Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
It is important to note that, in terms of their rhetorical potential, these
three concepts are more or less interchangeable: each idea would seem to
entail the other two (figure 3).
Figure 3
A public made to believe in naturalism will also be inclined to accept the
scientistic assumption that all questions fall within the scope of the natu-
ral sciences, since this ontological premise will condition them to presume
that all meaningful questions are scientific ones. Conversely, a public that
believes in scientism will likely share the assumption that nature is all that
is or at least all that can be known. Similarly, the doctrine of evolution,
once generalized as evolutionism, will also seem to support the other two
ideas. Scientific work is thought to occur within the bounds of material
nature, and so, for those who already believe that evolutionary science has
accounted for the most complex of natural complexities that fall within
these limits, both naturalism and scientism will be presumed.
Any culture inclined to embrace naturalism or scientism might also
be eager to patronize the natural sciences. But when these notions are
expressed through evolutionism, they gain unique rhetorical leverage. Evo-
lutionism rolls scientism and naturalism back into the world of scientific
research and thereby promises to broaden the scope of scientific entitle-
ment without endangering its autonomy. Because the doctrines of natural-
ism and scientism are likely to be defended through abstract examinations
of epistemology and ontology, they tend to externalize scientific author-
ity. Scientists will sometimes directly advance these notions, but the most
authoritative proponents of naturalism and scientism have been philoso-
phers: John Locke, David Hume, Étienne Condillac, John Stuart Mill, A.
J. Ayer, Bertrand Russell, Rudolph Carnap, Daniel Dennett, Jerry Fodor,
