This paper’s primary purpose is to show that there is a peculiar alternative to scientism whose central thesis is not about sources of knowledge or the existence of various objects, but it aims at setting out a strategy to help decide which of the two mutually exclusive beliefs is the better one to adopt. Scientophilia, to coin a term, recommends preferring, without any discussion, a position consistent with the consensus of credible and reliable experts in a given domain. In case (...) there is no such agreement, mainly because peers disagree with each other, or experts are difficult to identify, it is recommended for a scientophile to suspend judgment. Scientophilia is not a position on science or human knowledge boundaries, but it deals with the practical side of belief change. Verdicts made by this approach are partially similar to those offered by mild scientism, as scientophilia puts scientific knowledge as one of the most reliable sources. However, it is also consistent with mild antiscientism, as in some particular cases (for example, Moorean truths), it assigns reliable expertise to non-scientific experts. Therefore it is a third way. (shrink)

Perfected science is but an idealization that provides a useful contrast to highlight the limited character of what we do and can attain. This lies at the core of various debates in the philosophy of science and Rescher’s discussion focuses on the question: how far could science go in principle—what are the theoretical limits on science? He concentrates on what science can discover, not what it should discover. He explores in detail the existence of limits or limitations on scientific inquiry, (...) especially those that, in principle, preclude the full realization of the aims of science, as opposed to those that relate to economic obstacles to scientific progress. Rescher also places his argument within the politics of the day, where "strident calls of ideological extremes surround us," ranging from the exaggeration that "science can do anything"—to the antiscientism that views science as a costly diversion we would be well advised to abandon. Rescher offers a middle path between these two extremes and provides an appreciation of the actual powers and limitations of science, not only to philosophers of science but also to a larger, less specialized audience. (shrink)

This chapter outlines ways in which Wittgenstein’s opposition to scientism is manifest in his later conception of philosophy and the negative attitude he held toward his times. The chapter tries to make clear how these two areas of Wittgenstein’s thought are connected and reflect an anti-scientistic worldview he held, one intimated in Philosophical Investigations §122. -/- It is argued that the later Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophy is marked out against two scientistic claims in particular. First, the view that the scientific method is (...) superior to all other means of learning or gaining knowledge. Second, the view that scientific knowledge is superior to all other kinds of knowledge and understanding. Wittgenstein’s opposition to these claims is brought out through examining a fundamental aim of his later philosophy, producing the ‘kind of understanding which consists in “seeing connections”’ (PI §122), and his attempts to expose certain philosophical confusions. It is argued that these reflect his antiscientistic worldview. -/- Through discussion of Oswald Spengler’s influence on Wittgenstein, the chapter outlines how Wittgenstein’s opposition to scientism underwrites his negative cultural outlook and how this is connected with the anti-scientistic elements of his later philosophy discussed. The work of Ray Monk (1999; 1990) and Hans-Johann Glock (1996) is instrumental in what follows. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 312-333 [Access article in PDF] Consilient Literary Interpretation Marcus Nordlund I THIS IS AN EXCITING TIME in the history of human self-knowledge. Like the two souls in Plato's Symposium, the life sciences and the human sciences are slowly coming to terms with their painful divorce and are increasingly on speaking terms. Thanks to important developments across a broad range of academic disciplines from biology (...) and neuroscience to anthropology and psychology, we are starting to glean the possibility of a new conceptual integration that may have important consequences for our understanding of human nature. After hundreds of years of virtuoso variations on the theme of philosophical and scientific dualism, we have come some way towards bridging the gap between mind and matter, biology and culture, science and the arts.From the perspective of literary studies, two recent developments have been especially valuable. The previous decade saw a growing recognition among social scientists of the explanatory force of evolutionary theory, and of the ultimate bankruptcy of the nature-nurture opposition that forces biology and culture into different compartments. Since the social sciences have always supplied literary studies with food for thought, it would be strange if such developments did not reflect on literature, too. Equally important has been the increasing impatience among scholars in the humanities with the radical skepticism, antiscientism, and dogmatic agnosticism that turns both science and literature into mere self-validating narratives and sees no significant difference between descriptive and normative statements. Together, these theoretical shifts have slowly begun to pave the way for a new dialogue between those who study biology, psychology, and cultural artifacts like literature. Since the mid-1990s, a number of literary [End Page 312] scholars have taken the first steps towards merging evolutionary and cultural explanation in the study of literature. 1One striking defense of such a conceptual integration between science and literature was delivered a few years ago in Edward O. Wilson's Consilience. 2 According to Wilson, there is "only one way to unite the great branches of learning and end the culture wars. It is to view the boundary between the scientific and literary cultures not as a territorial line but as a broad and mostly unexplored terrain awaiting cooperative entry from both sides" (p. 138). While he concedes that the two cultures can and should be characterized by "radically different goals and methods," he also stresses that interpretation provides a "logical channel of consilient explanation between science and the arts" (p. 234).While we have good reason to be optimistic about the potential of this joint endeavor, it is nevertheless fraught with massive problems. The current track record in interdisciplinary literary studies is uneven, to say the least. Strange confusions about the nature and status of theory abound, and these often take the shape of spontaneous raids into foreign conceptual frameworks that are bound to baffle the practitioners of the host discipline. As Richard Levin importantly points out, 3 there are numerous reasons why current interdisciplinary literary theories tend to become self-validating. There are no negative tests; critics tend to choose theories on the basis of ideological preferences rather than the criterion of truth; and there is a widespread assumption that theories can simply be transformed willfully whenever they do not meet the requirements of the interpreter.Many of the problems Levin points to can, I think, be remedied by something as trivial as a change in attitude within the discipline of literature itself. For example, something has obviously gone seriously wrong when the automatic spouting of political ad hominem arguments and genetic fallacies has become second nature to so many critics. But there are other and more fundamental problems that seem intrinsic to the whole question of interdisciplinarity. One of these, according to Wilson, is that as we move forward in the hierarchy of sciences, from physics to biology to literature, we encounter a rapidly accelerating complexity: "It is far easier to go backward through the branching corridors than to go forward.... Biology is almost unimaginably more complex than physics, and the arts equivalently more complex than... (shrink)

