Chapter 1
Science and scientism
1.1 Introduction
Science is the most remarkable and powerful cultural artifact humankind
has ever created. What is more, most people in our society
regard science as providing us with knowledge about the natural world
that has an unsurpassed claim to reality and truth. That is one reason
why I am proud to be a physicist, a part of the scientific
enterprise. But increasingly I am dismayed that science is being
twisted into something other than what it truly is. It is portrayed as
identical to a philosophical doctrine that I call
`scientism'.
Scientism is the belief that all valid knowledge is
science. Scientism says, or at least implicitly assumes, that rational
knowledge is scientific, and everything else that claims the status of
knowledge is just superstition, irrationality, emotion, or nonsense.
The purpose of this book is to show the pervasiveness of the doctrine
of scientism; to explore its coherence, and consequences; and to show
that it must be repudiated, both to make sense of a vast range of
non-scientific human endeavor, and also for science itself. One of the
conflicts that is most visible in current culture is between scientism
and religion. But the overall confrontation is not just with religious
faith, prominent though that part of the debate may be. Religious
belief is not at all unique in being an unscientific knowledge. On the
contrary, I shall argue that there are many important beliefs, secular
as well as religious, which are justified and rational, but not
scientific. And if that is so, then scientism is a ghastly
intellectual mistake.
But how could it have come about that this mistake is so widespread,
if it is a mistake? The underlying reason is that scientism is
confused with science. This confusion is commonplace in many, many
popularizations of science. Scientists of considerable reputation
speak with authority and understanding (but rarely modesty) about the
knowledge and technology that science has brought; and frequently they
introduce into their explanations, without acknowledging it,
non-scientific assumptions, unjustified extrapolations, philosophy and
metaphysics either based on or promoting scientism. It is natural
then, for readers, particularly those without inside knowledge of
science, to assume that science and scientism are one and the
same. After all, many leading scientists, and science popularizers,
speak and act as if they are. A major strand within the community of
science thus directly promotes this confusion.
What is more, several major strands within the community of religious
faith also promote this confusion. On the conservative theological
wing, which feels itself in an intellectual battle with a secular
academy, there is a deep suspicion of science because it is seen as a
countervailing authority against religious orthodoxy. Most of the
theologically liberal wing, in contrast, long ago adopted scientism,
because they confused it with science. But both sides, whether
rejecting or assimilating, have confused science and scientism; and
that confusion is a major factor in the stance they each take.
Broader non-science academic disciplines - and here I am thinking of
subjects such as
history, literature, social studies,
philosophy, and the arts - have related problems. I shall argue that
one can understand many of the trends of academic thought in the past
century or so as being motivated in part by either embracing or
rejecting scientism. Those trends that embrace scientism, do so
because they feel compelled by the intellectual stature of science:
they confuse the two. Those that (more recently) reject scientism,
seeing its sterility, seem often to reject science as well, because
they have confused the two.
Scientism is many-faceted. It is, first of all, a philosophy of
knowledge. It is an opinion about the way that knowledge can be
obtained and justified. My single sentence definition of scientism
focuses on this underlying and foundational aspect:
" Scientism is
the belief that all valid knowledge is science." However, the
repercussions of this viewpoint are so great that scientism rapidly
becomes much more. It becomes an all-encompassing world-view; a
perspective from which all of the questions of life are examined; a
grounding presupposition or set of presuppositions which provides the
framework by which the world is to be understood. Therefore, from
scientism spring many other influences on thought and behavior,
notably the principles that guide our understanding of meaning and
truth; the ethical and social understanding of who we are and how we
should live; and ultimately our answers to the `big questions': our
religious beliefs.
In so far as scientism is an overarching world-view, it is fair to
regard it as essentially a
religious
position. Its advocates are unhappy with such an assertion, and argue
that because scientism does not entail the belief in the supernatural,
and does not entail ceremonials and rituals, it cannot be regarded as
religion. But that is hair-splitting. There are religions that don't
involve a belief in God, and religions that don't require
participation in ceremonies. What's more, as we will see, several of
the historic forms that scientism has taken actually do involve
ceremonials and rituals of religious intent. In any case, the key
aspect of religious conviction that scientism shares with most
organized religions is that it offers a comprehensive principle or
belief, which itself cannot be proved (certainly not scientifically
proved) but which serves to organize our understanding and guide our
actions.
