4 Comments

Pseudoplotinus
September 27th, 2012 | 3:32 pm

Great article.

Personally I think the new scientism and the old relativism (aka postmodernism) are in fact different species of the same genus, the genus being naive reductionism.

The postmodernist begins with a series of epistemological statements undermining the correspondence with reality definition of truth and then arrives at the conclusion that there is no truth as such, but “it’s interpretation all the way down.”

The advocate of scientism on the other hand begins with assertions celebrating the clear advances achieved by the hard sciences and then concludes that all accounts of truth not demonstrable by science can therefore have no claim to the status of truth.

Once one idol is destroyed by world-historical events, the other idol takes its place, rinse and repeat. Or as Martin Luther once said: “Human reason is like a drunken man on horseback; set it up on one side, and it tumbles over on the other.”

Robert Cheeks
September 28th, 2012 | 8:09 am

Excellent analysis and yes, Helen is a whiz kid.

Certain ideologies have worked assiduously in our modern era to politicize ‘science’ (“man made global warming” comes immediately to mind). The purpose is twofold: first, to generate those false conclusions that strengthen a specific political agenda, and second, to corrupt the ‘scientific’ inquiry/process itself.

Science has become a corrupt, political tool divorced from the act of ordering the polis toward the “Good.”

We can say that society has suffered from both mental and spiritual pathologies in the effort to remove God from society. In losing contact with nonexistent reality (the transcendent) man seeks by his very nature to fill the void. The purpose of scientism then was merely the attempt to recapture the reality lost in the ‘death of God.’

Voegelin wrote in his essay, “Immortality” that, “The task of reestablishing contact with nonexistent (transcendent) reality, however, is not easy, and the task of making the attempts socially effective is even less so.”

Pseudoplotinus
September 28th, 2012 | 5:24 pm

Robert, timely reference to Voegelin.

A man whose ideas will become increasingly relevant as scientism eclipses relativism.

Robert Cheeks
September 28th, 2012 | 9:57 pm

Thanks. As our culture goes through the torturous horrors of collapse there will be those we count on to recapture the lost symbols that will re-establish reality. Dr. Voegelin has much to teach us.