Monopolizing Knowledge

Science and Scientism

One of the most visible conflicts in current culture is between “scientism” and religion. Because religious knowledge differs from scientific knowledge, scientism claims (or at least assumes) that it must therefore be inferior. However, there are many other important beliefs, secular as well as religious, which are justified and rational, but not scientific, and therefore marginalized by scientism. And if that is so, then scientism is a ghastly intellectual mistake.

But how could it have come about that this mistake is so widespread, if it is a mistake? The underlying reason is that scientism is confused with science. It is natural for readers without inside knowledge of science to assume that science and scientism are one and the same when many leading scientists and science popularizers often speak and act as if they and thus directly promote this confusion. What is more, several major strands within religion also promote this confusion. On the conservative theological wing, science is often rejected because it is confused with scientism, and on the theologically liberal wing scientism is often adopted for the same reason. Whether rejecting or assimilating, religious believers often confuse science and scientism.

Scientism is, first of all, a philosophy of knowledge. It is an opinion about the way that knowledge can be obtained and justified. However, scientism rapidly becomes much more. It becomes an all-encompassing world-view; a perspective from which all of the questions of life are examined: a grounding presupposition or set of presuppositions which provides the framework by which the world is to be understood. In other words, it is essentially a religious position.

The Origins of Scientism

The word science is used with two completely different meanings; confusing the two has a natural tendency to lead to scientism. The historical meaning comes from the word's Latin root, scientia, which means simply knowledge, and indeed the word science was once used to describe any systematic orderly study of a field of knowledge. In today’s common usage, however, "science" refers to the study of the natural world. The "Encyclopédie" (1751-) of Diderot and D'Alembert¹, a classic embodiment of Enlightenment thought, defines the word science to mean knowledge in general, but then focuses on natural science and technology. This is scientism in its youth. Enlightenment writings helped to insinuate scientism as an unacknowledged presupposition into much of the intellectual climate of the succeeding two centuries. From Samuel Johnson's Dictionary (1755), through historians such as Thomas Babington Macaulay (1848), and in vestiges even into the mid twentieth century, "science" was held to refer generally to formal, intellectual learning, yet when specific examples of science are cited these are almost all natural science.

Edward Cheney used his preface to the 1898 edition of Macaulay's history² to criticize him as failing to "treat history as a science". Cheney's attitude is rife with scientism - trying to distinguish between `true' scientific historical knowledge on the one hand, and on the other, literature that fails to qualify as science and hence as true knowledge. As president of the American Historical Society, twenty seven years later, Cheney would champion an explicitly scientistic view of the historian's task as to discover law in history, “... natural laws, which we must accept whether we want to or not, ... laws to be accepted and reckoned with as much as the laws of gravitation, or of chemical affinity” ³ The view is not convincing. The supposed distinction between scientific and unscientific history bears no discernible relationship to the methods of the natural sciences. It is mostly a substitution of “scientific” for "correct" for rhetorical effect.

The continued robustness of scientism is surely partly attributable to this terminological confusion. If science means simply knowledge, then scientism is merely tautologically true. End of story. But if science means a particular type of knowledge, as it does today, then it is essential to recognize that meaning and stick to it. In short what we mean by science today is the inheritance of the Scientific Revolution. In later parts of this series, I shall identify two key defining characteristics of science that encapsulate the two emphases crucial to its development: experimental or natural evidence, and mechanical or mathematical explanation. Before I move on to this task, though, let me pause to address some objections to the whole of my explanatory enterprise.

A Few Possible Objections

One objection that might be raised at this stage is to ask why one should restrict the designation science to the inheritors of the Scientific Revolution. After all, the argument goes, surely we should use whatever strategy is available to discover knowledge. My first answer is immediately to point out that this objection is an example of scientism. It confuses knowledge with science and implies that they are one and the same. I am not at all interested in limiting the ways of obtaining knowledge to those avenues that we call “scientific”. I simply want to be clear that, as a matter of historical fact, science as we commonly conceive it had, and has, a distinctive characteristic approach to methods of discovering and knowing. But why insist on this terminology? Here, my second answer is that science has a well-earned prestige and authority precisely because of its success. This prestige is, of course, one driving force behind the desire of many disciplines to be considered sciences. To use the metaphor of the market today, it is a question of "branding".

A second kind of objection is this: suppose we grant that we will use the word science to mean natural science. Doesn't that just mean the study of nature? So shouldn’t"the study of nature" be our working definition of science then? And if it is, why should one limit the scope of science by an identification of its methods? Surely one should use whatever methods are available to study nature.

My answer is this: the main problem with "the study of nature" as a definition of science is that it simply begs the question: what is nature? We tend to think that "nature" is self-evident; but it isn't. Prior to the Scientific Revolution, nature was populated with gods and teleological imperatives, with intention and purpose. Even in 1686, Robert Boyle (of Boyles' Law) identified eight different senses of the word nature⁴. Boyle's purpose was to deplore the use of, the semi-deity that underwrote Aristotle's physics, which the Scientific Revolution was in the process of superceding, and to replace it with the established order or settled course of things. Moreover, even after the Enlightenment, the romantics such as the poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge said that what they were about was the study of nature. Yet no one today would for a moment think to call the poetic understanding of the natural world science. It simply is not adequate to assume that what is meant by nature is obvious.