Higher education in the West, in its beginnings, was almost
exclusively a Christian undertaking. Its rationale and content were
dominated by the propagation of Christian truths and the education of
people to undertake that mission. As it grew, of course, much broader
perspectives were encompassed, but even well into the nineteenth
century, religious observance and education were dominant aspects of
most colleges and
universities. In the second half of that
century, though, a transformation occurred, away from religious to
more secular motivations and content.1 To a great extent, that transformation can be
viewed as a conversion to scientism. Not that all twentieth century
academics subscribed overtly to scientism. But just as Christian
presuppositions were a kind of academic
mental
habitat in earlier centuries, so, scientism became the de facto
world-view of the academy. Scientistic viewpoints had been advocated
by a vocal minority of intellectuals since the beginning of the
Enlightenment, and had gained increasing
dominance prior to this transformation. But after it, scientism became
practically the
orthodoxy of the academy.
In the later parts of this study, I will explore briefly some of the
more practical consequences of scientism in modern attitudes to
political and social decision making. One can consider the emphasis on
technological solutions for the challenges we face
as a facet of scientism. The modern reliance on technology to solve
all manner of social challenges was increasingly subject to critiques
from human and religious perspectives as the twentieth century wore
on. The belief in human `progress', based on technique, failed in the
face of the stark realities of world wars and gulags. But because the
underlying scientism was not displaced from its intellectual
dominance, the
technological
imperative and the reliance on the technological fix seem as strong as
ever.
Repudiation of scientism is the only way that we can break free from
some of the more debilitating habits of thought that have dominated
modern intellectual life. But this repudiation is unsustainable, even
by the most heroic effort, without a distinction between science and
scientism. If denying scientism's sway requires us to deny the
truthfulness, value, or reality of scientific knowledge - as seems to
be implied by some of today's critiques - then in my opinion the move
will fail. And it should fail, because in fact science does give real,
reliable, knowledge. It is just that science and scientism are not the
same thing. Science is not all the knowledge there is.
1.2 Science, what do we mean by it?
Perhaps, gentle reader, you are yourself already highly dubious about
the distinction that I am trying to draw. Quite possibly, you take the
view that science really is the only reliable route to knowledge: that
science is simply the systematic critical study of any field of
activity: that the word science simply describes
knowledge, which after all is its Latin
etymology. If so, then I need to convince you, first,
that there is something distinctive about the disciplines that we
traditionally call science, something that is different from other
disciplines; and second, that that distinctiveness calls for definite
characteristics of the things we study using the methods of science,
which not all questions possess. In other words, I must show both that
there are in fact functional definitions of science, and that not all
interesting knowledge falls within the scope of the definitions.
A major cause of confusion is that the word
science is used with at least two
meanings. Those meanings are completely different; confusing the two
has a natural tendency to lead to scientism. One meaning, which I
just alluded to, looks to the derivation of the word. It comes from
the Latin scientia which means simply knowledge. Based on this
foundation, the word science is sometimes used to describe any
systematic orderly study of a field of knowledge; or by extension the
knowledge that such study produces. The other meaning of the word
science is today a far more common usage. It is that "science"
refers to the study of the natural world.
The Encyclopédie and Samuel Johnson
2
Figure 1.1: Frontispiece
of Diderot's Encyclopédie. Reason and
philosophy revealing truth. Drawn by Charles-Nicolas Cochin,
1764.
Prior to the nineteenth century, the word science was used, especially
in continental Europe, to mean simply knowledge. The
Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts
et des Métiers3 was edited by Denis
Diderot and published in 21 volumes of text and 11 of illustrative
plates during the years 1751 to 1777. It was in many ways the
embodiment of Enlightenment thinking. Its definition of the word
science is this:
SCIENCE, as a
philosophical concept, means the clear and certain knowledge of
something, whether founded on self-evident principles, or via
systematic demonstration. The word science is, in this sense, the
opposite of doubt; opinion stands midway between science and doubt.
(The original was in French.) Clearly, by this definition, science is
no different from what we commonly simply call knowledge. If this
were all that the word science connoted, there would be no problem. We
would use "science" interchangeably with "knowledge" and little
else would be implied. But, of course, this is not the only
connotation in modern usage. Most of the time, today, when people
refer to science they are referring to
natural science, our
knowledge of nature, discovered by experiment and (most convincingly
mathematical) theory. This is the meaning I use.
