Anti-scientism is a philosophical and ideological position. Philosophical trends and schools

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:47

Anti-scientism is a philosophical movement that opposes science. The main idea of the adherents is that science should not affect people's lives. She has no place in everyday life, so you should not pay so much attention. Why they decided so, where it came from and how philosophers view this trend, is described in this article.

It all started with scientism

First you need to understand what scientism is, and then you can move on to the main topic. Scientism is a special philosophical trend that recognizes science as the highest value. André Comte-Sponville, one of the founders of scientism, said that science should be regarded as religious dogma.

Scientists were people who ex alted mathematics or physics and said that all sciences should be equal to them. An example of this is Rutherford's famous quote: "Sciences are of two kinds: physics and stamp collecting."

The philosophical and ideological position of scientism isin the following postulates:

• Only science is true knowledge.
• All methods that are used in scientific research are applicable to social and humanitarian knowledge.
• Science can solve all the problems facing humanity.

Now the main thing

In contrast to scientism, a new philosophical direction began to emerge, called anti-scientism. In short, this is a movement whose founders oppose science. Within the framework of anti-scientism, views on scientific knowledge vary, acquiring a liberal or critical character.

Initially, anti-scientism was based on forms of knowledge that did not involve science (morality, religion, etc.). Today, the anti-scientific view criticizes science as such. Another version of anti-scientism considers the contradiction of scientific and technological progress and says that science should be responsible for all the consequences that are caused by its activities. Therefore, we can say that anti-scientism is a trend that sees in science the main problem of human development.

Main species

In general, anti-scientism can be divided into moderate and radical. Moderate anti-scientism is not opposed to science per se, but rather to ardent scientists who believe that scientific methods should be the basis of everything.

Radical views proclaim the uselessness of science, causing it to be hostile to human nature. Scientific and technological progress has two categoriesinfluence: on the one hand, it simplifies a person's life, on the other hand, it leads to mental and cultural degradation. Therefore, scientific imperatives must be destroyed, replaced by other factors of socialization.

Representatives

Science makes a person's life soulless, having neither a human face nor romance. One of the first to express his indignation and substantiate it scientifically was Herbert Marcuse. He showed that the diversity of human manifestations is suppressed by technocratic parameters. The abundance of surges that a person faces daily indicates that society is in a critical state. Overloaded with information flows are not only specialists in technical professions, but also the humanities, whose spiritual aspiration is stifled by excessive standards.

In 1950, Bertrand Russell put forward an interesting theory, he said that the concept and essence of antiscientism are hidden in the hypertrophied development of science, which has become the main reason for the loss of humanity and values.

Michael Polanyi once said that scientism can be identified with the church, which fetters human thoughts, forcing them to hide important beliefs behind a terminological curtain. In turn, anti-scientism is the only free flow that allows a person to be himself.

Neo-Kantianism

Anti-scientism is a special doctrine that occupies its own niche in philosophy. For a long time, philosophy was considered a science, but when the latter separated as an integralunit, her methods began to be challenged. Some philosophical schools believed that science prevents a person from developing and thinking broadly, others in some way recognized its merits. Therefore, there were several ambiguous opinions regarding scientific activity.

B. Windelband and G. Rickett were the first representatives of the Baden neo-Kantian school, which interpreted Kant's philosophy from a transcendental psychological point of view, where he considered the process of socialization of the individual. They defended the position of comprehensive human development, considering it impossible to consider the process of cognition separately from culture or religion. In this regard, science cannot be positioned as a basic source of perception. In the process of development, an important place is occupied by the system of values and norms, with the help of which a person studies the world, because he cannot free himself from innate subjectivity, and scientific dogmas infringe on him in this regard.

In contrast to them, Heidegger says that one cannot completely dismiss science from the process of socialization in particular and philosophy in general. Scientific knowledge is one of the possibilities that allows you to comprehend the essence of being, albeit in a slightly limited form. Science cannot give a complete description of everything that happens in the world, but it is able to streamline the events that occur.

Existentialism

Existential philosophical schools were guided by the teachings of Karl Jaspers regarding anti-scientism. He assured that philosophy and science are absolutely incompatible concepts, since they are orientedto get opposite results. At a time when science is constantly accumulating knowledge, and its latest theories are considered the most reliable, philosophy can, without a twinge of conscience, return to the study of a question that was posed a thousand years ago. Science always looks forward. It is unable to form the value potential of humanity, since it is focused solely on the subject.

It is human nature to feel weakness and defenselessness before the existing laws of nature and society, and it also depends on a random combination of circumstances that provoke the emergence of a particular situation. Such situations arise constantly up to infinity, and it is not always possible to rely on dry knowledge alone to overcome them.

In everyday life, a person tends to forget about such a phenomenon as death. He may forget that he has a moral obligation or responsibility for something. And only getting into various situations, facing a moral choice, a person understands how powerless science is in these matters. There is no formula by which to calculate the percentage of good and evil in a particular story. There is no data that will show the outcome of events with absolute certainty, there are no graphs that show the expediency of rational and irrational thinking for a particular case. Science was created specifically for people to get rid of this kind of torment and master the objective world. This is exactly what Karl Jaspers thought when he said that anti-scientism is one thing in philosophy.from basic concepts.

Personalism

From the point of view of personalism, science is confirmation or negation, while philosophy is questioning. Studying anti-scientism, the directions of this trend substantiate science as a phenomenon that contradicts harmonious human development, moving it away from being. Personalists argue that man and being are one, but with the advent of science, this unity disappears. The technologization of society forces a person to fight nature, that is, to resist the world of which he is a part. And this abyss created by science forces the individual to become part of the empire of inhumanity.

Key messages

Anti-scientism is (in philosophy) a position that challenges the validity of science and its omnipresence. Simply put, philosophers are sure that, in addition to science, there must be other foundations on which a worldview can be formed. In this regard, one can imagine several philosophical schools that have studied the need for science in society.

The first trend is neo-Kantianism. Its representatives believed that science cannot be the main and only basis for understanding the world, since it infringes on the innate, sensual and emotional needs of a person. It should not be completely dismissed, because scientific knowledge helps to streamline all processes, but it is worth remembering their imperfection.

Existentialists said that science prevents a person from making the right moral choice. Scientific thinking is focused onknowledge of the world of things, but when it comes to choosing between right and wrong, all theorems become meaningless.

Personalists are of the opinion that science disfigures the natural nature of man. Since man and the world around him are one whole, and science forces him to fight with nature, that is, with a part of himself.

Result

Anti-scientism fights science in different ways: somewhere it criticizes it, completely refusing to recognize its existence, and somewhere it demonstrates its imperfection. And it remains to ask yourself the question of whether science is good or bad. On the one hand, science has helped humanity survive, but on the other hand, it has made it spiritually helpless. Therefore, before choosing between rational judgments and emotions, it is worth prioritizing correctly.