tothesource: The central argument of your book, Monopolizing Knowledge, if we could boil it down--is that "scientism" is wrong-headed precisely because it allows the particular assumptions and methods of science to gain a monopoly on knowledge, driving out all other legitimate forms of knowledge from the field. Could you spell that out a bit?

Ian Hutchinson: Put simply, scientism is the belief that science, modeled on the natural sciences, is all the real knowledge there is. It implies that whatever is not science is mere opinion, superstition, irrationality, emotion, or nonsense. Scientism is not a finding of science; nor is it needed for science to flourish; but it is an extremely widely held attitude in our society today. Actually, although there are some writers who explicitly advocate scientism, more usually it is an implicit, unspoken presumption. Many of the current critiques of religion are founded on scientism, as an elementary analysis of their arguments shows. But scientism also feeds the so-called culture wars, and science wars, the postmodern denial of science, the commonplace over-reliance on technology, and a whole host of polarizing trends in our culture.

My book sets out to examine scientism, to understand its roots, history, development, and results, and to show that it is a ghastly mistake. Recognizing and repudiating this mistake is not straightforward. The first difficulty is precisely that scientism is rarely explicit. It has become metaphorically almost the intellectual air that the academy breathes, and so it often goes unnoticed. A monopoly works unhindered if people don't realize it exists. The second problem is that the word science is ambiguous. Once, long ago, "science" meant simply any systematic intellectual discipline. That's the Latin derivation: just "knowledge". If that were what we meant today by science, then scientism would be true by definition, and there would be no more to say. But it isn't.  In common usage today, science means what was once called "natural philosophy", i.e. the science of the natural world, epitomized by physics, chemistry, biology, geology and so on.  Mixing up these two meanings promotes scientism.

tts: You suggest that the monopolizing expansion of scientism to "an all-encompassing world-view" makes it (paradoxically) "essentially a religious position." What effect, then, does scientism have on religion?

Hutchinson: Scientism is unquestionably a philosophical position. That's the first thing to realize. The success of science lends some superficial plausibility to scientism but scientism can't be demonstrated scientifically (which, incidentally, makes it self-contradictory) nor by any other logical argument. In that sense it is an unproven presupposition that is taken "on faith". It is a lens or filter through which the world is viewed, lending its own tint to every perception. It becomes a basis from which ethical questions are argued.  (Think, for example, about the contemporary use of "diversity", echoing ecological considerations, as a justification for all sorts of prescriptive morality). And for some people it becomes a cause to which they are passionately committed.  All of these are characteristics of religion. People who use scientistic arguments to critique religion protest loudly at such a characterization. They say they don't have rituals, and then define religion narrowly to mean belief in the supernatural, so as to avoid the charge. Ironically, early movements in scientism such as Positivism actually did have all the trappings of religion, including ritual services and sacred priesthoods. And some of the notable advocates of scientism in the late twentieth century (e.g. E.O.Wilson) likewise imagine religious energies and observances being coopted in its support.

tts: You note the interesting distorting effects of scientism on other legitimate fields of knowledge--the distortions coming from the attempt by people in these fields trying to imitate the methods of science where these methods are entirely inappropriate. Could you give us some examples?

Hutchinson: Obviously if science is all the real knowledge there is, then any self-respecting academic discipline had better be sure that it is a science. There's a long history of attempts to do this with the practice of non-scientific disciplines. For example, the attempts to make sociology and history into sciences gave rise to Positivism and Marxism in the nineteenth century. Then there was a succession of Social Darwinisms right down to the present day.  Incidentally, the word "scientism" was coined (or at least first widely promoted) by F A Hayek, a Nobel-prize-winning economist, to decry its baleful influence on his own social disciplines. There's also a rather more recent history of the simpler "branding" move of calling activities sciences regardless of their content or practice (for example "Domestic Science" education imparts important life skills but bears no intellectual resemblance to natural science).

Modern science, the inheritance of the scientific revolution, has identifiable characteristics by which it operates. I summarize these as insistence upon reproducibility and Clarity. Science relies upon experiments or observations that must give reproducible results, and be describable unambiguously (for example through measurements). These are the features that permit the experimental discovery of the law-like features of the world, and are the basis of science's stunning success in its understanding of nature.  But many extremely important aspects of the world don't possess those characteristics. History cannot be subjected to repeatable tests because it is generally about about unique events. The law, or politics, or language, or music, or philosophy, or religion are not subjects that lend themselves to the methods of science. They are not, and cannot be science. Yet they possess real knowledge. If an economist colleague bristles when I comment that his discipline is not a science, that is because of a presumption of scientism. He should not resent the comment. It is not a put-down, because I don't accept scientism. Science is not all the knowledge there is. Economics possesses real knowledge; it's just not science.

tts: You make the interesting argument that much of the controversy in regard to evolution actually comes from the acceptance of scientism--both by some of the more vocal advocates of evolution and its critics. It seems like you're saying something like this: evolution isn't the problem; scientism is the problem. Could you explain?

Hutchinson: The modern myth about the relationship between science and theology is that they are, and always have been, at war. This myth dates from the latter part of the nineteenth century, and arose as a deliberate part of the strategies of secularist advocates in academia. Both a serious appreciation of the actual history of science, and the lives and ideas of scientists in the modern world show that science and Christianity (I don't presume to speak for other religions) are not inevitably in conflict. There is, however, truly a tension that fits the warfare metaphor. It is between scientism and pretty much every other non-scientific viewpoint, including but not limited to religion.  In other words, my case is that a main cause of the tension between science and Christianity is not so much natural science or religious doctrine as it is the metaphysics of scientism. Christianity certainly is incompatible with scientism, but it is not incompatible with science. Science and scientism are not the same thing.

The problem is, though, that very often in the science and Christianity discussion, neither the secularist advocates nor the Christian draw any distinction between science and scientism.

Concerning evolution, yes, like several other aspects of modern cosmology, it rules out some literalistic interpretations of Genesis. But literal interpretations of Genesis have never, from the earliest church fathers, been Christian orthodoxy --- even granting that the default view was once that the earth is much younger than we now know it is. Where the incompatibilities really lie is in the unjustified and unscientific extrapolations of evolution that arise from scientism. Unfortunately, both sides of the argument often agree on the erroneous view that accepting biological evolution implies the anti-theist conclusion that God has no hand in creation, and that life is meaningless. This leads some influential Christians to think that they must reject evolution as a scientific explanation of biological diversity and adaptation. That's a mistake. Instead of trying to promote supposed scientific disproofs of evolution or scientific proofs of God --- thereby tending to concede the crucial point that science is the final arbiter of all truth --- they ought to repudiate that erroneous scientism.