The Encyclopédie itself reflects an ambiguity about the usage of the
word science, which may have been deliberate. The formal definition it
gives, is equivalent to "knowledge". But the Encyclopédie's usage
strongly implies the natural and technological knowledge
that is captured by the modern meaning, natural science.
Consider the title of the work itself, which might be translated,
"Encyclopedia or Reasoned Dictionary of
Sciences, Arts, and Trades". Lest the modern reader be misled by this
literalistic translation, we should recognize that the word Arts here
means predominantly what we would call technology. Here is part of the
Encyclopédie's own article on ART, which was evidently Diderot's
manifesto for the work.
Origin of the arts and sciences. In pursuit of his needs, luxury,
amusement, satisfaction of curiosity, or other objectives, man applied
his industriousness to the products of nature and thus created the
arts and sciences. The focal points of our different reflections have
been called "science" or "art" according to the nature of their
"formal" objects, to use the language of logic. If the object leads to
action, we give the name of "art" to the compendium of the rules
governing its use and to their technical order. If the object is
merely contemplated under different aspects, the compendium and
technical order of the observations concerning this object are called
"science."
Thus, for example, according to Diderot,
metaphysics is a science and
ethics
is an art. Theology is a science and pyrotechnics an art! So
arts are the products of applying industriousness to
nature, and differ from "science" in that arts are practical,
whereas science is contemplative. Moreover, for Diderot, there are
subdivisions of arts:
Division of the arts into liberal and mechanical arts. When men
examined the products of the arts, they realized that some were
primarily created by the mind, others by the hands. This is part of
the cause for the pre-eminence that some arts have been accorded over
others, and of the distinction between liberal and mechanical
arts.
Then after promoting the value of the mechanical arts and criticizing
those who disdain them, who by their prejudice "fill the cities with
useless spectators and with proud men engaged in idle speculation",
Diderot extols
Bacon and Colbert as champions of the
mechanical arts and says, "I shall devote most of my attention to the
mechanical arts, particularly because other authors have written
little about them."
The modern reader may be forgiven for feeling that Diderot has
multiplied distinctions in ways that are more confusing than
enlightening. Nevertheless, the main point is clear. The
Encyclopédie is a work predominantly about natural science and
technology. It defines the word science to mean knowledge in general;
but then it focuses on natural science and technology. Here we see
scientism in its youth. And even in its youth, it seems to be based on
deliberate confusion of language. The French
philosophes (whose champion Diderot was) and those
who followed them were quite deliberate in their attempt to undermine
confessional religious faith and any authority based on it. Their
avowed aim was to undermine the authority of the clergy and the
church; and hence the political system, the
Ancien Régime of which
clerical power was one foundation
stone. Those opposed to the monarchy and aristocracy used every
technique at their disposal from the satire of
Voltaire to the social activism of the
revolutionaries. But one of the most powerful of their techniques,
and arguably the most lasting legacy, was to insinuate scientism as an
unacknowledged presupposition into much of the intellectual climate of
the succeeding two centuries.
Samuel Johnson's dictionary4, or to give it its
full title, A DICTIONARY of the English Language: in which The
WORDS are deduced from their ORIGINALS, and ILLUSTRATED in their
DIFFERENT SIGNIFICATIONS by EXAMPLES from the best
WRITERS5 was
perhaps the most definitive work of English usage up to 1755, when it
was first published. It had far less of a deliberate agenda than the
Encyclopédie, and was a remarkable, nine-year, practically
solo effort, unlike the French dictionary of the day which took forty
scholars forty years. Johnson's boast, based on his initial optimistic
estimate of only a three-year schedule, was that this showed "As
three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a
Frenchman"6.
The 11th edition, abstracted like some earlier editions by Johnson to
produce additional profit through a more accessible, less bulky
work, retains only the authors, not the texts
by which the meanings are illustrated and its definition of science
reads
Science. 1. Knowledge. Hammond. 2. Certainty grounded on
demonstration. Berkley. 3. Art attained by precepts, or built
upon principles. Dryden. 4. Any art or species of
knowledge. Hooker, Glanville. 5. One of the seven liberal arts, grammar,
rhetorick, logick, arithmetick, musick, geometry, astronomy. Pope.