Instead, I believe, we must use a functional definition of science. Once we have a clear view of what science is, we will have a definition of what we here mean by nature. Nature is what we are studying in natural science. The result of this definition, as we'll see, is entirely consistent with what Boyle was arguing for: the established order or settled course of things.

We will continue this exploration of what we mean by “nature” in the next installment.

Notes

1. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert, editors. Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. André Le Breton, Michel-Antoine David, Laurent Durand, and Antoine-Claude Briasson, Paris, 1751-77.
2. Thomas Babbington (Lord) Macaulay. The History of England from the accession of James the second. G. P. Putnam, New York, 1898.
3. Edward P. Cheyney. Presidential address delivered before the american historical association. American Historical Review, 29 (2): 231-48, 1924.
4. Thomas Birch, editor. Robert Boyle,, The Works. Georg Olms Verlangsuchhandlung, Hildsheim, 1966. Volume 5, p167-9.

The varied ways in which this can occur have recently been documented by a group of historians of science, philosophers and theologians in a volume entitled Biology and Ideology – From Descartes to Dawkins (Denis R. Alexander and Ronald L. Numbers, eds., Chicago University Press, 2010). The thirteen essays in this volume illustrate the many and varied ways in which biology has been utilized for a wide range of political, religious, and social purposes from 1600 to the present day. The purposes may be beneficial, benign, or harmful in their outcomes, but all are “ideological” in the broadest sense of not being intrinsic to biology itself.

With the benefit of hindsight, historians—more than others—are in a good position to see how biology can be used for purposes beyond science in ways not always obvious at the time. The 20th century abuses of genetics in eugenics and in racist ideologies are obvious and thoroughly described in the present volume by writers such as the historians Edward Larson and Paul Weindling.

Less obvious are the subtle ways in which the same biological ideas have been used during the same period for quite opposite ideological purposes in different countries, as described by Shirley Roe and Peter Hanns Reill in their chapters on the 18th century. The supposedly ‘materialistic’ biology that in France was utilized by the philosophes to subvert the social order in the 18th century was in Britain used as a key resource for natural theology, whereas in Germany it was being used politically as an analogy for the structure of nation states.

Today the ideological uses of biology continue on as much as they ever did. In his chapter titled “Creationism, intelligent design, and modern biology,” Ronald Numbers describes how the biological theory of evolution has been invested with ideological overtones, particularly in North America, ever since Darwin published his On the Origin of Species in 1859. For some evolution became a philosophy that threatened to undermine notions of man “made in the image of God.” For others, evolution became a political threat to the social order, subverting campaigns to achieve greater rights for the oppressed.

This was particularly the case for the President Obama who never was: the thrice-defeated Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States and campaigner for liberal reform, William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925). Early in 1922, as Numbers recounts, Bryan helped to launch a crusade aimed at driving evolution out of the churches and schools of America. But Bryan’s motivation was as much political as religious. He had become alarmed by the way that the philosophy of “might is right” reputedly fueled German militaristic ambitions during the First World War. Benjamin Kidd’s Science of Power (1918), a book that influenced Bryan, purported to demonstrate the historical and philosophical links between Darwinism and German militarism.

It was Bryan’s campaign that helped launch the creationist movement of the early 1920s, leading in turn to the infamous Scopes Trial of 1925. The movement benefitted from another leading campaigner of the same era, the Canadian Adventist George McCready Price, who agreed with Bryan that the First World War, during which Germany put “the ruthless ethics of Darwinism . . . into actual practice,” provided ample evidence of the threat evolution posed to human freedom.

What Numbers brings out so clearly in his chapter is the way in which the theory of evolution was socially transformed into a bogeyman for virtually anyone who had an axe to grind. Rather than simply explaining the origins of biological diversity, it became an icon of materialism, or militarism, or atheism, or socialism, or capitalism. In fact evolution has been deployed since 1859 in support of almost every “ism” that exists, many of them mutually exclusive. All kinds of ideological barnacles became attached to the theory to the extent that the actual biology was obscured in the process.

Numbers goes on to document the way in which the late-20th century Intelligent Design movement likewise painted evolution in starkly atheistic terms, perceiving it as a materialistic threat to notions of design. Ironically, as Alister McGrath makes clear in his chapter entitled ‘Evolutionary biology in recent atheist apologetics’, the presentation of evolution by the ‘new atheists’ is in fact very similar to that of the creationists and proponents of Intelligent Design.

In the hands of Richard Dawkins, evolution becomes an ultra-Darwinian philosophy in rivalry with the idea of creation. Dawkins argues that there are at present only three possible ways of seeing the world: Darwinism, Lamarckism, or God. The last two fail to explain the world adequately; the only option is therefore Darwinism. “I’m a Darwinist,” writes Dawkins, “because I believe the only alternatives are Lamarckism or God, neither of which does the job as an explanatory principle. Life in the universe is either Darwinian or something else not yet thought of.” In such claims, McGrath notes, evolution becomes exalted to a meta narrative, infused with the ideological rhetoric of atheism.

