scientism
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.09 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The belief that the scientific method and the assumptions and research methods of the physical sciences are applicable to all other disciplines (such as the humanities and social sciences), or that those other disciplines are not as valuable.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "Finally, with good reason, this psychology aims to be a psychology of a purely empiriological type. It is pervaded and overwhelmed on every side, however, by a pseudometaphysics of the most vulgar character, which Freud is all the less anxious to dispense with as he imagines he has no philosophy or metaphysics at all. I say pseudometaphysics of the most vulgar type, because it combines all the prejudices of deterministic, mechanistic scientism with all the prejudices of irrationalism."
- "This claim, espoused by scientific naturalists, is called scientism, the view that science is the paradigm of truth and rationality. There are two forms of scientism: strong and weak. Strong scientism […]"
- "This is the view of scientism. The historical roots of scientism can probably be traced to the Enlightenment with its ideology of progress and perfectibility. Perhaps its best-known historical advocate is the French social philosopher Auguste […]"
- "Habermas's work of the middle and late 1960s is centrally concerned with the philosophical and sociological issues raised by scientism, the reduction of all knowledge to that furnished by the empirical sciences, where these are conceived as […]"
- "'Scientism means ... that we no longer understand science as one form of possible knowledge, but rather identify knowledge with science.' Habermas's critique of scientism focuses on its relation to positivism, since positivism provides […]"
- "First, I want to make clear that what I am attacking is not science but scientism: the mistaken belief that the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology and their derivatives) can or will give a complete description and even explanation of […]"
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *sek-? Proto-Indo-European *-éyti Proto-Indo-European *skey-der. Latin sciō Latin sciēns Latin -ia Classical Latin scientia ▲ Latin scientia Proto-Italic *-fakos Latin -ficus Medieval Latin scientificusder. Middle French scientifiquebor. English scientific Proto-Indo-European *-id- Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-idyéti Proto-Hellenic *-íd͏̌d͏̌ō Ancient Greek -ῐ́ζω (-ĭ́zō) Proto-Indo-European *-mos Proto-Indo-European *-mós Ancient Greek -μός (-mós) Ancient Greek -ισμός (-ismós)der. English -ism English scientism From scient- (in either Classical Latin scientia or scientific) + -ism. Compare scientist.