The Nightmare of Scientism

This is a brief follow-up to a recent article, ‘All Humans Are Naturally Religious’. There I noted that, in the opinion of Carl Jung and Paul Tillich, when religion “loses its specifically religious trappings, (it) reappears in the guise of political, social, or philosophical and cultural notions, or indeed in anything to which can be appended the suffix ‘ism’ ”. I also noted that when science is elevated to the status of a religion and worshipped accordingly, we call it scientism.

Yesterday I came across an outstanding example. I was reading The Essential Colin Wilson¹. In it there is a chapter called ‘The Strange Story of Modern Philosophy’, which was taken from his earlier book Beyond the Outsider. During this historical account he describes the positivism of Auguste Comte:

“Comte was one of the first of the great worshippers of science of the nineteenth century. History, he says, proceeds in three stages: superstition, metaphysics and science. The first stage is one of total ignorance, when men are dominated by fear. In the second stage, men know enough to reject the idea of a universe populated by gods and demons, but are still inclined to connect up their facts with vague theories about the ‘absolute’, ‘essences’, and so on. Finally, with the coming of science, history enters its final stage; the sun of knowledge rises, and the millennium is in sight. All knowledge can now be verified by observation and logic”.

Wilson then comments that “to men of the twentieth century, this view sounds harmlessly optimistic, but naïve”. Naïve, certainly. Perhaps even totally wrong? I would say so — the last sentence is especially ignorant. But harmless. Really? Note the phrase ‘the sun of knowledge’. This is presumably a reference to the movement now known as the Enlightenment.

I don’t intend to go into a detailed critique here, so treat this rather as polemical. The rejection of everything religious or spiritual in modern times is not harmless; it is a terrible mistake that has to be rectified. The advent of the scientific and philosophical Enlightenment was not the final stage in the historical process. What once seemed to be Enlightenment has turned out to be an ugly black cloud blotting out the sun. Comte’s analysis of history is faulty. It is not a linear process — ongoing progress — rather cyclical. We have reached a dead-end, need to see scientism for the lie that it is, and look forward to the next stage, a reunification of the best of science and the best of religion (or spirituality if you prefer).

I hope you have enjoyed this article. I have written in the past about other topics, including spirituality, metaphysics, psychology, science, Christianity, politics and astrology. All of those articles are on Medium, but the simplest way to see a guide to them is to visit my website (click here and here). My most recent articles, however, are only on Medium; for those please check out my lists.

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Footnote:

1. Harrap, 1985