Accomplishments of Science and Delusions of Scientism

If post-Enlightenment modernity has a single credal axiom, it is that truth is limited to only what can be sensed with the senses, measured with our instruments, and generally expressed in mathematical language. Facts, in a word. All other claimants to “truth,” in this view, amount to subjective opinion at best and dark superstition at worst.

This way of knowing the world emerged roughly 400 years ago from within the natural sciences and soon came to color many people’s approach to life as a whole. The great premodern traditions at first balked, then spent the centuries that followed reacting against and/or accommodating the scientific outlook. All along, science yielded one dazzling insight after another into the inner workings of nature.

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