Scientism

Scientism–a bastard child of Kant and Hume–is the favoured bromide-philosophy of the day. The general strategy employed by the science-truster is to follow on from the complete demolition of metaphysics and epistemology in the wake of the enlightenment and to simply put their favoured scientific field in the place of this proper core of any rational philosophy. “Oh, everything is just psychology at the end of the day—we are slaves to our passions!” “Every choice you think you make is really an illusion rooted in your biological inclinations.” “Reality can be explained entirely by the motions of particles.” “You fools! Mathematics is the true one in the many—we can describe anything with mathematics and so anything mathematical can be called truth.” “That is just your sociological conditioning speaking. You know that some tribes have different concepts of time and counting—reality is in the eye of whichever society is beholding it, which is why we must turn to socialism.”

Of course, any science is a specialised field of study—it is answering the question “what do I know?” which relies on the prior question of “how do I know?.” For a man to begin any scientific endeavour he relies on a vast body of antecedent philosophy—this philosophy cannot be destroyed and replaced by the specialised knowledge that is built up from it. There is no The Science™ that can stand on it’s own or be “trusted”—in actual fact, calls to “trust the science” amount to trusting the scientists. The Chinese trusted that The Science™ would be able to maintain control over lab-grown chimera-viruses and when it failed to do so we were told that the problem was not trusting The Science™ enough! “We need to trust The Science™ now more than ever—you want freedom? How very Unscientific™ of you—didn’t you know that the top Experts™ have already determined that freedom is a bourgouis concept that has no application in practical reality? The Science™ has spoken and you must obey—for I am Law™.”

Scientism stands as one type of “bundled philosophy“—it gives you your metaphysics (What is there? Science™ is there.); epistemology (How do I know? Science™ of course!); and ethics (What should I do? Whatever The Science™ says is proper.); all in one neat bundle that can be treated as a primary, borrowed from person to person, and at no point does it need to be critically examined. “Critical examination? That’s the job of The Science™ not me! My place is to trust, not discover.”