This meme has crossed my feed in a number of places lately. I’m sharing it for debate, not for approval or agreement. If you share from my post, please leave my commentary intact. This has been a public service announcement.
#Scientism is very nearly a straw man. I’m willing to concede that there are some people who treat #science like a religion, but their numbers are tiny and they have zero influence on the conduct of research AFAICT. Anti-science #zealots who come up with memes like this, OTOH, are numerous and disturbingly influential.
It’s also amusing how the meme assumes #epistemology is a gold standard against which other intellectual pursuits must be measured. The author assigns to #philosophy the same unquestionable authority he accuses others of assigning to science.
So I’ll stake my claim: scientific #methodology—in the literal sense of the study of methods—has done more to illuminate “how we know what we know” in the last couple of centuries than formal epistemology has done in millennia. If this be scientism, make the most of it.
@medigoth The scientific method is dependent upon our observations and calculations. Our ape brains and senses are very limited. This is one limit of science.
@Bernard Our brains are limited, sure, although they’re impressively good at pushing those limits. Our senses get less limited all the time, because one of the things our brains are really good at is coming up with ways around the natural limits. That’s been one of the principal drivers of the scientific revolution, from the first early telescopes on. At this point I’d be hard-pressed to think of any science that doesn’t rely on technological augmentation to the senses we’re born with.
@medigoth
These enhancements have definitely increased our discoveries, but we are still and always will be limited. We are unable to experience and understand many senses and dimensions because they were not useful and perhaps detrimental to our survival.