Scientism is a tricky term because it seems to redefine itself to fit wherever it pleases.
It can refer to the idea that there are other ways to access reliable, objective truths about the universe despite our own propensity for fallacies. I think this is false, and basically an attempt to push science down to meet psuedoscience so that they can fight on equal ground.
It can refer to the application of science and measurement where it's not applicable. I think this happens a lot, and it's bad science. Because science has built such a good brand in the memetic market it's often treated as a gold award mark of quality for those wishing to elevate their opinions, or a badly wielded tool by people who refuse to read the manual.
It can refer to the idea that science is a higher power that will save us all, which I think is anti-science in a science costume. It is also quite terrifying, because it allows us to bathe in confidence while the planet heats and the bees die.
I think that a lot of things suffer from one form of scientism or another. I think I've gotten a reputation as being "anti-metrics" in business, but my position has always been that people need to understand how little they know before they leverage measurement when the outcome actually matters.
I'd like to share with you another term that I found incredibly useful to package a lot of my thoughts around the subject, and if you don't already know it you might find it as cool as I have. Managerialism is the displacement of the agency of people in business, replacing it with management and managers as a system and ideology. It tends to drive towards efficiency and effectiveness and it tends to do this via measurements. So it is an interesting social driver for metrics and measurement, and is so desperate to do so that it is willing to ignore the anthropological impact of measurement, or even if the metrics are mathematically or logically sane. Measuring people without any understanding of statistical significance, experimental design or confounding variables. Almost as if metrology were a cult talisman. It's come up a lot recently with regards to writings on the rise of neoliberalism, and both are an interesting read when it comes to the motivations and effects of both on society, business and community.
I think this is interesting not just because it might offer some insight to the driving force behind poorly deployed scientific rhetoric, shoddy metrics and poor understanding of data, but also that it seems to come from an anti-democratic ideology that disenfranchises employees, owners, or members of a community. Managerialism in community steals agency from its members as a whole and concentrates it on the few, like a power play for control over conversation and an Orwellian appropriation of symbols of positivity and progression to feed a flawed system of efficiency and improvement. Some animals are more equal than others.
I offer it as a thought exercise, at least. Our struggle to understand the world, under the pressure of impatience, an addiction to certainty, and a lack of humility can turn to us redefining truth by what metrics determine, like reading omens in scattered bones. Leaps of logic without a pause for questions - if we want to know, we measure. If we measure, we know. Now that we know, we act. All of it is true because we designed it to be true - the very core opposite of the humility of scientific inquiry.
Scientism is a tricky term because it seems to redefine itself to fit wherever it pleases.
It can refer to the idea that there are other ways to access reliable, objective truths about the universe despite our own propensity for fallacies. I think this is false, and basically an attempt to push science down to meet psuedoscience so that they can fight on equal ground.
It can refer to the application of science and measurement where it's not applicable. I think this happens a lot, and it's bad science. Because science has built such a good brand in the memetic market it's often treated as a gold award mark of quality for those wishing to elevate their opinions, or a badly wielded tool by people who refuse to read the manual.
It can refer to the idea that science is a higher power that will save us all, which I think is anti-science in a science costume. It is also quite terrifying, because it allows us to bathe in confidence while the planet heats and the bees die.
I think that a lot of things suffer from one form of scientism or another. I think I've gotten a reputation as being "anti-metrics" in business, but my position has always been that people need to understand how little they know before they leverage measurement when the outcome actually matters.
I'd like to share with you another term that I found incredibly useful to package a lot of my thoughts around the subject, and if you don't already know it you might find it as cool as I have. Managerialism is the displacement of the agency of people in business, replacing it with management and managers as a system and ideology. It tends to drive towards efficiency and effectiveness and it tends to do this via measurements. So it is an interesting social driver for metrics and measurement, and is so desperate to do so that it is willing to ignore the anthropological impact of measurement, or even if the metrics are mathematically or logically sane. Measuring people without any understanding of statistical significance, experimental design or confounding variables. Almost as if metrology were a cult talisman. It's come up a lot recently with regards to writings on the rise of neoliberalism, and both are an interesting read when it comes to the motivations and effects of both on society, business and community.
I think this is interesting not just because it might offer some insight to the driving force behind poorly deployed scientific rhetoric, shoddy metrics and poor understanding of data, but also that it seems to come from an anti-democratic ideology that disenfranchises employees, owners, or members of a community. Managerialism in community steals agency from its members as a whole and concentrates it on the few, like a power play for control over conversation and an Orwellian appropriation of symbols of positivity and progression to feed a flawed system of efficiency and improvement. Some animals are more equal than others.
I offer it as a thought exercise, at least. Our struggle to understand the world, under the pressure of impatience, an addiction to certainty, and a lack of humility can turn to us redefining truth by what metrics determine, like reading omens in scattered bones. Leaps of logic without a pause for questions - if we want to know, we measure. If we measure, we know. Now that we know, we act. All of it is true because we designed it to be true - the very core opposite of the humility of scientific inquiry.