Writer@Large

From <a href="http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=scientism" target="_blank">Dictionary.com</a>:

"sci·en·tism n.

"1. The collection of attitudes and practices considered typical of scientists.

"2. The belief that the investigative methods of the physical sciences are applicable or justifiable in all fields of inquiry."

Hmmm ... nothing wrong with that.

From the Wordsworth Concise English Dictionary (page 890, under the entry "science"):

"sci' entism the methods or mental attitudes of men of science: a belief that the methods used in studying natural sciences should be employed also in investigating all aspects of human behavior and condition".

Okay, a sound philsophical stance, IMO ...

From Merriam-Websters:

"[M]ethods and attitudes typical of or attributed to the natural scientist." [Dated to 1887.]

Nothing horrible there ...

Wow ... what dictionary are you using?

--W@L

Writer@Large

" ... and Bruce here teaches logical positivism, and is also in charge of the sheep dip!"

Yes, I think we all know what <a href="http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/l/logpos.htm" target="_blank">logical positivism</a> is. Funny thing, though: the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (above), the <a href="http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/6q.htm" target="_blank">Philosophy Pages</a>, even <a href="http://www.faithnet.freeserve.co.uk/logicalpositivism.htm" target="_blank">FaithNet</a> all manage to describe and discuss LP, at some length, without using the term "scientism." Yet you seem to use the word with so much ... vitroil. Taking science and slapping an "-ism" on it does not an enemy make.

--W@L

doubtingt

I myself find this assertion problematic and
perhaps meaningless. IF "natural" means
"everything that exists", then the statment is
meaningless. IF it means "only those things
we can observe", then to claim only these things exist is a statement of blind faith and constitutes a religion.

I would agree with a statment like:
"The advancement of our understanding is advanced when we accept only those assertions that can be tested and verified against systematic observation. Since all "supernatural"
assertions cannot be verified, by definition,
acceptance of these assertions is inherently irrational and thwarts the possibility of
increasing the accuracy of our knowledge."

The key difference in my statement is that
it makes no assertions regarding the existence
of unverifiable things, but rather focusses
on the fact that only the existence of verifiable things can ever be accepted via reason and allows
for future evidence and claims to compete for acceptance.

Ought Naught

Trying? So you don't think I'm doing a good job of it? </strong>If music cannot be objectified, then obviously you don't mean something so simple as, "patterns of compression and rarefaction of air transduced to patterns of neural activity within the brain." What do you mean then when you say that music exists? If it can't be objectified, then does it exist only subjectively and intersubjectively? If its existence depends upon ours then how can you be so sure that some aspects of our physical existence (e.g. brain waves) are not music? I don't really care to argue the merits of the "dogma of scientism" pro or con, but with the phrase, "qualitative aspects of reality" it sure sounds like you are talking about subjective phenomena. And again I wonder why you are so sure that these aren't the result of brain activity and thus open for scientific investigation. For example, we know that electrical activity within particular regions of the brain is correlated with, necessary for and sufficient to induce subjective visual sensation. Thus, advances in neurobiology (and perhaps psychology) have rendered at least some subjective (dare I say qualitative?) phenomena no longer immune to the probing of science. Can you give me some reason (beyond your mere say-so) to agree with you on the impossibility of the empirical verification of "qualitative aspects of reality"? I am tempted to dismiss it as being premature at best if not plainly contradicted by the current state of neurobiology research.

[ September 13, 2002: Message edited by: Ought Naught ]</p>

Godless Dave

You're saying that music can't be studied? So the students at
<a href="http://www.oberlin.edu/con/" target="_blank">Oberlin Conservatory of Music</a> and <a href="http://www.rochester.edu/eastman/" target="_blank">Eastman School of Music</a>, are just wasting a lot of money? The notebook I have full of explanations of chord tones is completely meaningless?

Music can be studied. It exists in the natural world. It consists of certain types of sounds arranged in patterns that are pleasing to the human brain. People have been studying it a least since the time of classical Greece.

Balisongsong, you have a very strange idea of what the natural world consists of.

balisongsong

Writer@Large,glad you got your dictionary out and did your homework.
Its the dogmatic scientism of the secular web thats at issue here,your reasoning is circular.
The investigational methods of science ARE NOT applicable or justifiable in ALL fields of inquiry.
The scientific method is appropriate for the investigation of the physical world alone,thats its limitation,and is not adequate for the understanding the qualitative world,music,art,suffering love,faith etc.
Science is not a appropriate discipline to investigate whether life has meaning,whether my significant other really loves me,whether peace is better than war,whether democracy is better than tyranny,whether honesty is better than dishonesty etc. and etc.

balisongsong

NO GODLESS DAVE,I didnt say music couldnt be studied,where the hell did you come up with that?
The reduction of studying music objectively is not what music is in its totality.

Ernest Sparks

I know musicians/teachers who can look at a music score for a piece and "know" what it sounds like without hearing it played or sung. But they are experienced with sounds and reading music. I think your "brain wave" reduction is crude. We don't know much about how the brain deals with music YET. Other aspects, such as memory, come into play.

I don't know what you count for "great music", but it does tend to be culturally relative. I remember hearing a story about a japanese man in the nineteenth century, who had no previous contact with western culture, being invited by some british people to be their guest in a trip to London. He agreed to go. One evening, they took him to an orchestra concert. They wanted to present the best of the western world to him. Music by Handel, Haydn, Mozart, etc. was performed. The man politely thanked his hosts afterward. Then he wrote a letter to be sent to his home. He said in the letter that his hosts had been kind to him, except that they took him to their music hall and subjected him to the most horrible, chaotic and ugly noise he had ever heard. It was like war, he said. (japanese traditional music has a precise and refined system of scales, different from the classical west)

[ September 14, 2002: Message edited by: Ernest Sparks ]</p>

Ernest Sparks

Balisongsong missed it on describing logical positivists. Bertrand Russell was NOT one of them. Rudolf Carnap and the Vienna Circle philosophers were the logical positivists. Russell has been regularly criticized as well as admired by modern philosophers. But they have to pick which philosophy of Russell, because he had a habit of changing his mind every few years. Someone once asked him if he thought everyone should accept his ideas. He replied, "Heavens no! I might be wrong!!"

Ernest Sparks

Physicist Richard Feynman once wrote something like the following:

Some people think that science ruins the wonder of life. To explain things takes away that wonder. I disagree. A rainbow in the sky is such a wonder. I can appreciate it as it is and arouse strong feelings about it. I can also explain how the sunlight is refracted and the colors are dispersed, and calculate exactly where the colors should appear from where I am standing. This only adds to my pleasure in the phenomenon. In the end, I still have the rainbow in the sky, but I have something else too. I know how a part of nature works.

{this was my paraphrase}

I think Feynman would NOT agree that the rainbow has some kind of REALITY over and above the matter/light interaction. It is directly derived from it.