Scientism: And the Limits of Science
Some things are simply not amenable to the scientific method.
There is sense of division in American society. Many people believe it results from a turbulent political climate. That is true to an extent. But most people I meet are apolitical. I must conclude, then, that our disagreements result more from personal and tribal indoctrination than mere political preference and unrest. Societal initiatives, once revered and praised, have taken on a contagion of scorn and disrespect: distortion of language, redefining words, the corruption of biological sex, distain for religion, and a detested dilution of the Christian message. All have become weaponized in overt efforts to bring down the traditional moral order and social structure.
The late G. K. Chesterton made a brilliant assertion: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” Any perceived failure of Christianity is not due to doctrinal insufficiency, but a lack of conviction for putting its doctrines into practice. This diminishing conviction accounts for the popular trend of modern Christians denouncing their Faith in large numbers not seen since the rise of Christendom. And the reason offered for justifying this abandonment of the Faith is really more akin to an excuse.
The foremost excuse is that the truths of modern science have achieved monumental discord between its empirical understanding of Nature and the beliefs of religion, specifically Christianity. Every scientific advance now serves to challenge the validity of Christian doctrine and ideology. Things once attributed to acts of God are now explained through the perspective of science and the Laws of Nature. As if this exposes the naked fiction of religion. The awe and mystery of the lights painted on the night sky, a vast fabric which extends over distances we cannot fathom, are surrendered to every new discovery, and by extension, the reverence of a Creator God who has no beginning and no end. To “understand” is to eradicate our imaginations to the authority of science.
Now, it so happens that we humans have a propensity for distraction: we are not always aware when we are holding truth in our hand. But it is abundantly clear that science is not the only means of putting it there. During the past two centuries, science has made impressive leaps in comprehending the physical world. But even progress can become corrupted through an unhealthy infatuation called scientism, the unrealistic creed that the scientific method is the one and only road to truth.
Scientism is not the same as science. Simply put, science good, scientism bad. Scientism is the pervasive view that worthy epistemological pursuits are fueled exclusively by science. Only disciplines such as medicine, physics, astronomy, and cosmology, carry the cognitive authority to answers all the really important questions of reality. Thus, scientific knowledge is immensely superior to knowledge gathered through all other pursuits, such as philosophy. The superiority of scientific conclusions rests on the fact they can be proved and confirmed.
According to scientism, any conclusions considered “true” (if there be any) from philosophical and theological inquiries are merely relative. That is, they can only be interpreted as one’s personal sentiments and opinions; and subsequently are repudiated as neither right nor wrong. The notion that they can be “factual” in any meaningful way is simply a pipedream. Thus, ethics and religion are abstract and emotionally grounded: only science is grounded in empirical truth. Tom Sorell notes that “What is crucial to scientism is not the identification of something as scientific or unscientific but the thought that the scientific is much more valuable than the non-scientific, or the thought that the non-scientific is of negligible value.”
Modern analysis of the natural sciences has undergone two noticeable alterations at the hand of scientism. The first assumes that any valid mathematical equation representing a given hypothesis or theory, presumes that it is an objective configuration of nature. So, for example, let us say a coherent compilation of manipulated mathematics suggests the possibility of multiple universes. To suggest does not reduce to is. So far as I understand it, the multiverse theory can never be empirically tested nor falsified, meaning it can never be verified or disproved. Nevertheless, many theorists continue to extoll and laud the idea of a multiverse with ironic credulity.
A fellow named Davies was able to keep his wits and put this rubbish in its proper context. “As one slips down that slope, more and more must be accepted on faith, and less and less is open to scientific verification. Extreme multiverse explanations are therefore reminiscent of theological discussions. Indeed, invoking an infinity of unseen universes to explain the unusual features of the one we do see is just as ad hoc as invoking an unseen Creator. The multiverse theory may be dressed up in scientific language, but in essence, it requires the same leap of faith.” This is scientism: indeed, it makes that leap of faith for a Creator all the more credible.
The second alteration follows as a corollary to the concept of objective. The word “objective” has never required a doctorate to have command of its use. In scientific vernacular it meant interpretations not influenced or corrupted by one’s personal feelings, bias, or prejudice. The modern interpretation by scientism is more like “cosmic truths absence of a confirming observer.” An objective world, on this view, reveals scientific truth independent of human interaction and, as I have already suggested, also from God. Call this the new “objectivity”; it is truer than just true. Its significance cannot be understated: if science is the only objective means for obtaining knowledge, then how we define objective determines how we define knowledge and by extension, truth.
