Advocating Scientism, 1963-2013

By the nineteenth century, scientism began to emerge as a worldview that sought to explain all phenomena through the scientific method to the exclusion of all other ways of knowing. These sentiments intensified with Charles Darwin’s discovery of evolution by natural selection. At the turn of the twentieth century, scientific discoveries increased exponentially, giving rise to a strong confidence that science could indeed describe everything. By 1960, certain scientists grew so confident in science’s descriptive ability that they started to advocate scientism. From 1963 to 2013, they advocated an antireligious, positivistic worldview through their popular works and warned of concurrent global conundrums such as the existence of nuclear weapons, global warming, and overpopulation. They envisioned a human future in space as a possible means to avoid earthly problems.