Scientism and Science from Islamic Perspectives

Presented by Dhiyaul Haq Suroso Hadi

Abstract: In recent decades, we have been given number of the most interesting
achievements in the history, the scientific discoveries through empirical
methods whereby the proponents have claimed that science could be the only
reliable way to get true knowledges. However, such claim has problematic
issues in any philosophical discussion. This article aims at understanding
scientism as an epistemological thesis and providing the historical development
of such theistic which are associated with scientific methods. To counter this
issue of scientism, arguments will be presented from Western philosopher as
well as analyses from Muslim scholars.

Introduction
The role of sciences, especially natural sciences in the human life today continue to
be controversial, even now that scientists have evolved into advanced science which can
give more detail explanation about reality. The intellectual and practical successes of
science have argued that there are no real limits to the competence of science. Accordingly,
since science has no limits and can achieve all truth of reality, so it can deal with all human
problems. However, some philosophers of religion are still doubting how can science
really provide us the truth of reality.

In understanding the reality, religion and science are frequently seen as an opposite
pole. The first attempts to find knowledge from revealed text and dogmatic doctrines, in
the other hand science finds its epistemological source from observable or verifiable facts.
The religious believer begins with the assumption that God exists, or that life is eternal, or
whatever his faith entails. These are not the product of a long progression of reasoning, but
rather, they are the starting point of the progress of reasoning.

To give an example for the relation between science and religion, it is clearly
important to take account of Stephen Hawking’s final book “Brief Answers to Big
Questions”. Hawking argues that there was no time before the Big Bang, because the
universe began as a singularity and time itself could not have existed before Big Bang.

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“We have finally found something that doesn’t have a cause, because there was no time for
a cause to exist in,” He wrote. “For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator,
because there is no time for creator to have existed in.” He is refusing the existence of god
with this argument. “we have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe,”
Hawking concludes the first chapter of his final book, “and for that I am extremely
grateful.” (Hawking,2018). This argument will persuade theistic believers, because his
view of the universe might render a divine creator and the laws of nature incompatible. In
fact, most scientists are already believers in scientism, otherwise they would not bother
with science.

It seems plausible that to understand such ideology of scientism and why most of
scientists in the modern era, do not believe in a divine god or even the existence of god.
Furthermore, this article will discuss the historical development of the idea of scientism. In
what follows the argumentation will be described in brief with their arguments which are
against scientism. It also seeks the possibility of integration between science and religion
which is very topical recently in Muslim world. Then the issue of incompatibility between
science and religion will be scrutinized and Quranic verse will be provided to support the
idea.

Definition of Scientism

Scientism is a rather strange word, it is recently becoming popular among

philosophers and scholars who have a concern about science. Broadly speaking, scientism
is derived from the word “science” and suffixed with “ism”, it basically means the belief
that science and its method of sceptical inquiry is the most reliable path to the truth. It is
also associated with many other “isms” with long and turbulent histories: rationalism,
empiricism, positivism and logical positivism.

American epistemologist Susan Haack defines scientism as “an exaggerated kind of

deference towards science, an excessive readiness to accept as authoritative any claim
made by science.” But Rik Peels criticizes this definition, because if we define scientism as
an exaggerated kind of deference towards science and an excessive readiness, then any
substantial debate about scientism is going to be impossible. He suggests in defining
scientism as an epistemological claim that: “only natural science gives rational belief and
knowledge;” or “there are no principled limit to science: it can give us knowledge about

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anything.” Mikael Stenmark suggests that we define an adherent of scientism as one who
accepts one of the following four theses:

 T1: The only kind of knowledge we can have is scientific knowledge.

 T2: The only things that exist are the ones science can discover.
 T3: Science alone can answer our question and explain as well as replace
traditional ethics.
 T4: Science alone can answer our existential questions and explain as well as
replace traditional religion.

