Scientism Quotes

• Science, at its core, is simply a method of practical logic that tests hypotheses against experience. Scientism, by contrast, is the worldview and value system that insists that the questions the scientific method can answer are the most important questions human beings can ask, and that the picture of the world yielded by science is a better approximation to reality than any other.

  John Michael Greer

  Reality, Important, Answers

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• The public has a distorted view of science because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries.

  Freeman Dyson

  Children, School, Views

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• Unlike scientism, science in the true sense of the word is open to unbiased investigation of any existing phenomena.

  Stanislav Grof

  Unbiased, Investigation

  Stanislav Grof (2000). “Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research”, p.230, SUNY Press

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• Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.

  Thomas Szasz

  Strong, Mistake, Men

  The Second Sin "Science and Scientism" (1973)

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• Science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries.

  Freeman Dyson

  Mystery, Exploration, Continuing

  "How We Know". Freeman Dyson's review of James Gleick's book "The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood" (2011), www.nybooks.com. March 10, 2011.

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• We live in a time of twin credulities: the hunger for the miraculous combined with a servile awe of science. The mating of the two gives us superstition plus scientism -- a Mongoloid metaphysic.

  Edward Abbey

  Two, Giving, Superstitions

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.13, RosettaBooks

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• We ask ourselves all kinds of questions, such as why does a peacock have such beautiful feathers, and we may answer that he needs the feathers to impress a female peacock, but then we ask ourselves, and why is there a peacock? And then we ask, why is there anything living? And then we ask, why is there anything at all? And if you tell some advocate of scientism that the answer is a secret, he will go white hot and write a book. But it is a secret. And the experience of living with the secret and thinking about it is in itself a kind of faith.

  Vaclav Havel

  Beautiful, Book, Writing

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• It is this claim to a monopoly of meaning, rather than any special scientific doctrine, that makes science and religion look like competitors today. Scientism emerged not as the conclusion of scientific argument but as a chosen element in a worldview - a vision that attracted people by its contrast with what went before - which is, of course, how people very often do make such decisions, even ones that they afterwards call scientific.

  Mary Midgley

  People, Decision, Vision

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• Insofar as he makes use of his healthy senses, man himself is the best and most exact scientific instrument possible. The greatest misfortune of modern physics is that its experiments have been set apart from man, as it were, physics refuses to recognize nature in anything not shown by artificial instruments, and even uses this as a measure of its accomplishments.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Science, Men, Healthy

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• I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  God, Faith, Christian

  As quoted by William Rees-Mogg in "The Times", April 4, 2005.

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• I never felt a feeling that I knew or could know to be unlike the feelings of other people. I never consciously thought, except after patterns that the world or my fellows set for me.

  Josiah Royce

  People, Feelings, World

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• Positivism stands or falls with the principle of scientism, that is that the meaning of knowledge is defined by what the sciences do and can thus be adequately explicated through the methodological analysis of scientific procedures.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Fall, Knowledge, Science

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• A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

  Francis Bacon

  Atheist, Philosophy, Men

  Essays "Of Atheism" (1625)

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• An enlightened trust in the sovereignty of human reason can be every bit as magical as the exploits of Merlin, and a faith in our capacity for limitless self-improvement just as much a wide-eyed superstition as a faith in leprechauns.

  Terry Eagleton

  Self, Superstitions, Improvement

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• Education is the most important thing you can have.

  Torrey Smith

  Important, Allocation, Important Things

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• Protestant Christianity, whether in its liberal or conservative garb, finds itself waking up each morning in bed with a deteriorating modern culture, between sheets with a raunchy sexual reductionism, despairing scientism, morally normless cultural relativism, and self-assertive individualism. We remain resident aliens, OF the world but not profoundly in it, dining at the banquet table of waning modernity without a whisper of table grace. We all wear biblical name tags (Joseph, David, and Sarah), but have forgotten what our Christian names mean.

  Thomas Oden

  Christian, Morning, Mean

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• Science and religion...are friends, not foes, in the common quest for knowledge. Some people may find this surprising, for there's a feeling throughout our society that religious belief is outmoded, or downright impossible, in a scientific age. I don't agree. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if people in this so-called 'scientific age' knew a bit more about science than many of them actually do, they'd find it easier to share my views.

  John Polkinghorne

  Religious, Knowledge, Science

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• An important tradition within westren philosophy believes in the primacy of natural science as a guide to truth. This is sometimes met with the charge that such an allegiance amounts to scientism - the view that the only things that really exist are those recognized by fundamental physical theory, and that the only forms of genuine knowledge are scientific ones.

  J. J. C. Smart

  Philosophy, Believe, Views

  J. J. C. Smart, J. J. Haldane (2008). “Atheism and Theism”, p.82, John Wiley & Sons

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• The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Inspirational, Revenge, Hatred

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• Democracies, unlike dictatorships, are forgiving and generous, but they cannot survive unless they fight.

  Jalal Talabani

  Fighting, Forgiving, Democracy

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• There was a long history of speculation that in quantum gravity, unlike Einstein's classical theory, it might be possible for the topology of spacetime to change.

  Edward Witten

  Change, Long, Might

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• The Greeks distinguished between good and bad behavior, language that enhanced or diminished persons. Being intoxicated with scientism, we fail to recognize that the seemingly technical terms used to identify psychiatric illnesses and interventions are simply dyphemisms and euphemisms.

  Thomas Szasz

  Greek, Language, Failing

  "The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary". Book by Thomas Szasz, 1990.

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• Pocahontas was the reason the Virginia colony didn't disappear, unlike some earlier attempts

  Brooks Robinson

  Virginia, Reason, Disappear

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• Being a philosophical naturalist does not mean that one thinks that science can provide all of the answers. That is scientism and that is wrong. I don't think a billion buckets of science could speak to the problems raised by the Tea Party. Being a philosophical naturalist does not mean that one thinks that the only truths are those of science. I think the claim just made in the last sentence is true but I don't think it is a claim of science. It means that you use science where you can and you respect and try to emulate its standards.

  Michael Ruse

  Party, Philosophical, Mean

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• It was a perfectly average well- adjusted childhood, not a bit unlike that of millions of other individuals.

  DeForest Kelley

  Average, Childhood, Individual

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