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This paper evaluates the case Paul Horwich makes in his book Wittgenstein's Metaphilosophy against so‐called T‐philosophy—the traditional conception of philosophy as a theoretical enterprise that seeks to analyse concepts, solve problems, and explain phenomena in a unified and systematic way. Different forms of T‐philosophy are identified in the paper, but it is argued that Horwich's multi‐pronged critique has no force against any of them. The paper also assesses, as a case study, Horwich's contention that the problem of our knowledge of mathematical objects can be dissolved on the grounds that the problem is based on a misguided analogy with our knowledge of physical objects. The paper shows that Horwich's contention is mistaken and that the problem can be established without drawing any analogy with our knowledge of physical objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human Resource (HR) algorithms are now widely used for decision making in the field of HR. In this paper, we examine how biases may become entrenched in HR algorithms, which are often designed without consultation with HR specialists, assumed to operate with scientific objectivity and often viewed as instruments beyond scrutiny. Using three orienting concepts such as scientism, illusio and rationales, we demonstrate why and how biases of HR algorithms go unchecked and in turn may perpetuate the biases in HR systems and consequent HR decisions. Based on a narrative review, we examine bias in HR algorithms; provide a methodology for algorithmic hygiene for HR professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sheds light on the role of evolutionary ideas in the making of Turkish nationalism during the Kemalist era (1923–1938). By so doing, it aims to challenge some of the dominant historiographical viewpoints as to the nature of Turkish nationalism. One is related to the Kemalist elites' predisposition towards the so‐called "scientism" seen as one of the bases for nationalism. We intend to turn upside–down the relation between the Kemalists' use of science and Turkish nationalism. Second, we problematize the "culturalist" origins of Turkish nationalism arguing that the seemingly "culturalist" reflections of the time were, indeed, materialist formulations based on the science of the times. We discuss in this respect the Kemalist elites' use of evolutionary ideas. By synthesizing the ways in which these elites employed evolutionary ideas in the fields of history, language, geography, anthropology, biology, eugenics, and pedagogy, we aim to understand the specific nature of Turkish nationalism before 1945. This secular nationalism conceived culture as having materialist bases and differed fundamentally from the culturalist varieties of Turkish nationalism coloured by Islam in the post‐1945 era. Furthermore, the paper empirically enriches the complex and entangled story of evolutionary ideas in the early Turkish Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with Troth and Guest (2019) on psychology in HRM. I argue they misframe the central issue in debate. The real problem is not psychology per se but psychologisation—the drive to reduce explanation of macro‐level HRM outcomes to individual‐level psychological‐behavioural factors and individual differences. Accordingly, the most visible and harmful effects of psychologisation are in strategic HRM and the HRM‐performance literature but Troth and Guest's defence of psychology does not cover them. I use this response to re‐establish that it is psychologisation, not psychology per se, that is the critics' focal concern and describe how the three‐decade advance of psychologisation, along with scholastic scientism and normative promotionalism, have created severe theoretical and empirical problems in the high‐performance research programme and taken the strategic HRM field down a 30‐year dead‐end. Suggestions for a turn‐around are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Chicago sociologist William F. Ogburn's (1886–1959) views about technological unemployment, which were intimately connected to his analysis of the social impacts of technological developments and resulting social problems due to cultural lag. We trace the development of his views as seen through his well‐known 1922 book, Social Change with Respect to Culture and Original Nature, his important contributions to the President's Research Committee on Social Trends (1933), and his lesser‐known pamphlets designed for a broader audience—Living with Machines (1933), You and Machines (1934), and Machines and Tomorrow's World (1938). He used these pamphlets to educate the public about the dangers of new machines and technological unemployment. In doing so, he drew upon sociological analysis in his professional scholarly writings and his long‐standing personal interests in social betterment and social reform. Our analysis also calls into question the adequacy of existing scholarship on Ogburn that has emphasized his commitment to a statistical, dispassionate, and "objectivist" approach to social science research. We call for a revised, richer, and more complex view of Ogburn's work and legacy as one of the nation's leading social scientists during the first half of the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses an implicit presupposition in research-supported psychological treatments and evidence-based practice in psychology. It argues that the notion of research-supported psychological treatments is based on a reductive conceptualisation of psychotherapy. Research-supported psychological treatments hinge upon an empirical reduction where psychotherapy schools become conceptualized as mere collections of empirical propositions. However, this paper argues that the different psychotherapy schools have distinct ethoses that are constituted by normative claims. Consequently, the evaluation of the different psychotherapy schools and the practice of psychotherapy should include the underlying normative claims of these ethoses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the main global critiques of scientism lose their punch because they rely on an uncharitable definition of their target. It focuses on epistemological scientism and divides it into four categories in terms