If earlier scientist were less affected in their obedience to the traditional interpretation of what counts as knowledge, that is because their epistemological approach made a sharp demarcation between the subjective and the objective. Thus, they set their sights on the purely objective analysis of things that can be measured, observed, and predicted And, rightly, left the abstract principles of the subjective mind – its thoughts and sentiments and Reason – to the poets and philosophers. I say philosophers because good philosophy is only theology.
This places a heavy finger on the real danger of scientism. The overwhelming tendency is to subject every natural inquiry to the rigors of science, though such inquiries are not even amenable to the scientific method. This is only to say there are limitations to what science can explain. When these limitations are breeched, the scientific method is influenced by the investigator’s personal feelings, prejudice, and biased interpretations. Science is replaced by the exercise of faith – the very thing it proudly confesses to avoid. This is easily proved by short examinations of the nature of consciousness and the theories around the creation of the universe called the Big Bang.
The Nature of Consciousness
Because we are conscious beings we experience the world directly by virtue of our thoughts, decision making, sensations, emotions, and, indeed, by our agency. Especially our freewill to make choices.
Consciousness rates as the most elusive phenomena for science to explain. The problem centers around examining objective events in the brain corresponding to incongruent subjective experiences. Neuroscientists prefer to focus deeply on the neurons themselves rather than the physical process for which they are conduits. Researchers are rather good in determining areas of the brain that give rise to specific functions such as wiggling your fingers, lifting your arm, or turning your neck. What theories of consciousness find problematic is how is to explain why and how all the separate functions generate a unified, conscious experience of wiggling your fingers, lifting your arm, and turning your neck.
Furthermore, if researchers want to study happiness in a subject, they must rely exclusively on the subjective description given by the subject. The only time researchers truly know anything about happiness is when they themselves are in the conscious state called happy. But no happy person is normally conscious of their happiness: they are too busy being happy. The moment they step out of their happiness in order to analyze it, they are no longer happy. Similarly, I can know nothing about the conscious experience of pain until I am in pain. But while in those moments – while I am most conscious of it - I am least able to study it.
As for freewill we can say a choice is neither a random behavior explicable by an appeal to quantum physics, nor an act predetermined by the tamer classical laws of physics. The concept of freewill (embraced by Christianity) must first be accepted and understood before consciousness can be agreeably understood. What progress scientists have made required the assistance of philosophers. The addition of theologians may not be a bad idea either.
One version of consciousness holds it is not caused by any physical process: instead, consciousness is derived from beyond the fundamental building blocks in the quantum realm from which the physical world emerges. This is the metaphysical creed held by a panpsychist - the term deriving from the two Greek words “pan” meaning all and “psyche” meaning soul or mind. Even the term brings investigators far closer to the nature of God than they are, perhaps, comfortable with. If they are bold enough, they will confess that the mystery of consciousness “points to the possibility of a non-physical or spiritual dimension to reality, one that may be ultimately grounded in the divine.”
Concerning the first created Man, we are told that God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7) It is the breath, the n’sha^ma^h, in the ancient Hebrew, and the Latin spiracular vitae, which exports from God to Man the higher principle of being, as compared with the existence of the animals – that is, Man becomes a conscious, living being.
Perhaps the greatest challenge in unlocking the mystery of consciousness is its indelible subjective nature. Neuroscience is beyond the scope of my education. But my opinion is that any meaningful advancement and efficacy, requires a change from the focus on the white and grey matter of the brain to external sources and causes. What seems to be inarguably certain, is that a purely objective answer as to how material brain cells give rise to conscious (subjective) experience requires science to turn a blind eye to the very subjective character it supposedly serves to explain. I cannot comprehend the complicated network of neurons as they pertain to information theory. But what I can understand with confidence is that if consciousness is solely subjective, the logical implication is that no purely objective account of brain matter can ever explain it. Science has reached a limit.
The Creation of the Universe
The supposition of a created universe was introduced by Georges Lemaître, a physicist and mathematician. He proposed the Big Bang theory for the genesis of the universe which he called the hypothesis of the primeval atom. It is perhaps of some value to note that Lemaître was also a catholic priest. Many of his fellow scientists were skeptical of his work, and one could posit, presumably, as a result of his priesthood. If a priest in today’s environment were to theorize the creation of Nature, the incompatibility between science and religion would likely prevent any publication of the theory. But in 1927, the whole of society had not yet learned to be skeptical of God and all who believe in Him. In that year Lemaître published the theory that nearby galaxies were speeding away from us – a phenomenon that could be explained by an expanding universe.
