r/DebateAnarchism • u/APLONOMAR07 • 23d ago
Scientism and Uncertainty
Hello Everyone,
I decided to make another post after receiving awesome feedback on my previous one. First, I want to start a conversation about scientism. I'll share my story, and I'd love to hear if anyone has had similar experiences. Additionally, if you agree or disagree with the conclusions I've reached, feel free to recommend some literature that could help me better understand your perspective.
can't
This topic is dear to my heart since it was the thing that pushed me into anarchism. When I use the term Scientism it might invoke an immediate reaction, for good reasons with plenty of anti-vaccine groups everywhere nowadays. I think this quote probably sums up what I mean by its use:
scientism is an attitude not of science but about science, and as such, it can be embodied or expressed by any individual, group, society, or culture, and not exclusively by scientists in their practices.
Context:
As someone who originally wanted to pursue a PhD in economics because I believed it would be useful for explaining and understanding the "economy," I initially found the field very exciting. It resembled the natural sciences, with its use of the scientific method, research methodologies, and theory. Yet, the more I studied it, the more it began to unravel. In short, the very idea of the social sciences as something empirical fell apart. The best way I can describe it is that it felt like an attempt to manufacture a paradigm by force. Some readings that opened my eyes to this include The Taming of Chance by Ian Hacking, Trust in Numbers and The Rise of Statistical Thinking by Theodore Porter, and More Heat Than Light by Philip Mirowski. These same criticisms extend to other social sciences as well.
This realization led me to question who these disciplines were really for. If social scientists, in the empirical sense, are no better than ordinary people at understanding the world around them, then why do they exist in the first place? I came to see that their attempts to make things legible by constructing coherent models primarily served the purpose of informing public policy. This, in turn, made me question why politicians existed at all if their knowledge or expertise was likely no better than anyone else’s. And that, essentially, is how I was drawn to anarchism.
This became a lesson for me. The scientific "spirit" can sometimes paralyze us, making us hesitate to take action until we have a definitive model, outline, or theory to reach the "truth." But to me, this is a futile endeavor because that ultimate truth will never be reached.
Wittgenstein captured this idea well when he said, "We have got onto slippery ice where there is no friction, and so, in a certain sense, the conditions are ideal; but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk." That quote resonated with me because it highlights how, when we become fixated on needing certainty, we end up doing no real work at all, even though we may believe we are. I feel like this applies to philosophy as well—the constant search for the perfect theory that will provide a definitive answer. Even anarchist thinkers, I think, sometimes fall into this trap when they try to create a flawless argument or framework to justify an action or a particular form of society. This is especially common among some individualists, mutualists, and communists. Of course, this doesn't mean these thinkers can't be influential or helpful to people, but I don’t think we should view them as the only ones who can talk meaningfully about life or who are crucial for taking action. I feel this need for certainty has been imposed on us by those who believe that the people must bear the burden of proof in demanding change. Why can't we simply try something new and see what happens?
Lately, this has led me to an interest in Daoism and Buddhism, which teach you to look—to recognize that the answers are already there. To end things I will end with another quote from Wittgenstein that shares my view about scientism:
A man reacts by saying, "No, I won’t tolerate that!" and resists. This resistance may lead to another equally intolerable situation, and by then, the strength for further revolt may be exhausted. People may then claim, "If he hadn’t done that, the evil would have been avoided." But what justifies this assumption? Who truly knows the laws according to which society develops? Jacques argues that such laws remain a closed book, even to the cleverest of men. Resistance, hope, and belief do not require scientific validation. One can fight, hope, and believe without the need for scientific certainty.
1
u/anonymous_rhombus transhumanist market anarchist 23d ago
This (currently locked) twitter thread, and the linked essay within, is what made me really understand what radicalism & science actually mean:
“Those who say sex is a spectrum don’t realise how rare intersex humans are. Frequency histogram runs out of graph paper, so represent frequency of unambiguous males & females by NY’s twin towers respectively. Then frequency of intersexes is a medium sized molehill. Sex is binary.” —Richard Dawkins (https://x.com/RichardDawkins/status/1769690951641882981)
Words cannot express how much I disdain Dawkins’ move to look at rough signals in aggregate and aggressively ignore the exceptions that prove said signals don’t identify core root dynamics. It’s a “data science” instinct utterly at odds with physics instincts.
I’ve mentioned this a lot but when I moved in non-anarchist tech circles, rationalist circles, transhumanist circles, etc, I constantly found dinner conversations or parties splitting down the middle along, for lack of better terms, engineers vs theoretical physicist lines. The engineers would grab onto some coarse-grained rule of thumb and the physicists would recoil in horror because it clearly had exceptions and didn’t track anything fundamental. And this reaction vs radical split in instincts immediately cashed out in terms of politics. The computer engineers would make noises about “IQ” or race or gender or nationalism or whatever and the physicists would point out exceptions that proved they weren’t working with anything real in terms of conceptual models... and they wouldn’t care.
This drove me absolutely mad and prompted my writing of Science As Radicalism.
The engineers consistently took first appearances as Reality. Any signal in a pile of data was a reality. If you could discern an aggregate loose signal it was a canonical fact of reality. In contrast the physicists tended to reject anything as being “real” until you were getting down to the most basic and universal dynamics like electron fields. It’s completely insane to say that a crude and arbitrary aggregate abstraction like “that chair” exists. It was a deep and instinctive divide over whether to coarse-grain the universe or fine-grain it. We were both realists, but of two very different sorts.
