Abstract
Scientistic conceptualisations hold to the positivistic positions that science is limitless in its potential representations of material phenomena and that it is the only sure path to knowledge. In recent popular scientific literature, these presuppositions have been reaffirmed to the detriment of both philosophy and theology. This article argues for the contrary position by a meta-analysis of empirical science from a Thomist perspective. Identifying empirical science as limited in its method and bound to the material sphere of being alone, we posit that rather than standing as the sole path to the knowledge of being, empirical science is constrained at its frontiers. It is subsequently contended that far from empirical science having the explanatory ability to respond to all presenting scientific problems in principle, fundamentals without the grasp of the methodology of empirical science exist. To relate the article’s meta-analysis to scientific praxis, physical cosmology – as the most foundational empirical science – is exemplified in the discussion.Keywords: Philosophy; Religion; Science; Scientism; Thomism; Metaphysics; Epistemology
Highlights
With the limitlessness of scientific knowledge, we mean: there is no question that in principle science cannot answer. (Carnap 1961:254)1Despite numerous publications that critique scientistic epistemologies of empirical science, a proliferation of scientism – in the spirit of Carnap – has emerged from the hands of popular science writers, for example, Dawkins (2003), Harris (2006), Hawking (2001), Humphrey (1995), and Hawking and Mlodinow (2010) among others.2 In each of these, and many other scientific texts like them, ‘science’ is reduced to the empirically verifiable alone
A specific analysis of scientific cosmology will be employed as an exemplar, because cosmology ranges in its truth claims across an epistemic spectrum from empirical science to metaphysics
I have attempted to articulate some frontier points in the scientific project, wherein empirical science is clarified as limited by its method and bound in what it can demonstrate
Summary
With the limitlessness of scientific knowledge, we mean: there is no question that in principle science cannot answer. (Carnap 1961:254). Positivism has strongly assumed the reliability of empirical science as an unquestionable tenet, so excluding alternate knowledge systems (Ayer [1936] 1990:16; Crotty 1998:26–27; Mach 1914:12) This same assumption is kept by current advocates of scientism like Carl Sagan (1980:4), 3.Prior to Hume and Comte, Francis Bacon (1561–1626) theorised in a positivist manner that universals are objectively perceivable through the scientific method (Bacon 1854:348). As cosmologists exist within the object of their study, they are unable to separate themselves from the cosmos in an attempt at objectivity In this way, limits are imposed by both the universe and the abilities of the human in terms of the constrained perspective the scientific subject has of the object (Barrow [1998] 2005:189; Dewdney 2004:2). The vastness of observation data held by the subject necessitates filtering through judgement (Faust 1984:9), but, these never absolutely representing being as-it-is (Faust 1984:41–42)
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