An astronomer having superior observational skills, Edwin Hubble, later provided the initial verification of an expanding universe. He observed that the light from distant galaxies was redshifted. This was evidence that galaxies were racing away from other galaxies; the greater the distance a galaxy is from us, the greater the wavelength gets stretched through space and the redder that galaxy appears from the perspective of others. Now, Hubble observed this redshift not simply in a galaxy here and there, but in almost every galaxy. A lesser mind would probably have been duped into inferring the redshift to be the product of receding motion powered by each individual galaxy. But a pattern with every galaxy speeding away in all directions by their own power, was, to Hubble, inexplicable.
If I understand the astronomers correctly, a single source of light (a star or satellite) moving through space away from our point of observation, achieves a longer wavelength also evident by a redshift in color. In this case, however, the redshift results from the Doppler effect. You are probably familiar with this phenomenon as it applies to sound waves. When a helicopter, for example, flies toward you the sound waves get compressed, and the sound takes on a higher pitch. Conversely, when the helicopter passes your position, the waves spread out ahead of you causing the pitch to drop. So, the salient pitch is conspicuous, depending on whether the helicopter is approaching you or moving away from you.
Hubble’s observations dismissed the Doppler phenomenon - the receding, redshift was not caused by the motion of the galaxies through space. A better explanation, and one already predicted by Lemaître’s mathematics, was that the receding, redshift was caused by the stretching of space between the galaxies: space itself was expanding. When Hubble’s observations were dropped into Lemaître’s mathematical model, a confirmation of his theory emerged. A good analogy is a small boat on the high sea; having neither motor nor sail it inevitably stays afloat carried by the waves of the sea. The galaxies, as boats, are riding the high waves of an expanding universe evidenced as a cosmological redshift.
The implications of an expanding universe are immense. The age of the universe is estimated to be 13.8 billion years. If the universe has been expanding for the past 13.8 billion years, Lemaître reasoned that if you run the clock in reverse then the universe becomes an infinitely tiny, infinitely dense point with infinite gravity — a singularity indicating a cosmic beginning. The Big Bang of this singularity created the universe. It is at this point in our story that good science starts to take on an opaque scientism.
It is quite difficult (if not impossible) to get a mental image of this singularity. Cosmologists explain that before the Big Bang the universe did not exist. The Big Bang is the beginning of space and time. Indeed, it is the beginning of all things that exist as things from a beginning - the beginning of Nature. Prior to the Big Bang there was no Nature because Nature means the Whole Show: all matter, space, and time. Alternatively, the Big Bang, then, created the Whole Show. In a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, everything expanded outward from the singularity, creating the energy, atoms and eventually the stars and galaxies you see in the night sky today.
Now I readily admit that I am a stern proponent of a created universe. But the Big Bang theory bestowed as scientism leaves the condition of my mind a bit scrambled and even threatens paralysis. I have two problems: the first, is the scientistic problem; the second is a philosophical problem. The scientistic problem implies that the Big Bang actually exceeds limits of modern science: theoretic physicists and cosmologists (intelligent as they are) simply lack the theoretic tools, knowledge, pre-existent theories to address a problem that may not even be conducive to scientific inquiry. Einstein’s theory of general relativity is needed to describe the nature of the singularity. But the theorized models based solely on general relativity cannot fully explain the expected conditions of gravity predicted at the singularity. As such, notions of space and time lose all meaning.
Apparently, and ironically, physicists and cosmologists have known for decades that general relativity is an incomplete theory, despite its remarkable success at confirming its essential predictions. Its one weakness is a shortcoming in explaining gravity at extremely strong levels or at extraordinary small distances, called quantum gravity. A successful model for the earliest conditions of the Big Bang mandate a widely accepted theory of quantum gravity. At present, all attempts for such a theory have failed to reach fruition and are forthcoming. If scientists hope to describe the properties of the theorized singularity, they must first establish a theory that subscribes to quantum gravity. Until then, a limit to science prevails. To quote one scientist, “The singularity is often framed as the ‘beginning’ of the universe: But it's not a beginning at all. Mathematically, the singularity at the Big Bang isn't telling us that the universe began there. Instead, it's telling us that general relativity itself has broken down and has lost its predictive and explanatory power.” If cosmologists hope to truly grasp the earliest moments of the universe, they will need “new physics” and less scientism.