Evidently this definition conforms to the more general concept as
addressing any systematic body of knowledge. Several
of the original quotations from which these definitions are derived do
show signs of preference towards natural science. Nevertheless, the
last definition, as liberal art, emphatically retains the breadth of
meaning that a classical derivation might imply.
Two Nineteenth Century Historians
Insight into the usage of the word science in the nineteenth century
can be gleaned from the writing of
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), a lawyer,
politician, colonial administrator, poet, essayist and historian
7
Figure 1.2: Thomas Babington Macaulay at age 49. After a drawing by
George Richmond.
Macaulay's
The History of
England from the accession of James the second was an immediate
bestseller when it was published in mid century (volumes 1 and 2 in
1848), and remains a classic of English literary style and popular
history, still in print. Macaulay's writing is considered also a
characteristic example of
`Whig History', which means an
interpretation of history in terms of the progressive growth of
liberty and enlightenment, accompanying the increase of democratic and
parliamentary power, as opposed to monarchy and aristocracy.
Macaulay, while unromantic in his perspicacious analysis of the
motivations of individuals and the sentiments of the populace, is fond
of sweeping assessments such as "From the time when the barbarians
overran the Western Empire to the time of the revival of letters, the
influence of the Church of Rome had been generally favorable to
science, to civilization, and to good government. But during the last
three centuries, to stunt the growth of the human mind has been her
chief object."8
We see in this quotation that Macaulay refers to science
as the intellectual component of the growth of the human mind, which,
along with civilization and government, constitutes the progress that
he is interested to document. Macaulay's usage of
`science' here is very broad, encompassing all of
liberal studies, not just natural science. Yet later in his overview
of England in 1685, speaking about historical assessments of the size
of the English population (about five million), he writes "Lastly, in
our own days Mr. Finlaison, an actuary of eminent skill, subjected the
ancient parochial registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials to all
the tests which the modern improvements in statistical science enabled
him to apply."9
So `science' is a natural description of mathematical analysis. But in
discussing the low relative degree of militarization of England he
says "... the defence of nations had become a science and a calling"
meaning that the army was becoming professionalized, and associated
with systematic learning, though not necessarily that of natural
philosophy.10
Macaulay speaks of the far more effective naval officers of that day
who had risen through the ranks rather than acquiring their
appointment, as did the `gentlemen captains', by political
preferment. "But to a landsman these tarpaulins, as they were called,
seemed a strange and half-savage race. All their knowledge was
professional; and their professional knowledge was practical rather
than scientific."11
So here he is reflecting the
Encyclopédie's distinction between art: the practical; and
science: the contemplative, or perhaps in modern terminology
theoretical.
Macaulay sees science as preeminently the result of
formal education, but later refers to the distinguishing of right from wrong
as part of "ethical science" (i.e. the science of ethics).
Thus the usage of Macaulay reflects an understanding of science as
knowledge that is
contemplative and
formally-learnt, encompassing the broad scope of human endeavor, yet
only somewhat ambiguously focused on situations and methods that are
predominantly the province of natural and mathematical studies. That
ambiguity, though, is in practice dispelled by his summary under the
heading "State of science in England" in 1685. Noting the
foundation, just twenty five years before, of the
Royal Society (whose concerns surely serve as an
indisputable definition of science as natural philosophy), he lists
the subjects of his state of science as including agricultural reform,
medicine, sanitation, " ... the chemical discoveries of
Boyle, and
the earliest botanical researches of Sloane. It was then that Ray made
a new classification of birds and fishes, and that the attention of
Woodward was first drawn toward fossils and shells. ... John Wallis
placed the whole system of statics on a new foundation. Edmund Halley
investigated the properties of the atmosphere, the ebb and flow of the
sea, the laws of magnetism, and the course of the comets; ... mapped
the constellations of the southern
hemisphere"
12.
With the sole
possible exception of Petty's "Political Arithmetic", an early
treatise in economic statistics, what Macaulay refers to are topics in
natural science.
Figure 1.3: St Paul's cathedral, in London, designed by Christopher
Wren, a founder of the Royal Society, and Professor of Astronomy
at Oxford, illustrates the harmony of
natural science, technology, art, and
Christianity in 17th century England.