of how strong (science is the only source of knowledge) or weak (science is the best source of knowledge) and how narrow (only natural sciences) or broad (all sciences or at least not only the natural sciences) they are. Two central arguments against scientism, the (false) dilemma and self‐referential incoherence, are analysed. Of the four types of epistemological scientism, three can deal with these counterarguments by utilizing two methodological principles: epistemic evaluability of reliability and epistemic opportunism. One hopes that these considerations will steer the discussion on scientism to more fruitful pastures in the future. For example, there are interesting methodological considerations concerning what evaluability or reliability and epistemic opportunism entail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins by locating Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in the context of education more broadly and identifies some key concepts that form a backcloth to understanding it and some tensions and curriculum issues to which it gives rise. The paper examines some of the strengths and problems of different interpretations of ESD and argues that its future as force for good depends on it becoming disentangled from the scientism that characterises much modern and late-modern thinking. It is further argued that this can be achieved by a focus on the character of our engagement with place and that this can reveal what is truly environing, including the intrinsic normativity, agency and value of transcendent nature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the Confucian veneration of the past and its commitment to transmitting the tradition of the sages. It does so by placing it in the context of the historical trajectory from the May Fourth attacks on Confucianism and its scientistic, iconoclastic approach to 'saving China,' to similar approaches to China's modernization in later decades, through the market reforms that launched China into global capitalism, to the revival of Confucianism in recent years. It reexamines the association of the Pragmatism of John Dewey and Hu Shih with the scientistic iconoclasm of the May Fourth Movement and argues that a broader scrutiny of Dewey's and Hu's works, beyond the period when Dewey visited China, reveals a more balanced treatment of tradition, science, and modernization. Pragmatists believe in reconstructing, not destroying, traditions in their pursuit of growth for individuals and communities. Despite a tension between the progress-oriented historical consciousness that Dewey inherited from the Enlightenment (a consciousness that some consider as characteristic of modern Western historiography) and the historical consciousness underlying Chinese historiographical tradition (one that views the past as a didactic 'mirror'), it is possible to reconcile the Pragmatic reconstruction of tradition with the Confucian veneration of the past. This paper argues for a Pragmatic Confucian approach to Chinese traditions that is selective in its transmission of the past and flexible enough in its 'preservation' to allow for progressive change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are strong arguments in favour of the need for more 'empirically informed philosophy'. Using papers in the current issue of JECP as case studies, I raise fundamental and unresolved methodological questions about the proper relationship between philosophy and empirical research, in particular concerning the relationship between 'data' in empirical research and the 'responses' people give in to questions in the process of philosophical dialogue. There are tensions between the role of data in empirical research and the critical stance required for philosophy that need to be addressed, if empirically informed philosophy is to make a serious and substantial contribution to our thinking about the matters of great import it addresses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a conceptual investigation into the notion of a network as a form of social organization for the production of excellent research. This metaphor has been particularly attractive to social scientists and managers of cooperative research, because it seems to connote what is organic, flexible and libratory in communication and in the philosophy of language. The paper criticizes this preconception. In particular, it shows that, while Wittgenstein's philosophy may indeed encapsulate the virtues that partisans for the networking trope admire, they are mistaken in thinking that they can claim his authority for the use they make of this figure. The thought that they can do so results from inattention to features of the development of his ideas about language, particularly his fervent anti-scientism. I conclude that an over-stretched use of the metaphor obscures its constraining signification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I focus on the central role faith plays in the thought of Polanyi and Voegelin. I begin by indicating how both find the modern conception of scientific knowing seriously wanting. What Polanyi terms“objectivism” and Voegelin calls“scientism” is the modern tendency to reduce knowledge to only that which can be scientifically demonstrated. This errant view of knowledge does not occur in a vacuum, though, and both men draw a connection between this and the political pathologies of the twentieth century. I then show the complementary ways in which these two thinkers believe recovery is possible: an epistemological solution encompassed in Polanyi's personal knowledge and an ontological reorientation that is the core of Voegelin's insistence that we must recover an awareness of human participation in transcendent reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The dissociation between the domains of knowledge continues to perpetuate the fragmentation of people’s health and healing experiences. Of particular significance are the polarities that have been created between the objective, subjective and spiritual dimensions of knowledge and human experience. This paper offers a consideration of how faith might serve as a pragmatic avenue towards assuaging the polarities between knowledges and enhancing nurses’ ability to attend to the complex and mulitdimensional nature of