academic Scientism 1 and 2: Methodological and
Eliminative Scientism
The main distinction that we need to make is that between what I call aca-
demic scientism and universal scientism. Academic scientism is restricted to
the academic disciplines,4 whereas universal scientism is meant to apply both
inside and outside of the academy. We will see in a moment what these claims
amount to.
The first distinction we need to make with respect to academic scientism
is between methodological and eliminative scientism. Whereas the method-
ological variety grants that, say, philosophy and psychology are proper aca-
demic disciplines that ask sensible questions, it asserts that they are so only
if they adopt the methods of the natural sciences, such as observation and
experimentation. Thus, the traditional questions of, say, theology or philos-
ophy, can be answered only by using the methods of the natural sciences.5
The eliminative version is stronger in that it claims that academic disciplines
4. Hayek (1979), for instance, treats scientism as a claim about natural science and other aca-
demic disciplines.
5. Thus also Stenmark (2001: 3).
32
32 • Rik Peels
other than the natural sciences, such as the humanities, have nothing to add
to the natural sciences if properly carried out. The questions asked in, say,
psychology and philosophy, are nonsensical or obscure. We should abandon
the subject matters of these disciplines altogether. For example, Otto Neurath
gives a rather rhetorical statement of his view that metaphysics should be
given up in favor of physics when he says:
how does the elimination of metaphysics proceed in practice? Men are

induced to give up senseless sentences and freed from metaphysics. But
must this always remain so? Must everyone in turn go through meta-
physics as through a childhood disease—perhaps the earlier he gets it,
the less dangerous it is—to be led back to unified science? No. Every
child can in principle learn to apply the language of physicalism correctly
from the outset, first in a crude form, then in a more refined and precise
way. (Neurath 1987: 9)
Neurath is rather explicit about his eliminative academic scientism. Others,

such as Patricia Churchland and Stephen Stich, are less explicit. They argue
that, since no consensus is forthcoming after two thousand years of discus-
sion, we should abandon traditional philosophical problems, such as how
knowledge is to be analyzed.6 These problems should be left aside altogether,
since they cannot be solved by means of natural science. The assumption here
is, clearly, that only natural science delivers what we are looking for (con-
sensus) and that we should, therefore, give up any academic disciplines that
do not employ the methods of natural science.7
A second distinction that is relevant here is that between partial and full
academic scientism. Whereas partial academic scientism makes a scientistic
claim about only some of the academic disciplines that are distinct from the
6. See, for instance, Churchland (1987) and Stich (1983). Haack (1995: 158–181) characterizes
these two views as revolutionary scientism.
7. In the same spirit, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow open their book The Grand
Design by asking:
What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need
a creator? . . . Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is
dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly
physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for
knowledge. (Hawking and Mlodinow 2010: 5)
Hughes (2012: 33) takes methodological scientism to be crucial to scientism generally.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
con él como con los otros; y
vuelta á Diana dijo:
Pregunta.
Decí, ¿cuál es el maestro
que su dueño le es criado,
está como loco atado,
sin habilidades diestro
y sin doctrina letrado?
Cuando cerca le tenía,
sin oille le entendía,
y tan sabio se mostraba,
que palabra no me hablaba
y mil cosas me decía.
Yo me tuviera por dichosa, dijo

