Scientism

Science explicitly does not accept arguments from authority. Theories are considered established because they are well tested against publicly accessible experience and are coherent with other well tested theories. Authority has nothing to do with it. So it is ironic that attempts would be made to put science in the place of fallen authorities from the past.

Authority also has the aura of permanence and infallibility, but science is inherently tentative and evolving. Even the most well established scientific theories may need to be revised or replaced based on future experience.

Scientific theories do deserve some special status though because of the strict and rigorous tests that they must pass. For what they cover, they are our best source of knowledge. This special status however is not based on authority.

On the other hand, we do talk about someone being an authority on some subject, meaning that they have studied it thoroughly and know most all there is to know about it. It makes more sense to rely on someone who is an authority in this sense, if you can trust them, than to rely on someone who does not know much about the subject.

In this sense science does have authority, or more particularly, scientists are authorities on areas of experience covered by their specialty. We would be better off listening to what they have learned than to listen to someone who is not well versed in that area.

This does not give them any authority in any other area of life though. It is tempting to ask a great scientist about all kinds of other areas. But they are an authority in a particular area. Outside of that area they are just like us. They may have a habit of rigorous thought that we could draw on, but who knows if they make use of it uniformly. Often people compartmentalize so that they may be totally logical in one area but totally emotional in another area. It seems impossible to generalize, so it would be best to think of them as like anyone when talking outside of their specialty.

Because of science's great success, it is tempting to universalize and say that it is the only way of knowing, but as we have seen science has had to limit its scope in order to be as reliable as it is. We have used the word truth earlier as a compliment paid to texts that are coherent and well tested against experience. Science applies this in a particularly rigorous way. First, it limits its scope to the most easily studied experiences, those that are publicly accessible. Then it concentrates on rigorous testing for coherence within the theory and with other theories. Then it goes a step farther and does this all within a community of research where there is extensive review and cross checking of results. So science is the best we can do, but it gets its power from limiting its scope. There are many other aspects of life that can still be studied and for which truths in the more general sense can be found. They may not be as reliable as scientific truths, but they may be in areas that are more important to us. It could be that the more important something is to us the less we can reliably know about it, but that does not necessarily mean that we can't know anything about it.

Scientism takes the extreme view. It only accepts as knowledge those aspects of life that fall under science's purview. It says that what science cannot discover, we cannot know. But surely this goes too far. On the one hand, it seems to overestimate the perfection of scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge is good and it may be as reliable as we can get, but it is far from perfect. On the other hand, there can be degrees of rigor depending on what is practical for a particular area of study. We can test our beliefs for coherence and against experience to the degree possible in the particular situation. It may not be science, but it can still be the best knowledge we have in that area.

Scientism could be interpreted as a power play for some scientists. It could be a defensive move to disarm those who would restrict the freedom of scientific research and try to place it under the control of ideology or arbitrary authority. As a rhetorical device it might be effective, but it is really not necessary to go that far. Instead we could use the seeming unattainability of absolute justification, the unreliability of appeals to authority, and the need to test our theories as best we can for coherence and against experience as the antidote to dogmatism and authoritarianism.