health and healing processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New Political Economy has something very important in common with welfare economics: its focus on static, technical efficiency criteria to judge the rationality of a social, political or economic order. This often leads theorists to perceive their objects of research as well-defined problems to which clear-cut solutions can be found and prescribed as policy proposals, addressed at the policymaker or the democratic sovereign. This perspective frequently excludes important empirical phenomena from the research agenda. Although, for example, certain well-defined informational asymmetries are frequently modeled, fundamental knowledge problems such as ignorance of the true model of the economy are usually ignored. In the present paper, this approach is criticized from a Hayekian point of view, with an emphasis on the problems of "scientism" (i.e., the inappropriate transfer of methods from the natural to the social sciences) and irremediably imperfect knowledge, troubling both the agents in the theoretical model and the theorist. Furthermore, it is argued and illustrated with two examples that an extension of Public Choice's research agenda along Hayekian lines may be fruitful, because it leads to a fresh perception even of such problems that already have been extensively researched within the traditional framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explicates the argument of The Origins of American Science. Starting from my own historical premises and the origin of the social sciences in both historicism and science, I compare the divergent historical orientations of the sociologies of Robert Par and Max Weber. I argue that the inclination of American social science toward scientism and liberalism derives from the national ideology of American exceptionalism. Since this structural feature of American political culture was itself a part of history. I indicate how changes in historical consciousness and politics led American social scientists to reformulate exceptionalism and their disciplines. By the 1920s, their hope of establishing scientific control over, and maintaining the liberal direction of, the fast-changing national history was embodied in scientism. I close with some thoughts about the continuing power of scientism and exceptionalism since the 1920s, and the possibility that an historical. Weberian model of social science could bridge the widening gap between scientistic and hermeneutic wings of the social science disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article informs that members of the APA who are so strictly dedicated to the doctrine of immaculate Scientism must needs limit the compass of their professional attention to the simplest and purest of measurable phenomena. To those who with good reason pride themselves on having contributed to the historic emancipation of Sociology discipline from the shackles of an out-worn philosophy and theology, to these and perhaps to many others, the title of this paper provides ample cause for dismay or indignation. The ground for this undertaking of the author's, as well as for the hope that other psychologists will invade the abundant field of religious images and imagents, and grapple with one or another of its many mysteries, is a conclusion, or value judgment, the author has have come to, on the periphery of science, which might be termed a credo.

The core of this essay is a review of Alexander Bogner's book "The Epistemization of Politics" (2021). It fits into the ongoing discussion about the role of scientism in science education. Bogner makes the provocative case that science denialism inadvertently points to contemporary scientism in the public sphere, and he observes that many science deniers mobilize (counter)experts and (counter)expertise because better knowledge seems to be "the harder currency" than softer values and interests, emotions, fears, or epistemological dissent. In this way, Bogner explains, the struggle for political hegemony has turned into a struggle for better knowledge. He calls this the epistemization of politics—a new form of political scientism. In this essay, I describe why reading this book was so valuable to me as a teaching professional and why I decided to share some important points with other science educators and scholars. I pose four important questions that I asked myself after reading Bogner's book—about scientism in school science paving the way for scientism in policy, about Science Studies positions in science education as a possible backdoor to science denial, about the role of the naturalistic fallacy in science education (do we always distinguish between facts and values?), and about how scientism in school science threatens the agency of our students. I discuss these points in light of recent publications in the science education literature. The essay is concluded with a number of original quotes from the last chapter of Bogner's book, which revisits his main points and can serve as a stimulus for further reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both defenders and certain critics of evidence-based medicine (EBM) share philosophical commitments – assumptions about the meaning of and relationship between such fundamental concepts as ‘objectivity’, ‘subjectivity’ and ‘rationality’– that frame the debate between them. Critics need to be particularly careful in analysing their own philosophical commitments. Ironically, failure to do so has led some to ground their rejection of EBM in philosophical theses that are less clear and/or more contentious than the reasonable conclusions they wish to defend. There is no need to label ‘objectivity’ a ‘myth’ or ‘scientific method’ an ‘illusion’ in order to identify what is wrong in EBM. Such strategies play into the hands of EBM dogmatists, allowing them to continue to position themselves as the defenders of ‘science’ and ‘reason’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents questions and answers related to the debate on the evidence-based medicine. One person asked if the scholarly clinical journals always facilitate medical progress or if they can suppress it. Finally, another person in the art of soft science asked if the evidence-based medicine reasoned medicine or both.