Diana, de quedar vencida de ti,
amada Ismenia; mas pues lo soy
en la hermosura y en las demás
perfeciones, no me dará agora
mucha alabanza vencer el
propósito que tuviste de
enlazarme con tu pregunta. Dos
años habrá que un médico de la
ciudad de León vino á curar á mi
padre de cierta enfermedad, y
como un día tuviesse en las
manos un libro, tomésele yo y
púseme á leerle. Y viniéndome á
la memoria los provechos que se
sacan de los libros, le dije que me
parescían maestros mudos, que
sin hablar eran entendidos. Y él á
este propósito me dijo esta
pregunta, donde algunas
extrañezas y excelencias de los
libros están particularmente
notadas. Con toda verdad, dijo
Ismenia, no hay quien pueda
vencerte, á lo menos las pastoras
no tendremos ánimo para passar
más adelante en la pelea; no sé
yo estas damas si tendrán armas
que puedan derribarte. Alcida,
que hasta entonces había callado,
gozando de oir y ver las músicas,
danzas y juegos, y de mirar y
hablar á su querido Marcelio,
quiso también travessar en aquel
juego, y dijo: Pues las pastoras
has rendido, Diana, no es razón
que nosotras quedemos en salvo.
Bien sé que no menos adivinarás
mi pregunta que las otras, pero
quiero decirla porque será
possible que contente. Díjomela
un patrón de una nave, cuando yo
navegaba de Nápoles á España,
y la encomendé á la memoria, por
parescerme no muy mala, y dice
desta suerte:
Pregunta.
¿Quién jamás caballo vido
que, por extraña manera,
sin jamás haber comido,
con el viento sostenido,
se le iguale en la carrera?
Obra muy grandes hazañas,
y en sus corridas extrañas
va arrastrando el duro
pecho,
sus riendas, por más
provecho,
metidas en sus entrañas.
Un rato estuvo Diana pensando,

oída esta pregunta y hecho el
discurso que para declararla era
menester, y consideradas las
partes della, al fin resolviéndose,
dijo: Razón era, hermosa dama,
que de tu mano quedasse yo
vencida, y que quien se rinde á tu
gentileza se rindiesse á tu
discreción, y por ella se tuviesse
por dichosa. Si por el caballo de
tu enigma no se entiende la nave,
yo confiesso que no la sé
declarar. Harto más vencida
quedo yo, dijo Alcida, de tu
respuesta que tú de mi pregunta,
pues confessando no saber
entendella subtilmente la
declaraste. De ventura he
acertado, dijo Diana, y no de
saber, que á buen tino dije
aquello, y no por pensar que en
ello acertaba. Cualquier
acertamiento, dijo Alcida, se ha
de esperar de tan buen juicio;
pero yo quiero que adevines á mi
hermana Clenarda un enigma que
sabe, que no me paresce malo:
no sé si agora se le acordará. Y
luego vuelta á Clenarda le dijo:
Hazle, hermana, á esta avisada
pastora aquella demanda que en
nuestra ciudad heciste un día, si
te acuerdas, á Berintio y
Clomenio, nuestros primos,
estando en casa de Elisonia en
conversación. Soy contenta, dijo
Clenarda, que memoria tengo
della, y tenía intención de decilla,
y dice deste modo:
Pregunta.
Decidme, señores, ¿cuál ave
volando
tres codos en alto jamás se
levanta,
con pies más de treinta
subiendo y bajando,
con alas sin plumas el aire
azotando,
ni come, ni bebe, ni grita, ni
canta;
Del áspera muerte vecina
allegada,
con piedras que arroja, nos
hiere y maltrata,
amiga es de gente captiva y
malvada,
y á muertes y robos contino
vezada,
esconde en las aguas la
gente que mata?
Diana entonces dijo: Esta

