Scientism Quotes

“Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value

“The ufo is nothing more than an assertion of herself by the Goddess into history, saying to science and paternalistically governed and driven organizations: You have gone far enough. We are going to turn the world upside down. Your science is going to be shown up for what it is, nothing more than a pleasant metaphor usefully extrapolated into the production of toys for healthy children. That's what science is good for.
It is not some meta-theory at whose feet every point of view from astrology to acupressure to channeling need be laid to have the hand of science announce thumbs up or thumbs down.”
― Terence McKenna

“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
[Billions and Billions of Demons - JANUARY 9, 1997 ISSUE]”
― Richard C. Lewontin

“Physics explains everything, which we know because anything physics cannot explain does not exist, which we know because whatever exists must be explicable by physics, which we know because physics explains everything. There is something here of the mystical.”
― David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God : Being, Consciousness, Bliss

“Insofar as he makes use of his healthy senses, man himself is the best and most exact scientific instrument possible. The greatest misfortune of modern physics is that its experiments have been set apart from man, as it were, physics refuses to recognize nature in anything not shown by artificial instruments, and even uses this as a measure of its accomplishments.”
― Goethe

“Henceforth the Cartesian surgical operation in which spirit and matter become totally separated dominated scientific and philosophic thought The domain of science was matter which was a pure "it" divorced completely from any ontological aspect other than pure quantity. Although there were protests here and there especially among English and German thinkers, this view became the very factor that determined the relationship between man and nature, scientifically and philosophically. Thus seventeenth-century rationalism is the unconscious background of all later scientific thought up to the present day. Whatever discoveries are made in the sciences and whatever changes are brought about in conceptions of time, space, matter and motion, the background of seventeenth-century rationalism remains. For this very reason, other interpretations of nature, especially the symbolic, have never been seriously considered and accepted.”
― Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man

“The quest for absolute certainty is an immature, if not infantile, trait of thinking.”
― Herbert Feigl, Inquiries and Provocation: Selected Writings, 1929-1974

“Nineteenth-century inventors of the steam engine used a physical theory which today is considered as scientifically false . In fact most of the inventors up to very recent times have been, for the most part, ignorant of the science of their day and have applied theories that have proved to be false. Moreover, even today a physical or chemical theory can change while its application continues untouched. The success of applied science, therefore, is no reason for accepting the infallibility of the scientific theories involved. There should be an intelligent and conscious criticism of science and its implications, both for those involved in the sciences, and most of all for those who are the recipients of the popularized versions of scientific theories. The philosophy of science has in certain cases tried to point to the lack of logical consistency in some scientific definitions and methods. But having surrendered itself to the fruits of the experimental and analytical methods, it cannot itself be an independent judge of modern science.”
― Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man

“In fact it might be said that the main reason why modern science never arose in China or Islam is precisely because of the presence of metaphysical doctrine and a traditional religious structure which refused to make a profane thing of nature. Neither the ‘Oriental bureaucratism' of Needham nor any other social and economic explanation suffices to explain why the scientific revolution as seen in the West did not develop elsewhere. The most basic reason is that neither in Islam, nor India nor the Far East was the substance and stuff of nature so depleted of a sacramental and spiritual character, nor was the intellectual dimension of these traditions so enfeebled as to enable a purely secular science of nature and a secular philosophy to develop outside the matrix of the traditional intellectual orthodoxy. Islam, which resembles Christianity in so many ways, is a perfect example of this truth, and the tact that modern science did not develop in its bosom is not the sign of decadence as some have claimed but of the refusal of Islam to consider any form of knowledge as purely secular and divorced from what it considers as the ultimate goal of human existence.”
― Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man

“There is nothing more pleasant than rejecting hedonism, there is nothing more useful than rejecting utilitarianism, there is nothing more scientific than rejecting scientism, and there is nothing more prosocial than rejecting collectivism. In other words, there is no better way to enter into a healthy relationship with instrumental values than to reject doctrines that try to make them into intrinsic values.”
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

“It is clear that those who take scientific knowledge for the only truth, and deny what ties above it, are Nihilists [...]. Worship of the fact is by no means the love of truth; it is, as we have already suggested, its parody. It is the presumption of the fragment to replace the whole; it is the proud attempt to build a Tower of Babel, a collection of facts, to reach to the heights of truth and wisdom from below. But truth is only attained by bowing down and accepting what is received from above.”
― Seraphim Rose, Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age

“In the 1920s, Anglo-American medicine was praised for its political independence...especially in comparison to the USSR and Lysenkoism.

In the 2020s, Anglo-American science is mocked around the world for exchanging empirical observation for the cheap thrill of political relevance.”
― A.E. Samaan

“Theoretically he sees no distinction between his mother and any other aged female. He knows that, in a properly organized society, she'd be put into the lethal chamber, because of her arthritis. In spite of which he sends her I don't know how much a week to enable her to drag on a useless existence. I twitted him about it the other day. He blushed and was terribly upset, as though he’d been caught cheating at cards. So, to restore his prestige, he had to change the subject and begin talking about political murder and its advantages with the most wonderfully calm, detached, scientific ferocity. I only laughed at him. ‘One of these days,” I threatened, “I’ll take you at your word and invite you to a man-shooting party.” And what’s more, I will.”
― Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point

“Daran wird deutlich, dass Unsinn immer Unsinn bleibt, auch wenn weltberühmte Naturwissenschaftler ihn von sich geben. Verschleiert wird die Unlogik solcher Aussagen nur dadurch, dass sie von weltberühmten Wissenschaftlern getroffen werden und das Publikum sie daher für wissenschaftliche Aussagen hält und ihrer Autorität vertraut. Es handelt sich hierbei aber keineswegs um Aussagen der Wissenschaft.”
― John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking: Whose design is it anyway?

