The world as a physicist sees it

I have been collecting works of popular philosophy by accomplished physicists.

I think it would be fascinating to do a study on how these popular philosophies compare with one another, and also how they compare with scientism.

I would also be interested to compare scientisms with common forms of fundamentalism.*

(*Note: In my view, fundamentalism is not “religion gone too far” but religion misunderstood non-religiously. When ideas, symbols, practices, institutions are removed from the context of a philosophy in which such entities can make coherent and salvific sense, and instead comprehended in a degraded objective manner that requires fanaticism to counteract the sheer non-credibility of it all, fundamentalism results.)

My hypothesis is that scientism misunderstands and distorts science in the same way fundamentalisms misunderstand and distort religions.

And then I would suggest (but never conduct) a study comparing religious interpretations and misinterpretations (fundamentalisms at one extreme and esoteric mysticisms at the other) with scientific philosophical interpretations and misinterpretations (scientism on one extreme and facile skepticism on the other).

Leave a Reply