pregunta no la adivinara yo si no
hubiera oído la declaración della á
un pastor de mi aldea que había
navegado. No sé si tengo dello
memoria, mas parésceme que
dijo que por ella se entendía la
galera, que estando en medio de
las peligrosas aguas, está vecina
de la muerte, y á ella y robos está
vezada, echando los muertos en
el mar. Por los pies me dijo que
se entendían los remos, por las
alas las velas y por las piedras
que tira las pelotas de artillería.
En fin, dijo Clenarda, que todas
habíamos de decir por un igual,
porque nadie se fuesse alabando.
Con toda verdad, Diana, que tu
extremado saber me tiene
extrañamente maravillada, y no
veo premio que á tan gran
merescimiento sea bastante, sino
el que tienes en ser mujer de
Syreno. Estas y otras pláticas y
cortesías passaron, cuando
Felicia, que de ver el aviso, la
gala, la crianza y comedimiento
de Diana espantada había
quedado, sacó de su dedo un
riquíssimo anillo con una piedra
de gran valor, que ordinariamente
traía, y dándosele en premio de
su destreza, le dijo: Este servirá
por señal de lo que por ti entiendo
hacer: guárdale muy bien, que á
su tiempo hará notable provecho.
Muchas gracias hizo Diana á
Felicia por la merced, y por ella le
besó las manos, y lo mesmo hizo
Syreno. El cual acabadas las
cortesías y agradescimientos dijo:
Una cosa he notado en las
preguntas que aquí se han
propuesto, que la mayor parte
dellas han dicho las pastoras y
damas, y los hombres se han
tanto enmudescido, que
claramente han mostrado que en
cosas delicadas no tienen tanto
voto como las mujeres. D. Felix
entonces burlando dijo: No te
maravilles que en agudeza nos
lleven ventaja, pues en las demás
perfecciones las excedemos. No
pudo sufrir Belisa la burla de Don
Felix, pensando por ventura que
lo decía de veras, y volviendo por
las mujeres dijo: Queremos
nosotras, Don Felix, ser
aventajadas, y en ello mostramos
nuestro valor, subjetándonos de
grado á la voluntad y saber de los
hombres. Pero no faltan mujeres
que puedan estar á parangón con
los más señalados varones: que
aunque el oro esté escondido ó
no conoscido, no deja de tener su
valor. Pero la verdad tiene tanta
fuerza, que nuestras alabanzas
os las hace publicar á vosotros,
que mostráis ser nuestros
enemigos. No estaba en tu
opinión Florisia, pastora de
grande sabiduría y habilidad, que
un día en mi aldea, en unas
bodas, donde había
muchedumbre de pastores y
pastoras, que de los vecinos y
apartados lugares para la fiesta
se habían allegado, al son de un
rabel y unas chapas, que dos
pastores diestramente tañían,
cantó una canción en defensión y
alabanza de las mujeres, que no
sólo á ellas, pero á los hombres,
de los cuales allí decía harto mal,
sobradamente contentó. Y si
mucho porfías en tu parescer, no
será mucho decírtela, por
derribarte de tu falsa opinión.
Rieron todos del enojo que Belisa
había mostrado, y en ello
passaron algunos donaires. Al fin
el viejo Eugerio y el hijo
Polydoro, porque no se
perdiesse la ocasión de gozar de
tan buena música, como de
Belisa se esperaba, le dixeron:
Pastora, la alabanza y defensa á
las mujeres les es justamente
debida, y á nosotros el oilla con tu
delicada voz suavemente
recitada. Pláceme, dijo Belisa,
aunque hay cosas ásperas contra
los hombres, pero quiera Dios
que de todas las coplas me
acuerde; mas comenzaré á decir
que yo confío que, cantándolas, el
mesmo verso me las reducirá á la
memoria. Luego Arsileo, viendo
su Belisa apercibida para cantar,
comenzó á tañer el rabel, á cuyo
son ella recitó el cantar oído á
Florisia, que decía desta manera:
Canto de Florisia.
Salga fuera el verso airado
con una furia espantosa,
muéstrese el pecho
esforzado,
el espíritu indignado
y la lengua rigurosa.
Porque la gente bestial,
que, parlando á su sabor,
de mujeres dice mal,
á escuchar venga otro tal
y, si es possible, peor.
Tú, que el vano pressumir

tienes ya de tu cosecha,
hombre vezado á mentir,
¿qué mal puedes tú decir
de bien que tanto
aprovecha?
Mas de mal harto crescido
la mujer ocasión fué,
dando al mundo el
descreído,
que tras de habelle parido
se rebela sin por qué.
Que si á luz no la sacara,

tuviera menos enojos,
porque ansí no la infamara,
y en fin cuervo no criara
que le sacasse los ojos.
¿Qué varón ha padescido,
aunque sea un tierno padre,
las passiones que ha
sentido
la mujer por el marido
y por el hijo la madre?
¡Ved las madres con qué