Historical Development of Scientism

Scientific Revolution

Scientism has very long root which can be tracked back to 17 th century in Europe,
an era that can be known as the Scientific Revolution. The Englishman Francis Bacon, the
Frenchman Rene Descartes and the Italian Galileo Galilei challenged the ideas of ancient
thinkers and the church, as these scholars replaced old assumptions with new theories. It
was a new way of thinking about the natural world and that way was based on empirical
observation and sceptical inquiry, instead of analysis of ancient texts. It was Galileo Galilei
(1564-1642) who built his own telescope and used it to observe in astronomy. After an
astonishing observation, he found that the earth is not the centre of the universe, rejecting
religious authority the church and supporting the theory of Copernicus’ heliocentric. Rene
Descartes (1596-1650) formulated the method that relies on mathematics and logic. He
believed that everything should be doubted until proved by reason which is often called
rationalism. And Francis Bacon (1561-1626) urged scientists to generate practical
knowledge to improve a new understanding of natural world. Instead of reasoning from
abstract theories, he suggested the experimental method or sense-experience to draw the
conclusion, yet this approach is called empiricism.

The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment or the Age of Reason began to dominate Europe in 18 th century,

intellectuals discovered many scientific findings such as in physics, chemistry, biology,
and astronomy. They claimed that not only science could enhance the quality of human
life, it could even promote morals and ethics, they also claimed that science could replace

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the teachings of religion. Consequently, more and more Western embrace the new method
of thinking, and slightly throw over religious and ethical values.

Positivism
The 19th century witnessed the most powerful and enduring formulation of
scientism, a system called positivism was formulated by Auguste Comte (1798-1857).
Comte was often regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the
term. He believed that the only valid data is acquired through the senses, nothing was
transcendent and nothing metaphysical could have any claim to validity (Zammito,2004).
Comte also had a clear sense of the trajectory of intellectual history, which he called “The
Law of Three Stages” or each branch of knowledges passes through three stages: the
theological or fictitious, the metaphysical or abstract, and lastly the scientific or positive
state. He believed that through continual advancement of human understanding, religion
would fade away, philosophy and the humanities would be transformed into naturalistic
basis, and all human knowledge would eventually become a product of science. Any ideas
outside that realm would be pure fantasy or superstition (Mill,2005).

Logical Positivism

After World War I, European scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers began a

meeting in Vienna to establish a movement called Logical Positivism or Logical
Empiricism. It is not a school of philosophy with central doctrine or theory of knowledge.
It is rather a movement that reflects the scientific outlook of 20 th century European
civilization. One of the most features of logical positivism was the advocacy of the
principle of verification, which states that, in order to be meaningful a statement should be
empirically verifiable. Consequently, they considered philosophical works such as
metaphysics and ethics are meaningless, because they can be verified whether they are true
or false through empirical methods.

Varieties of Scientism

The main distinction that is important to make is that between Academic Scientism
and Universal Scientism. The first is restricted to the academic disciplines such as
metaphysics, philosophy and ethics, whereas the later, or Universal Scientism, is meant to
apply both inside and outside the academy (Peels,2015).

Academic Scientism
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 There are two types which are related to academic scientism, Methodological
Scientism and Eliminative Scientism. Firstly, the methodological type admits that proper
academic disciplines such as philosophy or psychology, which ask sensible questions,
should adopt the methods of the natural sciences such as observation and experimentation.
Accordingly, the traditional questions of theology or philosophy can be answered only by
operating the methods of the natural sciences (Stenmark, 2001). Secondly, the eliminative
type claims that academic disciplines such as philosophy or psychology other than natural
sciences, in other word, they have nothing to add to natural sciences. The asked questions
in that disciplines are nonsensical or obscure, so thus disciplines should be abandoned. For
example, Otto Neurath, one of the members of Vienna Circle, states that metaphysics
should be given up in favour of physics, he says:

