The Corporate Professor   /   Spring 2012   /    Short Takes

On Scientism and Philosophy

[SHORT TAKE]

Bernard Williams

Illustration from New Physiognomy: or signs of character, as manifested through temperament and external forms, and especially in the "the human face divine,” 1889; flickr.

Philosophy should certainly be interested in the sciences and some philosophers may well be involved in them, and nothing I say is meant to deny it. Scientism is, rather, a misunderstanding of the relations between philosophy and the natural sciences which tends to assimilate philosophy to the aims, or at least the manners, of the sciences…

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