amores,
qué regalos, qué blanduras
tratan los hijos traidores,
que les pagan sus dolores
con dobladas amarguras!
¡Qué recelos, qué cuidados
tienen por los crudos hijos;
qué pena en verlos
penados,
y en ver sus buenos
estados,
qué cumplidos regocijos!
¡Qué gran congoja les da

si el marido un daño tiene,
y si en irse puesto está,
qué dolor cuando se va,
qué pesar cuando no viene!
Mas los hombres engañosos
no agradescen nuestros
duelos:
antes son tan maliciosos,
que á cuidados amorosos
les ponen nombre de celos.
Y es que como los malvados

al falso amor de costumbre
están contino vezados,
ser muy de veras amados
les paresce pesadumbre.
Y cierto, pues por amarlos
denostadas nos sentimos,
mejor nos fuera olvidarlos,
ó en dejarlos de mirarlos,
no acordarnos si los vimos.
Pero donoso es de ver

que el de más mala manera,
en no estar una mujer
toda hecha á su placer,
le dice traidora y fiera.
Luego veréis ser nombradas
desdeñosas las modestas
y las castas mal criadas,
soberbias las recatadas
y crueles las honestas.
Ojalá á todas cuadraran

essos deshonrados
nombres,
que si ningunas amaran,
tantas dellas no quedaran
engañadas de los hombres.
Que muestran perder la vida,
si algo no pueden haber,
pero luego en ser habida
la cosa vista ó querida,
no hay memoria de querer.
Fíngense tristes cansados

de estar tanto tiempo vivos,
encarescen sus cuidados,
nómbranse desventurados,
ciegos, heridos, captivos.
Hacen de sus ojos mares,
nombran llamas sus
tormentos,
cuentan largos sus pesares,
los suspiros á millares
y las lágrimas á cuentos.
Ya se figuran rendidos,
ya se fingen valerosos,
ya señores, ya vencidos,
alegres estando heridos
y en la cárcel venturosos.
Maldicen sus buenas suertes,
menosprecian el vivir;
y en fin, ellos son tan
fuertes,
que passan doscientas
muertes
y no acaban de morir.
Dan y cobran, sanan, hieren

la alma, el cuerpo, el
corazón,
gozan, penan, viven,
mueren,
y en cuanto dicen y quieren
hay extraña confusión.
Y por esso cuando amor
me mostraba Melibeo,
contábame su dolor,
yo respondía: Pastor,
ni te entiendo ni te creo.
Hombres, ved cuán

justamente
el quereros se difiere,
pues consejo es de
prudente
no dar crédito al que miente
ni querer al que no quiere.
Pues de hoy más no nos
digáis
fieras, crudas y homicidas;
que no es bien que alegres
vais,
ni que ricos os hagáis
con nuestras honras y vidas.
Porque si acaso os miró

la más honesta doncella,
ó afablemente os habló,
dice el hombre que la vió:
Desvergonzada es aquélla.
Y ansí la pastora y dama
de cualquier modo padesce,
pues vuestra lengua la llama
desvergonzada, si os ama,
y cruel, si os aborresce.
Peor es que nos tenéis

por tan malditas y fuertes,
que en cuantos males
habéis,
culpa á nosotras ponéis
de los desastres y muertes.
Vienen por vuestra simpleza
y no por nuestra hermosura,
que á Troya causó tristeza,
no de Helena la belleza,
mas de Paris la locura.
¿Pues por qué de

deshonestas
fieramente nos tratáis,
si vosotros con las fiestas
importunas y molestas
reposar no nos dejáis?
Que á nuestras honras y
estados
no habéis respetos algunos,
dissolutos, mal mirados,
cuando más desengañados,
entonces más importunos.
Y venís todos á ser

pesados de tal manera,
que queréis que la mujer
por vos se venga á perder
y que os quiera aunque no
quiera.
Ansí conquistáis las vidas
de las mujeres que fueron
más buenas y recogidas:
de modo que las perdidas
por vosotros se perdieron.
¿Mas con qué versos diré