In the 1898 edition of Macaulay's History, however, a particularly
telling passage appears in the introduction written by
Edward
P. Cheyney, then Professor of European History at the University of
Pennsylvania, and himself the author of an important Short
History of England (1904). Cheyney writes
There are two quite different views of historical writing. The one
looks upon it as a form of literature, an artistic product, the
materials for which are to be found in the events of the past; the
other considers it as a science, the solution of the problems involved
in the same events of the past. Macaulay represents the former rather
than the latter. If strict canons of criticism were applied to his
methods of investigation and writing, much of his work would fail to
stand the test. ... Abundance of illustration and analogy frequently takes
the place of a really exhaustive study of the sources.13
It is remarkable that a historian would refer to history, or at least
history written in the way he approves, as a science. The differences
between the subjects and methods of history and those of natural
sciences are, as we shall later explore, about as stark as they can
be. But for our present purposes the key question is, what Cheyney is
getting at when he refers to historians that "treat history as a
science" and use "more rigorous methods" while, in contrast to
Macaulay they show "almost entire lack of literary ability"? In the
first place, it seems Cheyney's complaint is that Macaulay is not
rigorous, or critical enough. When he says "There are few things in
history quite so certain as he [Macaulay] seems to make them" his
advocacy appears to be for greater tentativeness. And when he says
"... a spirit of candor and a habit of judicial fairness, was not by
any means a characteristic of Macaulay's mind" his criticism appears
to be aimed at historical writing that contains specific perspectives
and judgements of the merits of actions or events. But when Cheyney
portrays Macaulay's writings as if they were some sort of historical
artistic literature or almost historical fiction, he goes far beyond
what is justified. Whatever may be the shortcomings of Macaulay's
work, there can be no doubt that his was a mind of great erudition,
not just imagination. His historical facts concerning the era he
addresses are carefully documented from original sources. Perhaps he
allowed himself greater latitude in speculative interpretation than
the academic historian of 1900 (or for that matter 2000) would
endorse. But it is remarkable and revealing that in the mind of
Cheyney, this makes Macaulay not so much unprofessional, or a
populist, or merely biased, but rather:
unscientific. This attitude is a consequence of
scientism - an effort to distinguish between `true' scientific
historical knowledge on the one hand, and on the other, literature
that fails to qualify as science and hence as true knowledge. In
effect Cheyney is claiming the credentials of science in support of
his view that some of Macaulay's interpretations are
erroneous.14
Perhaps we can understand Cheyney's position better in the light of
his Presidential address to the
American Historical Society, some 26 years
later15. In this oration entitled Law in
History, although he no longer uses the word scientific to describe
it, he still sees history as on a path to discovery of practically
deterministic cause and effect.
So arises the conception of
law in
history. History, the great course of human affairs, has been the
result not of voluntary action on the part of individuals or groups of
individuals, much less of chance; but has been subject to law. ...
Such are the six general laws I have ventured to state as discoverable
by a search among historical phenomena: first, a law of continuity;
second, a law of impermanence of nations; third, a law of unity of the
race, of interdependence among all its members; fourth, a law of
democracy; fifth, a law of freedom; sixth, a law of moral progress.
May I repeat that I do not conceive of these generalizations as
principles which it would be well for us to accept, or as ideals which
we may hope to attain; but as natural laws, which we must accept
whether we want to or not, whose workings we cannot obviate, however
much we may thwart them to our own failure and disadvantage; laws to
be accepted and reckoned with as much as the laws of gravitation, or
of chemical affinity, or of organic evolution, or of human psychology.
Cheyney's claims and terminology seem aimed to promote
professionalism in history: implying that there
are certain scientific norms of
historiography
practiced by the academic historian, but not by writers of much
broader experience such as Macaulay.
The effort is not convincing. The distinction between academic and
popular
history might be significant, but to
portray this as a distinction between scientific and unscientific is
mostly a power play. The distinction bears no discernible relationship
to methods of the natural sciences. It is mostly a substitution of the
judgement `correct' by `scientific' for rhetorical effect. Given the
present common usage of `science', any merit that might once have
resided in references to
scientific history
is today replaced by confusion. And the hope that some historical law
of (say) "moral progress" would be accepted "as much as the laws of
gravitation", seems to a scientist just silly.