“How does the elimination of metaphysics proceed in practice? Men

are induced to give up senseless sentences and freed from
metaphysics. But must this always remain so? Must everyone in turn
go through metaphysics as through a childhood disease – perhaps the
earlier he gets it, the less dangerous it is – to be led back to unified
science? No. Every child can in principle learn to apply the language
of physicalism correctly from the outset, first in a crude form, then in a
more refined and precise way.” (Neurath, 1987)

Universal Scientism

According to Rik Peels, Universal Scientism is applied not only to matter external
to the university, but also within the academic realm. However, since universal scientism is
not such a claim about academic methodology or the reduction of one academic discipline
to another, academic scientism is not a variety of universal scientism (Peels, 2015). In what
follows, Mikael Stenmark distinguish universal scientism into: Epistemological Scientism,
Ontological Scientism, Moral Scientism, and Existential Scientism (Stenmark, 2001)

1. Epistemological Scientism

Epistemological scientism is scientism about cognitive realm, both within and

outside the academy. There are many versions of epistemological scientism, they are: All
genuine knowledge is to be found only through (methods of) natural sciences; Natural
science provides the only reliable path to knowledge; All questions can in principle be
answered by natural science; Everything that can be known can be known through natural
science. For example, Bertrand Russell says about God and immortality:

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 “God and immortality, the central dogmas of the Christian religion,
find no support in science. (…) No doubt people will continue to
entertain these beliefs, because they are pleasant, just as it is pleasant
to think our selves virtuous and our enemies wicked. But for my part I
cannot see ground for either.” (Russell, 1967)
Russell points that since natural science cannot deliver any knowledge about God and
immortality, consequently, anything other than natural science such as theology and
philosophy will not deliver such knowledge either.

2. Ontological Scientism

Ontological scientism is not a claim about human knowledge, but it is a claim about
what does exist and what does not. According to Roger Trigg, a philosopher, this variety
claims that only those things exist which are at some point discovered by science (Trigg,
1993). However, Rik Peels doubts this statement, because there are infinites expanded
universe that might be unable to explore. Then, he suggests that every aspect of the cosmos
can in principle be investigated by science. The example for this variety is what Carl Sagan
describes about himself as a collection of water, calcium and organic molecules (Sagan,
2002). And other example from William Provine, he says that free will is an illusion,
because science can explain every decision without appeal to free will (Provine, 1988). So,
there is no value whatsoever for human.

3. Moral Scientism

Moral scientism has two varieties, one claims that natural science will lead to good
life, and these are some versions of it:

(a) The natural sciences guide us towards the morally good life.
(b) Common sense morality should be replaced with scientific morality
(Harris, 2010).
(c) Our moral personal and social problems can be solved by natural
science.

And the other one claims that science discounted morality and shows that it is an illusion,
and there are some versions of it:

(d) Science shows us that morality is an illusion.

(e) Science shows us that good and evil are merely social conventions.

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 (f) Science shows us that moral intuitions and beliefs are nothing but
evolutionarily adaptive features of humans.

It is important to take example that according to E.O. Wilson, scientists and humanists
should seriously consider removing ethics from the hands of philosophers, in order to
biologize it (Wilson, 1975). His idea seems to be that biological principles can be applied
in the social realms and that they can be used to justify and not merely explain certain
moral norms and values.

4. Existential Scientism

Existential scientism basically means that science should replace religion,

mythology, secular ideologies, such as fascism and Marxism, and other non-scientific ways
of answering our existential questions. There are two versions of it:

(a) Science should replace traditional religion and secular ideologies

(Stenmark, 2001)
(b) Salvation can be achieved by (the methods of) science alone.

Richard Dawkins elaborates that the answers of human’s big question are meaningless
unless they are informed by natural sciences. The traditional intellectuals such as ancient
Greek and Medieval scholastic philosophy are worthless, because simply they are not
based on scientific research (Dawkins, 1989).

