The Party of Scientism, Not Science

In a commencement speech at Rutgers, President Obama took an indirect shot at Donald Trump and the Republicans:

Facts, evidence, reason, logic, an understanding of science: These are good things. These are qualities you want in people making policy . . . We traditionally have valued those things, but if you’re listening to today’s political debate, you might wonder where this strain of anti-intellectualism came from.

Obama here indulges one of the hoariest progressive clichés: that they are the party of enlightenment, reason, and fact, while conservatives are ignorant obscurantists, “bitter clingers” to the superstitions of religion and tradition. This prejudice is false about both conservatives and progressives. Most of what many progressives think is science is, in fact, scientism: the application of the methods, techniques, and jargon of genuine science to subjects for which they are inappropriate.

Indeed, leftism was born in scientism. Karl Marx believed that his ideas about the historical development, economics, and human nature comprised “scientific socialism,” as true as the laws of natural science. As Friedrich Engels said at Marx’s funeral, “Just as Darwin had discovered the law of development of organic nature, so did Marx discover the laws of human history.” Of course Marxism is no such thing. It is a reductive view of human nature and action, based on selective evidence, unexamined assumptions, and jargon modeled on real science.

Most of what many progressives think is science is, in fact, scientism: the application of the methods, techniques, and jargon of genuine science to subjects for which they are inappropriate.

Not only inappropriate, but failing utterly, the fundamental definition of science.
And most importantly, failing also utterly to address and satisfying the legal definition and process established by jurisprudence to settle genuine scientific matters :

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure

The best examples, of course are matters relating to the EPA and Climate Change.

NONE of the Science procedures have been legitimized through the process defined in the MANUAL.

Most of the rabid militants are NOT scientists.
Hundreds of the opponents are.

And universally, our legislators who are in the best position to set things right, concentrate of trivialities and matters totally useless to right the sinking ship.

Scientism.

Exactly right.

Not science.

Same way they don’t really even believe in evolution. It’s more a evolutionism they adhere to.

Liberals and the left have always been anti-science. They see corporations use science to make better things and make profit. Or they see it as polluting. They also have the crazy new age ideas that are wish out of line with actual science.

Etc...

The same people telling us that mankind is responsible for “climate change” are telling us that gender is “fluid” and not a consequence of genetic composition.
None of this is science, at least not the way I learned it.

Nor mine.

Science was always a fascination of mine, as far as joining the "junior" section of the Academy of Sciences, Golden Gate park, San Francisco, while in high school.

Part of the trap is something I refuse to accept : the conflation and transformation of language. That obscures the clarity of the issue, the way "Climate change" makes the scientific discussion of climate meaningless.
So it is with sex. Gender, for countless generations referred to words. Sex deals with the clear distinction, in science, between male and female in all areas of the science of biology and, until recently, of human interactions.

For the "progressives," consistency and clarity are mortal enemies.

For the "progressives," consistency and clarity are mortal enemies.

SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one . . .. - Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

Socialists love to use euphemisms - “society” when they mean government,“liberal” or “progressive" when they mean socialist, and so on.

In fact it is not too much to say that they appropriate words in order to extinguish their meanings. Thomas Paine makes excruciatingly clear that “society” has a different meaning than “government.” And I am not aware of the existence of any true synonym for the word “society.” Therefore, to systematically misuse “society” as a synonym for “government” is to make it difficult if not impossible to articulate the thought conveyed by the word “society.”

I, Pencil is an article written in 1958 by Leonard E. Read. The burden of the article is how diffuse are the inputs to make a simple item like a pencil. Of course a particular company - Eberhard Faber, in the example instance - made the pencil. But Mr. Eberhard and Mr. Faber did not simply speak the pencil into existence; the company has to have buildings housing machinery, and workers to operate the machines. But beyond that, the Eberhard Faber workers have to have food, shelter, and normal amenities - including those required by their families.
And the same is true of the vendors who supply Eberhard Faber with the machinery they require, and all the obvious materials - wood, graphite, rubber, and the ferrule material and the enamel. All those vendors have their own equipment, workers, and supply chain. And in all cases the workers need food, shelter, and normal amenities. So although the pencil certainly does not exist without Eberhard Faber, society works together to make the pencil.
The correct word for all the support which surrounds the total production of the pencil - or anything else - is “society." Not government, society.
Likewise the use by socialists of the term “liberal” as a synonym for “socialist” suppresses the meaning of the term which, up to the 1920s, was the very antonym of “socialist.”

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