Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

The Psychopathology of Scientism 203
supplem.ented by stating the fact that scientific research rarely
follows the rigid commandments of the positivists. Many scientific
developments started with "metaphysical" problems which, according
to logical positivism, should have been discarded as pseudo
problems at the beginning, the theory of the atom, starting with
the wild speculations of Democritus and Lucretius, being an
example. Even mechanics, the prototype of exact science, was
freed from metaphysics and theology only slowly in a period extending
from Kepler to Lagrange. Kepler himself derived his
laws, not from solid principles of scientific research, but from
unbridled neoplatonic speculations. Physical notions like "force"
or "cause" were quite anthropomorphic in the beginning, and it
took a long development until they were "deanthropomorphized"
and became concepts in the sense of exact science and mathematical
description of nature.
It is therefore no wonder that the biological, behavioral, and
social sciences also began with vitalistic, philosophical, and metaphysical
notions and have only slowly reached a state where they
can deal with problems according to the modern standards of
science.
In truth, of course, science essentially is a symbolic system
created in such a way as to describe certain aspects. of experience.
What cannot be confirm.ed by experience is by this very fact
outside the field of science; but this is not a recent discovery.
On the other hand, explanation of and confirmation by experience
is a highly technical matter and not only much more than, but
very different from, "reduction to observable thing-predicates."
Science does not "reduce" to "observation predicates" and "protocol
sentences," but to highly technical terms like 'it-mesons, the
space-time continuum, the nucleoprotein helix, the expanding or
steady-state universe, and the rest, with the laws applying to such
entities-things connected with naive experience only by way of
a formidable mathematical and logical machine.
A consequence of this is that science mirrors only certain aspects
of experience, to the exclusion of others. What we call scientific
experience is a small sector of experience, and not only or neces-