scientism 10
The Crisis of the Self in an Age of Solutions
We live under the impression that we can do for the human community and the individual human soul what physicists have done with the atom.
‘Spiritual but not Religious’ Revisited: An Urgent Case for the Psychiatric
Look at our priests or bishops now. Do they seem any more advanced in the cure than anybody else? Some do. But so does the guy who took the snow…
The Stories We Share
Douthat is, I think, proposing a conversation. As a low-level functionary in the medical-industrial complex, I would like to take him up on that offer. There may be much to…
Two Cheers for Sacramentality
I give two cheers for Mark Clavier’s timely and eternal reminder to us that we should seek the encounter with God in the world; it may just give us a…
“Following the Science” in a Polarized Age
We should “follow the science.” But we need to have the intellectual humility—and moral fortitude—to acknowledge the provisional, incremental nature of scientific understanding.
I Am Not a Luddite
In my efforts to point people to various methodologies of eco-agriculture I often encounter those who dispute these approaches. One of the frequent refrains I hear is, “We can’t go…
College and its End(s)
“College and its End(s)”---that was the title I had given to the section of senior seminar I taught this past fall. The class was conceived with two animating questions in…
A Tale of Two Symbolic Systems
I am angry with my friend; he has betrayed a secret of mine perhaps, or maybe instead he has formed an intimacy with persons he knows to be my enemies. …
C.S. Lewis on Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism Pt. III
This is Part II of a III Part series on C.S. Lewis and Statism. The series originally appeared at theIndependent Institute. See Part I here and Part II here. Collectivism and…
Science, Self-Deification, and Gnosticism in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark”
Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Birthmark" provides a springboard for reflecting on the problems of scientism, especially the temptation to self-deification and, what Eric Voegelin terms, modern Gnosticism.