The Problem with “Scientism” is the Word

This is old enough that I may have already responded to it. And after more than half a century maybe I should admit defeat. But every time I see that word I re-live the indignation I felt as a 17 year old being forced to sit through a course on ‘Scientism, Man, and Religion’ and not being able to focus on anything other than the outrageous etymological dishonesty of introducing that pejorative term with the effect (obviously intended because any literate scholar would see it) of causing confusion in the public mind between the mental attitudes of a scientist (which is what the structure of the word implies) and an uncritical devotion to science as our only source of truth and value (which would have been better referred to as “scienceism”).

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