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Comment by tivert | Hacker News Reader

> I think there is a third definition of "science":

> 3. What is actually happening in academia

While we're enumerating, I think there's a fourth definition:

4. "Science" as a belief system rather than as a tool/technology. I think in this respect, there's often an unacknowledged (or denied) blurring between science and science fiction (the more traditional "spaceship books" kind, as well as overconfident speculation). There's also a tendency to claim the prestige and authority of science for one's own personal opinions and preferences.

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I think the word "Scientism" (also) covers that one ?

According to wiktionary, 'scientism' has these meanings:

1. The belief that the scientific method and the assumptions and research methods of the physical sciences are applicable to all other disciplines (such as the humanities and social sciences), or that those other disciplines are not as valuable.

2. The belief that all truth is exclusively discovered through science.

Maybe the second definition kind of fits if you stretch it. I think 'futurism', not in the sense of the artistic movement, is a closer fit; '2. The study and prediction of possible futures.'

Believe it or not, I have had more than one person tell me with sincerity that observing the contents of a box is "doing science", I imagine because they believe that science is actually the only way to acquire knowledge.

Meanwhile, these people mock the religious [in their imagination] for "being" insular/fundamentalist.

“When you break an egg and scramble it you are doing cosmology,” said Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at the California Institute of Technology.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/science/15brain.html

What are the other ways?

Making things up

I find personally that "scientism", unlike many other ism-s, is an external label. I.e. I don't think people call themselves that. It's a negative label ascribed to people one philosophically disagrees with. As such, I am skeptical of its value and use.

I think scientism runs deeper than just a set of philosophical beliefs. It is more like a modern religion, or even an aesthetic.

A key feature of scientism is that science itself is never well defined or understood by its adherents, so science is a floating signifier that can mean whatever its proponents want it to mean. Typically, these are not people with firsthand experience doing science, but consumers of second and thirdhand science media and science culture (TED Talks, "I fucking love science", NASA t-shirt, "I believe in science" bumper sticker, etc.). Lack of scientific literacy results in science taking on a ritual status, where following the ritual (scientific method, peer review, etc.) produces truth, and failure to find truth is always the fault of the mislead individual scientist. Because science is the ultimate source of truth, it is also the organizing principle for society, and those "anti-science" people who would question science are dangerous and stand in the way of progress--basically a religion.

> I think scientism runs deeper than just a set of philosophical beliefs. It is more like a modern religion, or even an aesthetic.

I agree.

> A key feature of scientism is that science itself is never well defined or understood by its adherents, so science is a floating signifier that can mean whatever its proponents want it to mean. Typically, these are not people with firsthand experience doing science, but consumers of second and thirdhand science media and science culture...

I don't think that completely true. I think you have different levels of adherents of scientism, and what you say is definitely true of most of the lower levels ("consumers of second and thirdhand science media and science culture").

However the top tier consists of the creators of a decent chunk of that "science media and science culture." Many of those people are actual scientists, but ones who have sought out the public eye as "science popularizers" and are best known for their works for general audiences.

The word you're looking for is probably "anti-intellectualism". The tribal flavoring of the white supremacism-religious fundamentalism far-right spectrum in the US is against undisputed knowledge, history, learning, and facts in addition to STEM.

Or they could be referring to the opposite - the unquestioning adherence to all things Science, as long as those things fall within the progressive orthodoxy that has a stranglehold on academia.

This comment doesn’t make sense at all in this context. It seems like you’re rushing to put down the “white supremacism-religious fundamentalism far-right” before understanding if that’s relevant to this thread.

That’s too many hyphens.

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