In a previous article, I examined the nature of historical consciousness. In this article, I apply it to three social issues: racism, ecological crisis, and higher education. Since the methods of historical consciousness are already in use, the aim here is not to introduce a new approach. My purpose is to make readers conscious of what they might normally do and why they are doing it. If a society fails to highlight and make explicit the methods it uses to solve the challenges it faces, the transfer of relevant skills will decline over several generations. Modern society has already reached the stage at which scientism has displaced a balance between timeless scientific rationality and historical consciousness in our approach to social issues. Without historical perspective to provide a narrative structure to the findings of science, society is likely to act in ways that are counterproductive. Unless citizens have a personal sense of participation in the stream of historical events, the knowledge they gain from science is not likely to be useful in guiding the direction of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to reconnect Quine's views to the current debate on scientific realism, I reframe Quine's scientific realism into a semantic, a metaphysical, and an epistemological dimension. With this conceptual background, I review the historical development of Quine's scientific realism from the late 1940s until his death in 2000. I challenge Soames's view that Quine is a phenomenalist at the time of "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951) and show that he remains agnostic between a realist and an anti‐realist conceptual scheme instead. I also argue that Quine's early views on regimentation are incompatible with a strong formulation of semantic realism. I proceed in reconstructing how he becomes a metaphysical and epistemological realist in the mid‐1950s and argue against the view of Keskinen and Fogelin that interprets Quine as being a metaphysical anti‐realist. Contrary to Davidson, I defend the view that he never gave up normative epistemology and really is a proper epistemological realist. Finally, I discuss how he tries to reconcile his realism with his thesis of ontological relativity and how this necessitates the switch to a stronger form of semantic realism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethical issues are structurally present in the design and choice of data; the interaction between problem, model, and intervention; and the scientism that supports data analytics' claims to authority. In this chapter, I argue against three social assumptions behind common implementations of learning analytics: data realism, technological neutrality, and scientism. Recognizing the need to create a mindset of conscious ethical awareness for learning analytics, I challenge institutional researchers to consider learning analytics through three critical lenses: a professional ethics lens, a responsibility lens, and an equity lens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's insights concerning the epistemology of libertarianism. Topics discussed by the author include weak incompatibilism, argument of philosopher Peter van Inwagen against the existence of epistemically justified libertarians, and assessment of arguments from empiricism and scientism.

This is an article on the history of religion and mathematics, which explores the origins and uses of geometric terminology in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century esoteric discourses, and inquires as to whether or not such adaptions are instances of the discursive strategy identified by Olav Hammer as terminological scientism. For the situation regarding spheric terminology, I argue that the context is not scientistic, being rather an example of the decontextualised modern appropriation of antique terminologies. In the case of planar terminology, I conclude that while its origin with Emanuel Swedenborg as an adaption of anatomical vocabulary does indeed fit Hammer's definition of scientism, modern usage stripped the term of Swedenborg's scientistic rationale - making the scientistic designation something of a vestigial atavism. In dealing with dimensional terminology, my conclusion is that from Johann Zöllner's initial formulation to the broader Spiritualistic and Theosophical applications, it exemplifies terminological scientism through and through. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this forum contribution, the planetary boundaries discourse put forward by W. Steffen and colleagues is scrutinized. These boundaries are defined as a 'safe operating space for humanity based on the intrinsic biophysical processes that regulate the stability of the Earth system'. Without reference to specific empirical shortcomings, it is shown that this discourse falls prey to the scientistic fallacy as part of utopian thought. Thus the erroneous belief is propagated that reality, through empirical research, can be penetrated to the full whereby a complete, that is, utopian, grasp of human reality can be translated into said 'operating space'. This discourse is shown to be incoherent and lays waste to any useful research that tries to fathom particular accidents, crises and contingencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to answer the question why Confucianism, the dominant 'teaching' among the Three Teachings, is not a religion in contemporary China, unlike the other two 'teachings,' Buddhism and Daoism. By examining this phenomenon in the social-historical context, this study finds its origin in Orientalism. The Orientalist conceptualization of religion became part of the New Culture discourse at the turn of the twentieth century. While China has undergone tremendous social changes over the past century, the old discourse remains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the short decades since the introduction of positive psychology instigated broader interdisciplinary research, interest in happiness has been growing in academia, the media and public policy. Numerous critiques of these developments have been forwarded from a variety of theoretical and disciplinary traditions. This article discusses three such criticisms: the culture-bound and normative character of happiness, 'bad science' and scientism, and diminished subjectivity and individualisation. It is argued that criticism, particularly