las extrañas perfecciones?
de qué modo alabaré
la constancia, amor y fe
que está en nuestros
corazones?
Muestran quilates subidos
las que amor tan fino tratan,
que los llantos y gemidos
por los difuntos maridos
con propria muerte rematan.
Y si Hippólyto en bondad
fué persona soberana,
por otra parte mirad
muerta por la castidad
Lucrecia, noble romana.
Es valor cual fué ninguno
que aquel mancebo gentil
desprecie el ruego
importuno,
mas Hippólyto fué uno
y Lucrecias hay dos mil.
Puesta aparte la belleza

en las cosas de doctrina,
á probar nuestra viveza
basta y sobra la destreza
de aquella Sapho y Corina.
Y ansí los hombres letrados
con engañosa cautela,
soberbios en sus estados,
por no ser aventajados
nos destierran de la
escuela.
Y si autores han contado

de mujeres algún mal,
no descresce nuestro
estado,
pues los mesmos han
hablado
de los hombres otro tal.
Y esto poca alteración
causa en nuestros
meresceres,
que forzado es de razon
que en lo que escribe un
varón
se diga mal de mujeres.
Pero allí mesmo hallaréis

mujeres muy excelentes,
y si mirar lo queréis,
muchas honestas veréis
fieles, sabias y valientes.
Ellas el mundo hermosean
con discreción y belleza,
ellas los ojos recrean,
ellas el gozo acarrean
y destierran la tristeza.
Por ellas honra tenéis,

hombres de malas entrañas,
por ellas versos hacéis
y por ellas entendéis
en las valientes hazañas.
Luego los que os empleáis
en buscar vidas ajenas,
si de mujeres tratáis,
por una mala que halláis
no infaméis á tantas
buenas.
Y si no os pueden vencer
tantas que hay castas y
bellas,
mirad una que ha de ser
tal que sola ha de tener
cuanto alcanzan todas ellas.
Los más perfectos varones
sobrepujados los veo
de las muchas perfecciones
que della en pocas razones
un día Proteo.
Diciendo: En el suelo ibero,

en una edad fortunada
ha de nascer un lucero,
por quien Cynthia ver
espero
en la lumbre aventajada.
Y será una dama tal,
que volverá el mundo ufano,
su casta ilustre y real
haciendo más principal
que la suya el africano.
Alégrese el mundo ya,

y esté advertido todo
hombre
que de aquesta que vendrá
Castro el linaje será,
Doña Hieronyma el
nombre.
Con Bolea ha de tener
acabada perfección,
siendo encumbrada mujer
del gran vicecanciller
de los reinos de Aragón.
Viendo estos dos, no presuma

Roma igualar con Iberia,
mas de envidia se consuma
de ver que él excede á
Numa
y ella vale más que Egeria.
Vencerá á Porcia en bondad,
á Cornelia en discreción,
á Livia en la dignidad,
á Sulpicia en castidad
y en belleza á cuantas son.
Esto Proteo decía

y Eco á su voz replicaba;
la tierra y mar parecía
recebir nueva alegría
de la dicha que esperaba.
Pues de hoy más la gente
fiera
deje vanos pareceres,
pues cuando tantas no
hubiera,
ésta sola engrandesciera
el valor de las mujeres.
Parescieron muy bien las

alabanzas y defensas de las
mujeres y la gracia con que por
Belisa fueron cantadas, de lo cual
Don Felix quedó convencido,
Belisa contenta y Arsileo muy
ufano. Todos los hombres que allí
estaban confessaron que era
verdad cuanto en la canción
estaba dicho en favor de las
mujeres, no otorgando lo que en
ella había contra los varones,
especialmente lo que apuntaba
de los engaños, cautelas y
fingidas penas: antes dijeron ser
ordinariamente más firme su fe y
más encarescido su dolor de lo
que publicaban. Lo que más á
Arsileo contentó fué lo de la
respuesta de Florisia á Melibeo,
tanto por ser ella muy donosa y
avisada, como porque algunas
veces había oído á Belisa una
canción hecha sobre ella, de la
cual mucho se agradaba. Por lo
cual le rogó que en tan alegre día,
para contento de tan noble gente,
la cantasse, y ella, como no sabía
contradecir á su querido Arsileo,
aunque cansada del passado
cantar, al mesmo son la dijo, y era
esta:
Canción.
Contando está Melibeo
á Florisia su dolor,
y ella responde: Pastor,
El dice: Pastora mía,