I would like to stress Vadim Mikhailovich's [Mezhuev's] position and clarify our conversation about culturology. It is constantly repeated that culturology is a science. It is my profound conviction that culturology is not a science. Culturology is a distinctive phenomenon of Russian culture and represents a certain intellectual movement. If one briefly surveys the history of its emergence, its philosophical origin becomes obvious. This intellectual movement consists of three levels, if one takes into account the "-logy" ending. First, the philosophical (...) level, from which in the 1970s culture began to be conceived as a special field of knowledge in our country. Then, humanistic knowledge: a great many representatives of the humanities in Russia-historians, art specialists, art critics, essayists-studied culture. Finally, there is the socioscientific tendency, which is just beginning to form in Russia and carries the internationally accepted name of social and cultural anthropology. All of us are synergistically attracted to these three tendencies, which comprise what is called culturology. The question of how these three tendencies of knowledge are correlated in the framework of the given intellectual movement is, in my view, extremely important. For quite some time now, there has been no reflection in Russia on the foundations of scientific and philosophical knowledge, but such reflection is necessary. To advance along the road of rational knowledge it is important to reflect in what cognitive space we find ourselves, what we are doing within its boundaries, and for what reason. From this point of view, neither philosophers nor representatives of the humanities or the social sciences will renounce their positions of observer. Moreover, I agree with Mezhuev that there is no single philosophy, humanistic conception, or theory of culture. Anyone who is engaged professionally in the study of cultural phenomena can choose his initial foundations. As Vadim Mezhuev correctly notes, the significance of philosophy for other types of knowledge lies in the fact that there are borderline areas of man's existence in the world. However, they are identified in different ways by different philosophies: positivism, phenomenology, classical Platonism, Aristotelianism, Kantianism, and so forth. Representatives of humanistic and socioscientific knowledge are free to choose any metaphysics. Philosophers will continue to attend to their business in their subject area, and scientists in theirs. But it is important periodically to determine rationally when there must be close and complementary relations between the three components of this intellectual movement and when they must exist in parallel. Then questions such as who has priority and who is the guardian of truth will not arise. If the tendencies have diverged in parallel, then the representatives of each of them are occupied within their domains with questions which are irrelevant in other fields of knowledge or for other theoretical models. At the end of the twentieth century, to pose the question of scientism or antiscientism is senseless because today we know that there are different forms of rationality and that science is not the only, and is quite a narrow, form of rationality. Myth too is rational. It is expressed in categories and has a particular inner logic. We recognize myth as a rational cultural entity, because it is represented in symbolic form as an ordered sequence of judgments, as an artifact. But it differs from scientific theory. That is why it is fruitful to reflect on what forms of rationality are relevant to what levels of knowledge. I agree with Ogurtsov, who says that these forms penetrate in one way or another into every culturally institutionalized form of knowledge. Indeed, in philosophical knowledge there are elements of everyday, mythological, and scientific knowledge, but this does not negate the distinctive nature of the philosophical form of knowledge. In science there are elements of metaphysics, mythology, and everyday knowledge, but this does not cancel the particularities of the scientific form of knowledge. The same is true of the humanistic form, which is in principle irremovable from the framework of institutionalized knowledge, at least for now. I do not agree with Ogurtsov that I give the humanistic form of knowledge a negative evaluation. Humanistic knowledge begins to be significant in a period of a cognitive paradigm shift. This, we can say, is apparent today, at a time of transition from the grand style of modernism in its postmodern mode to the building of the foundations for a new whole. The point is that the humanistic form of knowledge enables us to isolate at the outset those areas of the unknown at which we arrive because of the limitations inherent in other forms of rationality. It is closest to everyday and empirical categories of knowledge and forms of ideas; hence, particularism, image syncretism, and mobility are its distinctive features. But without this humanistic level no further step is possible in either scientific or philosophical knowledge. The breakdown into these forms of knowledge- philosophical, humanistic, and scientific-may be primitive, but we have to start our reflection on the foundations of our cognitive relationship to our surroundings somewhere. The identification of the forms of knowledge makes it possible to draw the conclusion that, unlike philosophical and humanistic knowledge, socioscientific knowledge is modeled on the natural sciences. From this it becomes obvious that the distinctive features of the object of social sciences determine also the special nature of the categorial apparatus, operationalization, selection method, and information analysis. I do not insist that the model I suggest must be accepted. Other models can be constructed. But let us start with a simpler comparison of types of knowledge and later we shall differentiate them. I started from this level because in our culture such a division is apparent and generally accepted. There are the philosophical, humanistic, and scientific forms of knowledge. They are irreducible to one another, they perform entirely different functions in the knowledge of man's relationship to the environment, and express different views about how man lives in culture. I agree that philosophy is exactly existence in culture with a singling out of the limits of this existence. But representatives of humanistic and socioscientific knowledge also deal with existence in culture. What is important for the philosopher is the direction of knowledge from within to the outside; for the representative of humanistic knowledge it is the description of how he exists among a multitude of seemingly diverse and divergent artifacts and processes; and for the scientist it is the order of the philosophically and humanistically defined reality in order to control it the better. (shrink)