Metaphysics a Science?
The confusion of usages of the word science
throughout the twentieth century may be illustrated by reference to
the insightful An Essay on Metaphysics by R.G.Collingwood
(1940)16. I think it is fair to say that
today metaphysics would be regarded as a subject that stands in
contrast to science. Common sense usage would say something along the
lines that science is about the experimentally verifiable facts of
nature, whereas metaphysics is about the speculative, unverifiable,
logical, and philosophical questions that include
religion and the big questions of human
life17. For Collingwood, though,
classical usages of the words are primary. He explains that literally
metaphysics is simply the expression used by the editors of
Aristotle to describe the writings that are placed
after physics.
Collingwood defines
science (in contrast to common usage even of 1940) as any "body of
systematic or orderly thinking". And he calls metaphysics "an
historical science" which attempts to find out, for the thinkers and
arguments it analyzes, their absolute presuppositions.
Ironically Collingwood is himself aware of and concerned to critique
scientism. He addresses a nineteenth century philosophy whose prime
tenet is that the "only valid method of attaining knowledge is the
method used in the natural sciences" as
Positivism. Undoubtedly the use of
`Positivism' is historically correct and precise terminology to
describe the school of philosophy to which it refers. One reason I
avoid it in talking about the larger issue is that scientism is far
broader and more influential than the explicit formulation by
Auguste Comte (1798-1857) and his followers,
which Collingwood analyses. No, scientism is not just philosophical
and sociological positivism; it is much more pervasive than that. Nor
is it just postivism's twentieth century extension
Logical Positivism, which holds, in
brief, that propositions other than scientific ones are meaningless,
and which Collingwood colorfully criticizes under the title of the
"Suicide of Positivistic Metaphysics"!
I'll have more to say later about these philosophical formulations.
But my present point is that calling metaphysics a science, despite
the practice adopted by Diderot in the mid 18th century, is by
modern standards just plain confusing, since metaphysics is in large
measure defined by the fact that it is not natural science.
Nothing leads more quickly to sloppy thinking and misunderstandings
than terminological confusion of this type. Indeed, the continued
robustness of scientism is surely partly attributable to this
terminological confusion. If science means simply
knowledge, then scientism is just tautologically true. End of
story. But if
science means a particular
type of knowledge, as it does today, then it is essential to recognize
that meaning and stick to it. For this reason and others, as a matter
of the use of language, when I refer to science, I will mean
natural science, not simply systematic knowledge. Moreover I
mean modern natural science, the inheritor of the revolution in
natural philosophy that started in the sixteenth century. I implore
the reader to bear this meaning firmly in mind.
New Sciences
A further source of confusion lies in recent
trends in academic disciplines to refer to their subjects as various
types of "sciences".
It was not a scientist but a philosopher
(John
Searle) who remarked that most of the disciplines that have the word
science in their name are actually not science. He was overstating the
idea, even for the 1970s. But he was making the point that most
subjects that are unequivocally sciences have descriptive names that
don't require the qualification "science". One can think of physics,
chemistry, astronomy, biology, geology, zoology, botany, genetics,
physiology, and so on. No one would hesitate to classify these as part
of science.
In contrast, think about Social Science, Management Sciences, Pharmaceutical
Sciences, Archaeological Sciences, Animal Science, Food Science,
Behavioral Sciences, Decision Sciences, Family and Consumer Sciences
(I am not making these up!) even Computer Science. Practically none
of these are science in the sense of the word that I am using, either
because they are not natural (about nature) or because they are really
technologies or professional studies.
In recent years, it must be conceded, some of the more traditional
sciences have taken to using the word science in the titles of
academic departments (e.g. Earth Sciences, Biological Sciences,
Atmospheric Sciences, Materials Science, Marine Sciences, Life
Sciences) but in most cases this seems to be either because they
represent a merging of several historically distinct subjects, or
because they want to shed a narrow interpretation.
Whatever may be the individual justification, the outbreak of
"sciences" in academic descriptions is in part a reflection of
scientism at work. If science is all the real knowledge there is, as
scientism says, then a self-respecting academic department better be
sure that its discipline is understood to be science. But of course, a
discipline does not become a science by simply calling itself one. So
not all the new "sciences" are science in any useful sense. But what
does make a discipline a science?
1.3 The Scientific Revolution
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