Welcome !
Hi and welcome to my corner of the vast cosmos. As most of you might have rightly guessed from the name of this blog, this is a place for the logical, the sane and the rationalists, who believe in scientism and the ability to explain things through the incremental but extremely powerful methodology of reasoning. As Edwin Hubble once said,
"Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure science"
So welcome to this world of logical reasoning and critical thinking.
Hi and welcome to my corner of the vast cosmos. As most of you might have rightly guessed from the name of this blog, this is a place for the logical, the sane and the rationalists, who believe in scientism and the ability to explain things through the incremental but extremely powerful methodology of reasoning. As Edwin Hubble once said,
"Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure science"
So welcome to this world of logical reasoning and critical thinking.
3 comments:
Let's see, scientism is defined as the belief that science is the epistemological arbiter of all human knowledge. A more positivist bent on this is: if the instruments, procedures, and methodologies of science can't observe or measure something, that something is at best irrelevant, at worst simply doesn't exist.
So you believe in scientism. Interesting. Please, then, use science to prove to me the existence of scientism. In other words, what measurement can I apply to observe (using only my five senses per your Hubble quote) scientism and predict what that entity called "scientism" will do next?
When you can do this, please prove to me using science alone that the broadly-termed "scientific method" is a valid procedural tool for doing science. (Note pragmatism will not be accepted for that is a circular argument, i.e., saying science works because it works is a fallacy and explains nothing.)
Finally, let's say you witness a man stealing candy from a baby. Using science and your senses you can (a) smell the pungent odor of the candy, (b) taste the candy, (c) feel its stickiness, (d) hear the howling of the baby, and (e) see the man running from the scene of the crime - which then permits you to calculate his speed and direction. Good.
But what else do your see that science simply cannot and never will be able to "see"? The injustice of the man's action, of course. Can science measure, observe, define, place in a box, speculate upon, or predict the behavior of what "injustice" will do next? No, of course not. But just because science can't "captue" the obvious injustice perpetrated, this in no way implies that injustice doesn't exist in some capacity. (You're not denying, I hope, that a moral injustice took place?)
Moreover, just because (it appears that) we acquire knowledge through our senses does not mean all knowledge is sensory knowledge. Just because Mr. Hubble limited his world view doesn't mean the rest of us have to do so.
It might be worth re-examining the presuppositions, antecedents, a priori assumptions, prejudices, etc. you've alluded to in your introductory post before proceeding with cogent, philosophical arguments that support your position.
One interesting thought that many believers of anti-scientism tend to harbor is that scientism deems non-existent those phenomena/events/occurences that cannot be explained by the tried and tested methodologies and doctrinies advocated by science. While this is true that in the minds of a few extremists, the fact remains that scientism at a higher and more abstract level totally admits and accepts the occurence of such phenomena that are as yet unexplainable by science and that are by nature of their unexplicability, deemed supernatural.
On the other hand, scientism vehemently opposes and refuses to accept those lines of reasoning that cannot be rigorously tested and ratified by critical analysis and open argument which are the pillars of the scientific methodolgy. Though subtle, this is an extremely significant notion , simply because, the non-scientific explanation provided for some of these supernatural phenomena, somehow become fully formed entities in due course of time and once again, science is criticised for its inability to measure these very entities while the fact remains that science had already rejected the very tether that links the existence of these entities, to the supernatural phenomena that these entities were believed to be causing.
As far as measuring the injustice associated with the event that "a man steals candy from a baby" is concerned, I believe, by adopting "critical reasoning", "logical interpretation" and "proof of evidence" as the tools for analyzing the event (which by the way are at the very basis of the scientific methodology), not only can the entity called injustice be measured, but a verdict can also be a passed as to the exact action to be taken to reduce the probability of this entity showing its face in a different form.
I believe there is a field of study called "law" that tries to apply these kind of scientific methods to situations similar to the one mentioned above.
Just answer the questions posed to you instead of prevaricating. The onus is on you: you're obligated to demonstrate (as opposed to merely prove) that the modern empirical sciences are the epistemological arbiters of ALL human knowledge before using them in that capacity.
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