“Until we take science for what it is”we will fail to fully benefit from it.

The Difference Between Ivory-Tower 

and Street-Level Scientism

By John Brungardt

Would René Descartes care about watching Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos? Would Galileo? Aristotle?

The question struck me when trying to find a cultural reference point to help place my subject in more familiar terms. I do not mean to investigate its answer seriously, only to use it to point out the ground for my topic. Enough, then, of this opening gambit.

What we need to discuss is our reception of the project of science and its practical consequences. Is there a way to properly integrate, with intellectual virtue or skill, science and its claims into our moral lives, and is there a way to do this improperly? The answer to such questions is implicitly presupposed by many discussions in the public square of internet forums as well as the inner forum of our own souls. The answer involves a proper education (a subject also addressed elsewhere, in various articlessuch as these).

The problem can be categorized under the heading of “scientism.” It is important to realize that this is not a merely academic issue. It occurs at an everyday level. I will refer to it as “street-level scientism.”

Street-level scientism is an intellectual habit: the illiberal submission to science due to its authority. The man suffering from street-level scientism is the one who often, in effect, equates “science” with “magic.” (If you can’t explain how a microprocessor works, then that includes me and you.) Yet its lettered cousin makes the opposite mistake and equates the non-scientific with irrationality or superstition. “Until we take science for what it is”we will fail to fully benefit from it.

The academic problem diagnosed under the name of scientism is related to problems nesting within the broader umbrellas of the justification of knowledge. It is one front of the debate between the scientific mind and the philosophical intellect as paradigms of human inquiry (a debate to which Tyson himself is no stranger).

Of course, the very existence and meaning of the term scientism is debated. The growth of the scientistic way of thinking has deep historical roots. Yet symptoms of scientism crop up daily. For instance, consider the brouhaha over Pope Francis’s recent comments on evolution. Even some scientists, to say nothing of the media, stand in need of a way to evaluate and integrate scientific claims with claims made by other types of knowledge (such as religious and philosophical claims).

How exactly does “street-level scientism” differ from its academic kin?


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