The second problem is the philosophical problem. I must find a means to translate the mathematical equations into a mental image generated by what the equations represent. I find it helpful to resort to the Einsteinian trick of thought experiments which rely exclusively on the imagination. What would I see or experience if I could ride along with the receding universe all the way back to the beginning? Back and back in space and time until I reach the singularity. As Nature became infinitely small what would replace the “space” it once occupied? Asserting the Big Bang to be the beginning of time and space – the Whole Show - cosmologists insist it is meaningless to ask what existed before or what lies beyond the expanding universe. It may be meaningless from the perspective of a theory, but it would not be meaningless from my perspective as an imaginary observer.
Because my imagination allows me to avoid disintegration by the actual “big bang” I reach the infinitely small and infinitely dense singularity. It is so dense that it contains all the energy and space-time of the universe we see today. I reason that if the singularity gave rise to the Big Bang and the Big Bang created the Whole Show, then the singularity could not occupy some theoretical point in the space and time of the Whole Show: there was no Nature (no space and no time) and therefore no place in Nature for the singularity to occupy.
My thought experiment has unveiled a dramatic paradox. The conundrum is a function of the theory of the big Bang as a natural event. The singularity, then, necessarily must exist somewhere in Nature to permit the Big Bang to occur, but the Big Bang created Nature, thus, prior to it, it could not be in Nature. And constitutively not a natural event. But half a minute: natural science, like cosmology, is interested in only natural events. I am led to the salient conclusion that Nature created Nature which is incoherent. Nature cannot create itself - it must abide by the Laws of Nature which only describe her behavior but do not contribute to her creation. To believe otherwise is to believe that a painting can create its artist.
But there is another theory we may apply to the unanswered questions of the Big Bang: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1). The sentence is so familiar that it can lose some of its sting. But what it affirms is monumental and it also avoids the paradox. The Biblical theory asserts Nature was created by the power of God, and consequently a Supernatural event, while science restates this creative energy as a cosmologic event. You may argue that the evidence for the Biblical theory must be taken on faith. But is that Faith really fundamentally different than the faith required to accept the Big Bang theory in full? I submit that if the Divine is agreed sine qua non for our present universe, then God created it; and His means for that creation was the Big Bang.
As with managing the possibility of multiple universes, the theory of the Big Bang can be adorned in scientific language and mathematics, but given its incompleteness, accepting its entirety warrants a leap of faith no different than the faith needed to secure a religious conviction. Rather than weighing the scientific theory and the theological theory on their own merits, you can become a skeptic. But you will also prove to be irrational: “we do not yet have all the answers to creation,” you might argue, “but even the thought of filling these gaps with God is deplorable, merit notwithstanding.”
By ignoring the limitations of science, scientism is vainly attempting to do the impossible: to force a Supernatural event onto a Natural theater. While cosmologists contend there is nothing outside the universe - that everything is Nature - they will experience an inevitable paradox. Nothing is something cosmologists cannot study. Unless they have something, they can tell us nothing. To step out of Nature is to step into Supernature. There, cosmologists will not be discussing the Laws of Nature but the Laws of God. The natural universe is either creatio ex nihilo by God who resides in the Supernatural, or it was created in a pre-existent, space-time which also gave rise to space and time. The former is logical, the latter, as we have seen, obviously, incoherent.
The cosmological consensus is that the universe had a beginning. The word consensus when considering fact is never a promising sign. It usually indicates that scientists are not all in agreement of a given theory because parts of it remain unexplained or elusive to confirmation and verification. We should never expect to hear the word consensus in regard to scientific truth. Truth is not up for a vote. I must say in good faith, cosmologists have a great deal of evidence for inferring a theory for a created universe, but to say it has been proved as scientific fact is to error by going beyond the evidence and the limitations of science.
About me:
I am a retired Clinical Diagnostic Scientist, a Registered Nurse, and a life-long student of philosophy.
Heuristic Critiques is a collection of essays directed at restoring sanity to a number of leading, corrupted ideologies: politics, education and epistemology, religion and Faith, morality, language, reason and logic, transgenderism and gender identity, Wokeism, and Critical Race Theory. Topics examined are undergirded by my conviction that we exist within an objective, natural reality which is practically and logically independent of human minds, social interaction, and social constructs.
We cannot gather truth apart from Belief and Faith, which are the sails that propel our vessel of empirical Truth into the harbors of Knowledge.