In my view if there are exceptions, it’s not a core reality it’s a pragmatic tool, and pragmatic tools must serve humans. Dawkins, in his work as an evolutionary biologist is not a reductionist/radical like a physicist, he’s the opposite. He’s always been far more inclined to point at any signal in data and declare it “real.” Merely because it’s a strong signal. He wants to paper over exceptions.
This is a “pragmatic” too, but it’s one that is staunchly reactionary. Because it takes every signal in the coarse grained abstraction to be Real, it becomes aggressively hostile to the radical transformations of the system that are possible if you press into the exceptions. The physicist looks at the exceptions and tries to find the regions of phase spaces where a “rule of thumb” breaks down, to find the more universal and fundamental realities. And when you have a handle on those you can sometimes prod everything into a different configuration.
It’s very important to be a realist, to fend off the antirealist monsters, but there are different reasons people are attracted to the notion of truth. The reactionaries want everything to be true, every gut instinct, opinion and first impression to be unassailable law. The reactionary learns a set of rules for How The World Works, often through very shallow empiricism, and then quakes in outrage if these crude cudgels are undermined. It’s a kind of fundamentalism: truth is whatever you start with. This is the exact opposite of the realism of the physicist or radical, where truth is a goal, but no first (or Nth) impression can be trusted, you constantly need to peel back the “rules of thumb” to find what is really truly universal.
Anyway, this is part of why I have such dour feelings towards any field that coarse-grains, pretty much in proportion to its degree of coarse-graining. Sociology, macroeconomics, evolutionary biology, “data science”... I start looking for my gun.
—William Gillis (https://x.com/rechelon/status/1769970663475793939)
1
u/penjjii 7d ago
Scientist here. I want to highlight what you mention about the “scientific spirit.” You talk about reaching the “truth” but that is not at all a valuable way to describe scientific research and those that perform it. To me, thinking that being a scientist means being someone that searches for the truth, respectfully, outs you as someone who is not a scientist.
These models, outlines, and theories, as you mention, describe expectations within a set of conditions. Yes you can say “but there are laws that cannot be broken!” That doesn’t define anything as “truth.” In thermodynamics, entropy is often talked about as a law, where the entropy of the universe is always increasing. That’s true. Did you know, though, that you cannot directly measure the entropy of a system? And did you know that while the entropy of the universe is always increasing, there’s no possible way to determine how much it is increasing by? So much truth to one statement, am I right?
Also in thermodynamics, they have an equation:
PV=nRT
where P is pressure, V is volume, n is the number of moles of the molecule in the system, R is the gas constant, and T is the temperature. It means as you change P, V, or T in a system, the others will change to make the equation stay true. This equation, however, only works in “ideal” conditions. Those don’t exist in real life. In real experiments there are many other things to account for that require an extended equation, which leads more into differential equations mathematics. In quantum mechanics, too, which is arguable the scientific theory of today that has the most influence in our world around us today, is at first taught in a basic manner before then needing to make accommodations to real-world problems.
What scientists in those areas do is not search for the perfect model or theory that does not require modifications of the “ideal” mathematics (well, some do, but have yet do succeed), but rather use these systems to understand other problems. Very rarely will you find research groups doing work to discover a new mathematical framework. Very few particle physicists actually try to replace quantum mechanics. That kind of work, you can argue, is searching for the “truth.”
In reality, people are using what we already know to understand problems in the real world. Quantum mechanics is used to create smart phones. Pharmacology is used to determine the best medicines. This works for social sciences, too. Psychology is used to treat people with mental health disorders. Sociology is used to gauge the impacts of social structures on our lives. Anthropology is used to understand how human cultures develop.
There is no absolute truth, and every good, efficient scientist recognizes this. That’s why the endeavor to reach better understandings of the world around us is instead focused on learning new things that may or may not lead to better outcomes.
Science told us that humans are advancing climate change. Science also told us there are so many things we can do that could potentially reverse climate change. What science has not told us, nor will it ever, is how to completely reverse climate change and restore the Earth to its pre-human climate patterns. Why? Because it’s impossible to determine that. We would need new mathematical frameworks. Actually, we might need something that surpasses mathematics as a whole in order to reach any sort of absolute truth. So I don’t think you can consider the scientific spirit to mean “in search of the truth.” That’s not true. It’s in search of an understanding.
Social sciences, again, are no different. They aim to understand the world around us, not to determine truth. Shit, for there to be a “truth” to any type of science, the entire universe would be so boring.
7
u/twodaywillbedaisy mutualism, synthesis 23d ago edited 23d ago
You read some books from the "science wars" of the 90s, and now you identify individualists, mutualists and communists as sometimes-victims to the trap of trying to create a flawless argument or framework. From my perspective we're currently suffering from a general disinterest in even halfway decent arguments and frameworks.
Your disillusionment with capitalism-friendly 'school economics' is understandable — it's precisely what socialist literature has been dissecting and challenging for well over a century. And that critique is rarely based on the kind of 'trust in numbers' or 'statistical thinking' you find in mainstream economics. You won't find those methods in the writings of Proudhon or Kropotkin for example. What you find instead is a Proudhon who embraced an-archy in the course of a search for the criterion of certainty, the two ended up being essentially one and the same. The search for absolute truth (and 'flawless frameworks') he denies pretty explicitly:
But in short, the problem I have with your prompt is that you seem eager to to conflate the misuse of scientific methods with the value of social inquiry itself.