mira con qué pena muero,
que de grado sufro y quiero
el dolor que no querría.
Arde y muérese el deseo,
tengo esperanza y temor.
Ella responde: Pastor,
El dice: El triste cuidado

tan agradable me ha sido,
que cuanto más padescido,
entonces más deseado.
Premio ninguno deseo,
y estoy sirviendo al Amor.
El dice: La dura muerte

deseara si no fuera
por la pena que me diera
dejar, pastora, de verte.
Pero triste, si te veo,
padezco muerte mayor.
El dice: Muero en mirarte
y en no verte estoy
penando;
cuando más te voy
buscando
más temor tengo de hallarte.
Como el antiguo Proteo
mudo figura y color.
El dice: Haber no pretendo

más bien del que la alma
alcanza,
porque aun con la
esperanza
me paresce que te ofendo.
Que mil deleites posseo
en tener por ti un dolor.
En tanto que Belisa cantó sus dos

cantares, Felicia había mandado
á una Nympha lo que había de
hacer para que allí se moviesse
una alegre fiesta, y ella lo supo
tan bien ejecutar, que al punto
que acababa la pastora de cantar
se sintieron en el río grandes
voces y alaridos, mezclados con
el ruido de las aguas. Vueltos
todos hacia allá, y llegándose á la
ribera, vieron venir río abajo doce
barcas en dos escuadras,
pintadas de muchos colores y
muy ricamente aderezadas: las
seis traían las velas de tornasol
blanco carmesí, y en las popas
sus estandartes de lo mesmo, y
las otras seis velas y banderas de
damasco morado, con bandas
amarillas. Traían los remos
hermosamente sobredorados y
venían de rosas y flores cubiertas
y adornadas. En cada una dellas
había seis Nymphas vestidas con
aljubas, es á saber: las de la una
escuadra de terciopelo carmesí
con franjas de plata, y las de la
otra de terciopelo morado, con
guarniciones de oro; sus brazos
arregazados, mostrando una
manga justa de tela de oro y
plata, sus escudos embrazados á
manera de valientes Amazonas.
Los remeros eran unos salvajes
coronados de rosas, amarrados á
los bancos con cadenas de plata.
Levantóse en ellos un gran
estruendo de clarines, chirimías,
cornetas y otras suertes de
música, á cuyo son entraron dos
á dos río abajo con un concierto
que causaba grande admiración.
Después desto se partieron en
dos escuadrones, y salió de cada
uno dellos un barco, quedando
los otros á una parte. En cada
cual de estos dos barcos venía un
salvaje vestido de los colores de
su parte, puestos los pies sobre la
proa, llevando un escudo que le

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Scientism: prospects and problems De

