Scientism’s
use of nonhuman models of interaction
The "scientific
community" imposes upon itself a rigorous and focused
discipline which is characterized by a healthy skepticism.
It only claims to know
something through sensory evidence. When scientists rely upon machines,
they are enhancing the scope and reach of their fields of sensation.
Using machines is indirect in a way but it is not considered
non-sensory. Scientists
sense microscopically and macroscopically, reaching into the atom
and scanning the edges of the cosmos.
The scientific method restricts itself
to using empirical observations, rational hypotheses
and reasoned deductions to test and offer "scientific" explanations. It restricts itself to understanding reality and truth
by testing only that which
can be repeated and so evaluated by an independent
third party. In
this
light, it is an ahistorical mode of observation. In contrast,
history is the interpretation of non-repeatable events which occur
once.
Scientism arose when thinkers began to model
human interactions on the model of non-human interactions.
In the first wave of Scientism,
the scientific facts reflected upon were mainly those
which were observable by the five gross common senses. The physical
world
of early biology and astronomy supplied the most useful
models. Intellectuals
and others would say, “What if human
society is like nonhuman society?” They would model human organization upon theories
derived from watching bees or ants or animals in-the-wild (“state
of Nature”).
Over time, even as the
sciences became more mechanized and
individuals could peer into the micro and the macro,
the approach remained the same, namely, that nonhuman
observations or data
was used to interpret what
human interactions or values are or should be.
Continue—Non-human models