What Biology and Ideology – From Descartes to Dawkins brings out so forcefully is the point that there “is nothing new under the sun.” As soon as a scientific idea or theory becomes influential and prestigious, then the tendency is for its prestige to be deployed for uses that go well beyond science. And where those uses go in apparently polar opposite directions, as in the comparison between creationism/ID and ultra-Darwinism, the opposite poles are often more similar to each other than either side might be prepared to admit.

The ideological uses and abuses of science are bad for science education, because so often the science gets lost in the rhetoric. They can be dangerous, as this volume so powerfully illustrates. They are also bad for religion, because scientific theories are always provisional, open to refutation, and simply not up to the herculean task of deployment for pro- or anti-religious arguments. Darwinian evolution, for example, just happens to be the inference to the best explanation for the origins of all the biological diversity on planet earth. It’s a stunningly successful theory, but it’s best just to let scientific theories do the job that they’re good at, and not invest them with ideologies that have nothing to do with the science.

Biology and Ideology – From Descartes to Dawkins (Denis R. Alexander and Ronald L. Numbers, eds., Chicago University Press, 2010) is available from all good bookstores. The book, as well as Alexander's book Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?, can be purchased online at www.faraday-institute.org at a discounted rate.

As an historian of science, I belong to a small, somewhat esoteric club. Although there are dozens of colleges and universities within 75 miles of my own, there are no more than half a dozen faculty with similar expertise at all of those institutions combined. If we focus more narrowly on my particular specialty - the history of science and Christianity - then I am probably alone in Central and Eastern Pennsylvania.

Because we are rare birds, our influence outside of our own nests has usually been minimal, especially when it comes to science and religion - an area that seems to invite comments from anyone and everyone, whether or not they actually know anything about it. Our collective anonymity may now be changing, however, with the publication of a splendid new book from Harvard University Press, Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion. The editor, Ronald L. Numbers, a former president of both the History of Science Society and the American Society of Church History, is a religious agnostic whose scholarship on the history of American religion and science is marked by meticulous accuracy and impartiality.

For a quarter century, Numbers and his colleague at the University of Wisconsin, David C. Lindberg, have led the way in challenging the commonly received view that the history of science and religion is best seen in terms of an ongoing, inevitable conflict, with science winning the war for cultural and epistemic territory. Although the conflict view ultimately derives from the European Enlightenment, its most influential expression was American. This is one of those cases in which you can judge the books by their covers - or, at least, by their titles. In 1874, NYU chemist John William Draper published his History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, and in 1896 the first president of Cornell, Andrew Dickson White, published A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. It is hard to say which one is worse, in terms of its scholarship, but my vote goes to White. Although he was a trained historian, White seems to have consulted primary sources about as often as he watched television. Consequently, his book is chock full of manufactured "facts," invented or misattributed "quotations," and unsupportable interpretations. Draper is not a great deal better, yet both books remain widely influential today, perhaps partly because the shoddy scholarship and outright nonsense they contain is central to the apologetics of contemporary unbelief. Why else would White's contribution to historical fiction be available for free download at infidels.org and Draper's book at positiveatheism.org?

The twenty-five authors in Numbers' book - one for each of the short, pithy chapters - serve writ on the conflict thesis and its legacy. Many contributors, including Numbers and Lindberg, are major players in the history of science, and at least two will be known to many readers who rarely venture into the field: Edward Larson, whose book on the Scopes trial won the Pulitzer Prize in History, and Michael Ruse, a distinguished philosopher and historian who often writes for general audiences. (Full disclosure: I wrote the chapter on Isaac Newton, but I do not mean to imply that I am a major player and my enthusiasm for the book would be undiminished if I had not contributed to it.) Twelve contributors are agnostics or atheists (by their own statements) and eight are Christians, so charges of advancing a clear ideological agenda will not stick. All of us wrote with ordinary readers, not specialists, in mind, making this a truly rare book: where else can you find such authoritative scholarship delivered so accessibly and fairly on such an important subject?

In effect, this book delivers a public obituary for the warfare view, which has been dead among historians for decades - though many scientists, journalists, and others who know far less about the topic apparently missed the funeral. In fact, the real history of religion and science is too complex, with too many important subtleties and significant mutual interactions, to be captured by any simple metaphor - not conflict, not harmony, nor any other single word that comes to mind. The people who actually lived through the events - those we historians call the "actors" themselves - very often saw things quite differently from the ways in which we've usually been told they saw them, or must have seen them.

How will all this go down? Whenever historians engage in debunking popular misconceptions, there are always people who want to shoot the messenger rather than to accept the truth of the message - especially when the truth of a given misconception is important to one's faith commitment. Numerous reviews by people from a range of faith commitments are readily available online; a detailed survey of their content is an exercise I leave to the reader. Those who need the warfare myth acknowledge the evidence but deny its significance; the facts about historical incidents are irrelevant to the logic of the arguments made now, they say, and anyone with half a brain knows that science is always triumphant over religion. Perhaps I ought to be more respectful: those whose minds are made up ought not to be confused by exposure to the facts.