Jeroen de Ridder, Rik Peels,

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

Introduction: Putting Scientism on the Philosophical Agenda—​R ené

1. A Conceptual Map of Scientism—​R ik Peels 28

2. Scientism and Its Rivals—​M ikael Stenmark 57

3. Philosophical Challenges for Scientism (and How to Meet

4. Scientism with a Humane Face—​James Ladyman 106

5. Philosophy, Science, and Common Sense—​H ilary Kornblith 127

6. Is Scientism Epistemically Vicious?—​I an James Kidd 149

7. An Epistemological Critique of Scientism—​R ené van

8. Kinds of Knowledge, Limits of Science—​J eroen de Ridder 190

9. Scientism: Who Needs It?—​A lvin Plantinga 220

10. Cognitive Science and Moral Philosophy: Challenging Scientistic

11. Physicalism, Not Scientism—​A lyssa Ney 258

12. Moderate Scientism in Philosophy—​W esley Buckwalter

Wesley Buckwalter, University of Pittsburgh

Putting Scientism on the

René van Woudenberg, Rik Peels, and Jeroen de Ridder

2 • René van Woudenberg, Rik Peels, and Jeroen de Ridder

This volume aims to contribute to understanding scientism as an explicitly

I.2 Why Scientism Should Be on the

4 • René van Woudenberg, Rik Peels, and Jeroen de Ridder

simplified scientistic epistemology that is articulated and embraced by many

• Sam Harris’s book The Moral Landscape;

What is lacking in these discussions, however, is a careful and systematic eval-

6 • René van Woudenberg, Rik Peels, and Jeroen de Ridder

been established beyond doubt, some adherents of scientism risk having to

logical positivists. In a famous exhortation in his Enquiry Concerning Human

When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc

8 • René van Woudenberg, Rik Peels, and Jeroen de Ridder

10 • René van Woudenberg, Rik Peels, and Jeroen de Ridder

was argued to be self-​referentially incoherent: If one accepts it, one thereby

(a) theoretical and explanatory as opposed to practical (Nagel 1961: 1–​14);

12 • René van Woudenberg, Rik Peels, and Jeroen de Ridder

important indirect roles in science, for instance, in choosing which problems

(4) All propositions in S are true.

De Jong and Betti present the model as a reconstruction of an influential way

14 • René van Woudenberg, Rik Peels, and Jeroen de Ridder

contingent. There are other reasonable and historically prominent construals

I.5 Arguments for Scientism

22. Peels (2017) discusses 10 possible arguments for scientism.

16 • René van Woudenberg, Rik Peels, and Jeroen de Ridder

I.6 Arguments against Scientism

Scientism suffers from self-​referential problems. Not being a scientific

18 • René van Woudenberg, Rik Peels, and Jeroen de Ridder

And Mikael Stenmark reasons as follows:

How do you set up a scientific experiment to demonstrate that science

deeply problematic. For scientific knowledge depends in many ways

Science cannot stand alone. We cannot believe its propositions

20 • René van Woudenberg, Rik Peels, and Jeroen de Ridder

I.7 Preview of the Chapters

tendency to be suspicious about everything in reality that cannot be described,

22 • René van Woudenberg, Rik Peels, and Jeroen de Ridder

scientific knowledge is objectifying knowledge. He then investigates what these

24 • René van Woudenberg, Rik Peels, and Jeroen de Ridder

While scientism has not received much sustained philosophical attention,

26 • René van Woudenberg, Rik Peels, and Jeroen de Ridder

1 A CONCEPTUAL MAP OF SCIENTISM

Introduction: Putting Scientism on the Philosophical Agenda—R ené

1. A Conceptual Map of Scientism—R ik Peels 28

2. Scientism and Its Rivals—M ikael Stenmark 57

4. Scientism with a Humane Face—James Ladyman 106

5. Philosophy, Science, and Common Sense—H ilary Kornblith 127

6. Is Scientism Epistemically Vicious?—I an James Kidd 149

7. An Epistemological Critique of Scientism—R ené van

8. Kinds of Knowledge, Limits of Science—J eroen de Ridder 190

9. Scientism: Who Needs It?—A lvin Plantinga 220

11. Physicalism, Not Scientism—A lyssa Ney 258

12. Moderate Scientism in Philosophy—W esley Buckwalter

I.2 Why Scientism Should Be on the

was argued to be self-referentially incoherent: If one accepts it, one thereby

(a) theoretical and explanatory as opposed to practical (Nagel 1961: 1–14);

I.5 Arguments for Scientism

I.6 Arguments against Scientism

Scientism suffers from self-referential problems. Not being a scientific

I.7 Preview of the Chapters

on the one hand and something else—another academic discipline or an-