Massimo Pigliucci recently published a review of Alex Rosenberg’s (who I interviewed) The Atheist’s Guide to Reality in The Philosopher’s Magazine. While I am a big fan of Dr. Pigliucci’s work (I love his Thinking About Science column in The Skeptical Inquirer and his book Making Sense of Evolution), I find myself in disagreement with his assessment. Before I get started however, I want to make it clear that this post is not meant to stir any internet controversy up (I doubt it even gets read) and I am not trying to make any bigger points about any of the issues that are usually hashed out. Instead, I am just posting my concerns.
As we all know, Alex’s book maps out what he takes to be the correct interpretation of naturalism: scientism. Scientism, as Alex represents it, is in many regards just another form of philosophical naturalism. It is pragmatic, fallible, and holds that “the methods of science are the only reliable ways to secure knowledge of anything.” The only major point of disagreement Alex has with naturalists like WV Quine is that he is a reductionist.
In chapter 2 of his book, he outlines that there is still a ton of stuff for science to do and there is plenty of room for it to be wrong. However, he argues, there is very little chance that the core ideas of science (evolution, the periodic table, the laws of thermodynamics) will be wrong and teleological explanations will resurface. Since Alex wrote an entire chapter about this position and outlined it in an opinion piece at the New York Times, I was surprised that Dr. Pigliucci wrote this:
For Rosenberg there are simple, science driven answers to all of life’s persistent questions, and he gives the short version right at the beginning of his book… In some cases I agree with Rosenberg’s answers, though I think his reasoning relies far too much on what after all are science’s provisional findings (I mean, until 15 years ago we thought the universe was slowing down; turns out it’s accelerating, maybe), while in other cases I think he is either wrong or at least does not come close to providing a satisfactory argument for his positions. Then again, that’s the problem with scientism: it starts with a kernel of truth and inflates it into a cosmic nihilism (Rosenberg’s word, which he uses proudly) of increasingly uncertain grounding.
