Natural Scientism

A variant of scientism that insists that only explanations couched in terms of natural laws and physical entities are legitimate, and that any appeal to teleology, purpose, or non‑physical causation is automatically unscientific. Natural scientism often dismisses biology's talk of "function" as mere metaphor, and psychology's talk of "intention" as pre-scientific. It enforces a physicalist ontology while ignoring that even physics requires non‑mechanical concepts like symmetry, field, and potential.

Example: "He claimed that evolutionary biology shouldn't use the word 'purpose'—natural scientism, ignoring that teleological language is indispensable for describing adaptation."

Natural Scientism by Dumu The Void April 20, 2026