Arguments for Scientism

There are many arguments that scientists provide for embracing scientism, some of
them are very strong and good reasoning. Rik Peels has selected ten reasons which are
based on defences of scientism that he finds in the literature (Peels, 2017). And here they
are:

1. Science has been enormously successful in that it has discovered many truths about
the world. Science has achieved something that we would have not achieved
without science, that are sometimes in a way grand unifying, giving us insight into
a wide variety of phenomena by a way of single theory.
2. The applications of science are everywhere. Science and its technology have
affected human lives by extremely changing transportation, medicine, agriculture
and many other areas.

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3. Beliefs based on science can be tested or corroborated. The idea is that one can in
principle set up an experiment in order to check for oneself whether the belief in
question is true.
4. Many scientific results are counter-intuitive and seem to contradict common sense.
According to Alex Rosenberg, science, especially physics and biology shows that
reality is completely different from what most people think (Rosenberg, 2011).
5. Science has learned to build safety mechanisms through its history, that are meant
to increase its reliability by making it as much as possible immune to subjective
preferences that might deviate from the path of the truth.
6. Scientists understand the genesis of scientific knowledge. Subsequently, they claim
that they do not know how other than scientific knowledge such as common sense,
moral and metaphysical truths are supposed to be. In the other hand, the beliefs
based on scientific research face no such difficulties, because there is an
evolutionary story to be told about how survival generally selects for true beliefs.
7. There is much less disagreement in the beliefs based on scientific research, but
when it comes to common sense beliefs, there is vast disagreement. There are
differences in metaphysics views among philosophers. Subsequently, in the term of
religious belief, people differ in believing a divine god.
8. Natural science provides evolutionary debunking explanations of common senses
beliefs. These explanations do not to be evolutionary explanation such as
neuroscientific explanation to religious belief, but they are often.
9. Science shows common sense to be permeated with bias. For instance, psychology
and behavioural economics have shown that we are prone to all sorts of cognitive
biases, incoherence and fallacies when it comes to common sense beliefs. One good
example is denomination effect which says that many people have tendency to
spend more money when it denominated to small amounts, such as coins, rather
than to large amounts such as bills.
10. Science demonstrates that many common senses beliefs are illusory. There is
empirical research that is sometimes taken to show that certain things that we
believe in the basis of common senses are illusory. It is plausible to take an
example about beliefs to act freely. Empirical research shows that we sometimes
believe that we performed a certain action freely, in fact, that action was not a free

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 action. This is because, we experience an event or a series of events as the result of
our own intentions.

Critique on Scientism

Some philosophers such as Mikael Stenmark as well as Rik Peels make some
critiques on scientism. There are three different kind of arguments which are against
scientism: the fundamental argument; the argument from self-referential incoherence or
self-refuting; and the argument from non-scientific values and principles in science.

1. The Fundamental Argument

The fundamental argument basically says that although science as scientism

believers claim, is purely neutral knowledge through scientific methods, but in fact,
science is based on things which are not scientific. Thus, there are such things as
propositions, memories and introspections (Peels, 2017). Similar thought can also be found
in Stenmark’s critique on Scientism (Stenmark, 2001). If only science is just scientific
things, then we could not be allowed to use memory. We would not be allowed to draw
any inferences from the data, because in doing so we wold have to rely on basic logical
intuitions. We would not be allowed to count data, for in doing so we would rely on basic
mathematical intuitions such as that 2+2=4. Accordingly, introspection is also necessary
for research of natural sciences.

2. The argument from Self-referential Incoherence or Self-refuting

The argument from self-referential incoherence against scientism would say that,
since on scientism no proposition can be rationally believed unless it is based on natural
scientific research, scientism itself cannot be rationally believed, because it is not based on
scientific research (Peels, 2017). According to Mikael Stenmark in his book on scientism,
he says:

“The most troublesome difficulty with T1 (a variety of

epistemological scientism; autor), however, is that it appears to be
self-refuting, that is, T1 seems to tell us not to accept T1 (as true
claim). This is very serious problem for the defenders of scientism,
because if T1 is self-refuting then it is not even possible for T1 to be
true (Stenmark, 2001).

