In 2016 a group of academics published a book entitled ‘Scientism: The New Orthodoxy”, edited by Richard Williams a professor of psychology at Brigham Young University, and Daniel Robinson a fellow in philosophy at Oxford.  How prescient in an era of monstrously fake science including Corona, the Climate, Transgenderism and other illiteracies, cults, and totalitarian theologies.  The book is worth reading if anyone is interested in understanding the crucial differences between Scientism, which many of us would define as a ‘religion of Science’, as opposed to real scientific inquiry.  It is refreshing to see some academics pushing back against the imposition of Globalism, or the ‘military-industrial’ complex mentioned by Eisenhower, which is the takeover by the state, of inquiry, education, information, philosophy, culture and material investigations.  Scientism as a metaphysical exercise comes right out of the ‘Enlightenment’ and the deracination of the past including culture, history and tradition.

The cult or religion of Scientism is a metaphysical and philosophical program.  The intent is to capture all of humanity’s endeavours within its unitarian, uniformitarian, and quite totalitarian construct.  All human experiences, whether in ‘hard science’ or ‘material’ matters, or in softer-metaphysical and immaterial realms, will be managed by ‘The Science’.  Scientism is thus like spilled water; it knows no natural boundaries. There is a chapter for example by philosopher Roger Scruton which appropriately analyses the corruption of the humanities and ‘social sciences’ by this cult of Scientism, including history, archaeology, art and even music. 

Scientism is a frontal assault on every aspect of material and immaterial existence.  Daily we are now told that women don’t exist, the family unit is right wing fascism, an increase in plant food means the end of the world, a virus mandates poisoned injections, time is endless and unchanging, the shrew became you, and only ‘government’ can discern and spread truth and real ‘information’.  ‘Follow The Science’ demands the cult and religion of Scientism.

So, what is Scientism according to this book?  First and quite obviously it is clear that criticising Scientism is not itself a critique or a disavowal of real science.  The two concepts have little in common.  In essence Scientism is the corruption and bastardisation of real science.

‘Rather, it (Scientism) attempts to hijack science to support metaphysical commitments in which science has no particular interest, and to which it owes no particular debt.’

‘The point is that scientism entails a metaphysical commitment to naturalist reductive, or emergent materialism and tries to define science in a way that includes not only a commitment to empirical methods, but also to this particular metaphysics’. (p. 3)

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