internal criticism, evidences the maturity of the field. However, the depth of some critiques may also indicate that interest in happiness is bound with broader cultural preoccupations and is likely to be superseded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT In this essay, we explore how sustainability is embodied in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), analyzing how the NGSS explicitly define and implicitly characterize sustainability. We identify three themes (universalism, scientism, and technocentrism) that are common in scientific discourse around sustainability and show how they appear in the NGSS. Taken together, these themes evoke a technology-centered perspective called ecological modernization that defines sustainability as a set of global problems affecting all humans equally and solvable through the application of science and technology. We argue that students who are taught to think about sustainability from this perspective will be less able to see its ethical and political dimensions and less prepared for the political realities of a pluralist, democratic society that must balance the needs of multiple groups and integrate science with other sources of knowledge to develop contextualized responses to sustainability challenges. One compelling alternative is a systematic collaboration between science educators and social studies educators, in which the complementary pedagogical strengths of both fields are combined to provide realistic and powerful preparation for future sustainability challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In formulating his understanding of Islamic history, thought and politics, the Turkish Muslim thinker Ahmet Davutoğlu approves and adopts the German philosopher Edmund Husserl's formulation of phenomenology - or, philosophy of consciousness. Both Husserl and Davutoğlu perceive a crisis in humanity and identify its causes in scientism and logical positivism, against which they develop their respective phenomenological alternatives. This article places in parallel Husserl's stylised history of Western thought and Weltanschauung method with that of Davutoğlu's Muslim worldview, in order to illuminate the latter's putatively comprehensive interpretation of Islam, diagnosis of the ills of secularism, modernisation, and crisis of values he finds in Muslim societies; and his prescribed treatment for those ills: the privileging of ontology over epistemology, and the full unfolding of core theological concepts of revelation, monotheism, and prophecy. Davutoğlu seeks to reconcile tensions and disputes within Islamic intellectual traditions concerning the nature of God and God's attributes, and the tension between mysticism and rationalism, and the historical and the atemporal. In summary, Davutoğlu's intervention in Islamic traditions is interesting in the effort it makes to appropriate elements of both Husserl and GWF Hegel for the purpose of reconciling a phenomenological reading of Islam with established Islamic authorities and commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views on New Atheism, which is a phenomenon that aims to raise awareness of science and philosophy. He discusses various elements of New Atheism and scientism, the differences between New Atheism and conventional atheism and provides a brief historical overview of atheism in Western nations. He offers several examples of the characteristics of New Atheist authors and tackles several problems related to scientism.

"Intelligent Design" (ID) is a contemporary intellectual movement arguing that there is scientific evidence for the existence of some sort of creator. Its proponents see ID as a scientific research program and as a way to build a bridge between science and theology, while many critics see it merely as a repackaged form of religiously motivated creationism: both bad science and bad theology. In this article, I offer a close reading of the ID movement's critique of theistic evolutionism and argue that this critique is ultimately in tension with the movement's broader thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analytic philosophy is sometimes said to have particularly close connections to logic and to science, and no particularly interesting or close relation to its own history. It is argued here that although the connections to logic and science have been important in the development of analytic philosophy, these connections do not come close to characterizing the nature of analytic philosophy, either as a body of doctrines or as a philosophical method. We will do better to understand analytic philosophy-and its relationship to continental philosophy-if we see it as a historically constructed collection of texts, which define its key problems and concerns. It is true, however, that analytic philosophy has paid little attention to the history of the subject. This is both its strength-since it allows for a distinctive kind of creativity-and its weakness-since ignoring history can encourage a philosophical variety of 'normal science.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I discuss John Henry Newman's correspondence with William Froude, F.R.S., (1810-79) and his family. Froude remained an unbeliever, and I argue that Newman's disputes with him about the ethics of belief and the relationship between religion and science not only reveal important aspects of his thought, but also anticipate modern discussions on foundationalism, the ethics of beliefs and scientism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One peculiarity of the broad theme of science-religion dialogues is that while it has been growing significantly, it seems to be moving farther and farther away from its goal of establishing bridges and understandings between the two enterprises. This essay explores this unhappy situation, with particular reference to the works of two scholars who have been critical of some of the pioneer theologians and have suggested some radically new approaches to the issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores several dimensions of the sociology of science and efforts by philosophers to address its most radical claims. Possibility to chart a path between the Scylla of scientism and the Charybdis of relativism; Need for educations to differentiate the normative and descriptive elements of the nature of science; Fallibility in science.