“…nonsense remains nonsense, even when talked by world-famous scientists.”
― John C. Lennox

“Christianity isn't anti-science, but it is anti-scientism. Scientism is the belief that science is the only way to know anything. But there are many things we know without the benefit of science at all, like logical and mathematical truths (which precede scientific investigations), metaphysical truths (which determine if the external world is real), moral and ethical truths (which set boundaries for our behavior), aesthetic truths (like determining beauty), and historical truths. Christians believe that science can tell us many important things but not all of the important things.”
― J. Warner Wallace, Person of Interest: Why Jesus Still Matters in a World that Rejects the Bible

“There are more things in heaven and earth… than are dreamt of in your science.”
― A.E. Samaan

“The scientists cannot produce even a single blade of grass in their laboratories, yet they are claiming that life is produced from chemicals. What is this nonsense?”
― A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Life Comes From Life (Jivan Shakti Cha Ugam)

“The elimination of purpose and meaning from the modern conception of the material universe was not and is not a “result” or “discovery” of modern science, but rather a philosophical interpretation of the results of modern science which owes more to early modern secularist philosophers like Hobbes and Hume – as well as to non-atheistic but equally anti-medieval philosophers like Descartes, Locke, and Kant – than it does to the great scientists of the last few centuries (even if many of these scientists happened to accept this philosophical interpretation of their results). Finally, a complete account of the universe and of human nature in terms that make no reference whatsoever to purpose, meaning, and design is not within our grasp and never will be, for the simple reason that such an “account” is in principle impossible, and the hope for it based on nothing more than muddleheadedness mixed with wishful thinking.”
― Edward Feser, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism

“Part of the problem with Dawkins’s criticisms of Aquinas, then (and of the other New Atheists’ criticisms of certain other religious arguments), is that they fail to understand the difference between a scientific hypothesis and an attempted metaphysical demonstration, and illegitimately judge the latter as if it were the former. Of course, they might respond by claiming that scientific reasoning, and maybe mathematical reasoning too, are the only legitimate kinds, and seek thereby to rule out metaphysical arguments from the get go. But there are two problems with this view (which is known as “scientism” or “positivism”). First, if they want to take this position, they’ll need to defend it and not simply assert it; otherwise they’ll be begging the question against their opponents and indulging in just the sort of dogmatism they claim to oppose. Second, the moment they attempt to defend it, they will have effectively refuted it, for scientism or positivism is itself a metaphysical position that could only be justified using metaphysical arguments.”
― Edward Feserser, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism

“The civilization of the modern West has, among other pretensions, that of being eminently 'scientific'; [...] it is one of those words to which our contemporaries seem to attach a sort of mysterious power, independent of their meaning. 'Science', with a capital letter, like 'Progress' and 'Civilization', like 'Right', 'Justice', and 'Liberty', is another of those entities that are better left undefined, and that run the risk of losing all their prestige as soon as they are inspected a little too closely. [...] These are veritable idols, the divinities of a sort of 'lay religion', which is not clearly defined, no doubt, and which cannot be, but which has nonetheless a very real existence: it is not religion in the proper sense of the word, but it is what pretends to take its place, and what better deserves to be called 'conter-relgilion'.”
― René Guénon, East and West

“To declare that there is not only an unknown but also an 'unkowable', and to turn and intellectual infirmity into a barrier which no one may pass - that is something whose like was never seen or heard before; and it is equally unheard of for men to turn a declaration of ignorance into a program of thought and a profession of faith, and quite openly to label a so-called doctrine with it under the name of 'agnosticism'. And these men, be it noted, are not skeptics, and do wish to be skeptics; if they were, there would be a certain logic in their attitude, which might make it excusable; but they are, on the contrary, the most enthusiastic believers in 'science', the most fervent admirers of 'reason'.”
― René Guénon, East and West

“The beginning state of inventing requirs the revolving engagement high elevation art of state believe, faith and doubt to emerge it true bodies into reality.”
― Ben Jr Grey

“[A] intensidade da autodestruição da humanidade é uma medida do mito pelo qual ela se orienta.”
― Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help

“Contrary to the dogma downloaded from our many cult-like institutions of higher (actually lower) learning, we’re not in any way separate from the quantum dance of the imagination; we’re inextricably bound up in it. In a mind-melting paradox, we somehow manage to give rise to the quantum dance … even as it dances us!”
― Sol Luckman, Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality

“Objectivity is a subjective fantasy implanted in us by an external will seeking to curtail our creativity by limiting our minds to our own detriment.”
― Sol Luckman, Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality

“Science had become a new magic and the more the man in the street believed in it, the less he understood it”
― Ernesto Sabato, Hombres y engranajes

“In coming years, the chief political dividing line will fall less and less among the traditional division between 'right' and 'left', but increasingly between the adherents of scientism - 1971 essay "The New Universal Church”
― Alexander Grothendieck

“In coming years, the chief political dividing line will fall less and less among the traditional division between 'right' and 'left', but increasingly between the adherents of scientism, who advocate 'technological progress at any price', and their opponents, i.e., roughly speaking, those who regard the enhancement of life, in all its richness and variety, as being the supreme value - 1971 essay "The New Universal Church”
― Alexander Grothendieck

“The architects of the modern worldview, notably Galileo and Descartes, assumed that those things that could be weighed, measured, and counted were more true than those that could not be quantified. If it couldn't be counted, in other words, it didn't count. - A Guide for the Perplexed (1977)”
― E. F. Schumacher