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Accordingly, Stenmark also states that accepting such claim of scientism is a
matter of superstition or blind faith.
3. The Argument from Non-scientific Values and Principles in Science

The argument from non-scientific values says that in order to choose two different
scientific theories, scientists’ decisions are based on non-scientific values such as
precision, simplicity, explanatory scope, explanatory power and coherence with
background of knowledge. For instance, there are two different scientific theories, the
theory of gravity and the theory of relativity. According to this argument, scientist will
look on both theories with its precision or simplicity. When it comes to airplane engineer
or whoever involved in aerodynamic, they tend to use the theory of gravity because of its
simplicity and coherence with the background of knowledge. Subsequently, when it comes
to astronaut or whoever involved in astronomy and cosmology, they will use the theory of
relativity, because it will give more detail explanation about space and time.

Analysis from Islamic Perspectives

In the modern era, Hosein Nasr argues that the number of Muslims who go to the
West or Muslim universities to study modern science have been increasing. They begin to
become concerned with the secularizing effect of the modern science and the negative
influence of its quantitative and un-spiritual nature upon Muslims. Hence, the awareness
of this issue has been heightened among Muslim scholars. It also leads to greater scrutiny
in the teaching of modern science and attempts to Islamicise science along with other
branches of knowledge (Nasr, 1968). He says:

“It is for Muslim scholars to study the whole history of Islamic

science completely and not only the chapters and periods which
influenced Western science. It is also for Muslim scholars to present
the tradition of Islamic science from the point of view of Islam itself
and not from the point of view of scientism, rationalism and
positivism which have dominated the history of science in the West
since the establishment of the discipline in the early part of the 20 th
century in Europe and America.”
Similar thought is also found in Al Attas thoughts, he proclaims that religion in a
specific way Islam, is in harmony with science. But it does not mean that Islam embraces
secular science and its ideologies which comes from the West (Al Attas, 1995). He says in
detail:

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 “We do affirm that religion is in harmony with science. But this does
not mean that religion is in harmony with modern scientific
methodology and philosophy of science. Since there is no science that
is free of value, we must intelligently investigate and study the values
and judgments that are inherent in, or aligned to, the presuppositions
and interpretations of modern science. We must not indifferently and
uncritically accept each new scientific or philosophical theory without
first understanding its implication and testing the validity of values
that go along with the theory. Islam possesses within itself the source
of its claim to truth and does not need scientific or philosophical
theories to justify such a claim. Moreover, it is not the concern of
Islam to fear scientific discoveries that could contradict the validity of
its truth.”
Alquran is also encouraging muslim to use ‘Aql or rationality and to observe the
natural verses to acknowledge the greatness of Allah, so we do science for the sake of
Allah. Allah says:

“The creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the
day and the night are evidence (of the existence of God) for people of
reason. It is these who commemorate God while standing, sitting, or
resting on their sides and who think about the creation of the heavens
and the earth and say, ‘Lord, you have not created all this without
reason. Glory be to you. Lord, save us from the torment of the fire’.”
(Al-Quran, 1:191-192)

Conclusion

This inquiry attempts to discuss the roots of scientism ideology in the modern science,
while giving numerous definitions of scientism and considering it as a thesis. The article
tries to track back the theistic ideologies which are associated with scientism through
historical development of the idea of scientific methods. Knowing the varieties of
scientism and the distinction between its versions, while giving some examples of each
variety. There is no final version of scientism, because it is still debated until this time. In
what follows, number of argumentations which defence scientism is provided, while
suggesting three important critiques which are against scientism. After this, prominent
figure from Muslim scholars is considered to analyse the problem of modern science
within traditional Islamic science, while providing Quranic verse. Stating that scientism is
problematic because not only against Islamic values but also against the principles of
science itself.

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