Comprehensivist Wednesdays: Exploring the Limits of Knowing

Is science the only or best source of knowledge, justification, and rational belief? In this Comprehensivist Wednesday meetup, we’ll explore the debate around scientism. A basic definition of scientism is the belief that science is the only and most authoritative source of knowledge, truth, and rational understanding. This often comes at the exclusion—or even dismissal—of other disciplines like philosophy, the arts, or ethics. We’ll examine how expanding the definition of science to include nearly all forms of human inquiry can detract from the term’s real meaning. Rather than rejecting science, we’ll discuss how it remains a powerful tool, especially for understanding the natural world, but not the only way we make sense of our lives. Our discussion will center on the article “No Matter How You Put It, Scientism Is Still a Bad Idea” (https://tinyurl.com/3hkxn9fa). The conversation will invite you to think critically about what counts as knowledge and how we build trust in different kinds of truth.

No Matter How You Put It, Scientism Is Still A Bad Idea
https://blog.apaonline.org/2020/10/22/no-matter-how-you-put-it-scientism-is-still-a-bad-idea/

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Welcome to the series "Comprehensivist Wednesdays". Transdisciplinarity, Renaissance humanism, homo universalis, and Polymathy are some of the ways of describing this approach which Buckminster Fuller called Comprehensivity and described as “macro-comprehensive and micro-incisive.”

See the calendar at https://www.meetup.com/52LivingIdeas/events/calendar/

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