Why has James been relatively absent from the neopragmatist revival of the past twenty years? I argue that part of the reason is that his psychological projects seem to hold little promise for a socially and culturally progressive philosophical project, and that his concern with religious issues makes him seem like a religious apologist. Bringing together James's psychological writings with his philosophical writings shows these assumptions to be wrong. I offer a reading of “The Will to Believe” and The Principles of Psychology to support my position (a) that James's philosophical methodology and his psychological works lend themselves to a naturalized approach to philosophical inquiry, which both allows for a reshaping of traditional philosophical questions and offers a check on scientism, and (b) that, contrary to many commentators' claims, James is not defending religion against science but is instead using science to address epistemic and moral issues more broadly. I conclude with a discussion of the ways in which James's naturalism demands a reconsideration of the nature of philosophical inquiry, as well as a revised view of a scientific psychology that avoids scientism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the free will and Scientiphicalism. Implication of Determinism for choosing available alternatives on the free will; Conflict of Scientiphicalism with the real choice; Discussion of the approach of conservative alternatives to Scientiphicalism.

Huston Smith's Why Religion Matters is the culminating reflections of one of the most respected religion scholars of our day. In this work, Smith sees modern society to be in the midst of a spiritual crisis. According to Smith, this crisis has been brought about by the advance of science and the inroads into what Smith calls the traditional worldview. While Smith's work is of some importance, I believe that several of its fundamental claims are mistaken. Smith often does not accurately portray the content of science and frequently conflates the actual practice of science with philosophical scientism. Smith wrongly blames science alone for the decline of religion among Western elites. His claim that all religions can be equivocally described in terms of the traditional worldview is also problematic. Despite this, Smith does have a clear conception of what the issues are in the relation between science and religion. It is my hope that these issues will continue to be taken seriously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Huston Smith is justifiably critical of scientism, the belief that science is the only reliable path to truth. He holds that scientism and the materialism that accompanies it have led to a widespread denial of the transcendence expressed in traditional religious world-views. He argues that evolutionary theory should be seen as a product of scientism rather than of scientific evidence, citing authors who claim that the fossil record does not support the idea of continuous descent with modification from earlier life forms. I suggest that he has underestimated the cumulative weight of evidence from many independent fields of science supporting neo-Darwinism. I argue that methodological (but not philosophical) naturalism is a basic assumption of scientific inquiry. Proponents of intelligent design assume a fixed plan or blueprint, which is compatible with Smith's understanding of God's timeless vision. By contrast, almost all biologists and many theologians today envisage a dynamic and open-ended process rather than the realization of the unchanging forms in a preexisting plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents history reader Jerome R. Ravetz's speech at the World Council of Churches' 1979 Conference on Faith, Science and the Future, which focused on the crisis of scientism as it is revealed in the social practice of science and the role of faith in resolving the problem. Weaknesses in scientific-technical knowledge; Relationship among scientific research, technology and the government.

Opinion. Argues that instruction on evolution can profitably begin with a dialogue on what counts as believable based on a study of the cultural history of Darwinism. Goals for teaching evolution; Problem of scientism; Difference between understanding and knowing evolution; Cultural constructivism.

ABSTRACT In this short response we show that Kevin Smith's moral and ethical rejections of homeopathy 1 are fallacious and rest on questionable epistemology. Further, we suggest Smith's presumption of a utilitarian stance is an example of scientism encroaching into medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the article "Clinical Guidelines: Ways Ahead," published in the November 1998 issue.