{"id":12008,"date":"2009-12-15T07:03:55","date_gmt":"2009-12-15T07:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/12\/15\/wisdom-from-putnam-on-science-and-scientism-2\/"},"modified":"2009-12-15T07:03:55","modified_gmt":"2009-12-15T07:03:55","slug":"wisdom-from-putnam-on-science-and-scientism-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/12\/15\/wisdom-from-putnam-on-science-and-scientism-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Wisdom from Putnam on Science and Scientism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"justify\" class=\"firstinpost\"><font face=\"Georgia\">Hilary Putnam, <strong>Mathematics, Matter and Method<\/strong> (Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. xiii (<em>emphasis<\/em> added):<\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">. . . I regard science as an important part of man&#39;s knowledge of reality; but there is a tradition with which I would not wish to be identified, which would say that scientific knowledge is all of man&#39;s knowledge. I do not believe that ethical statements are expressions of scientific knowledge; but neither do I agree that they are not knowledge at all. <em>The idea that the concepts of truth, falsity, explanation, and even understanding are all concepts which belong exclusively to science seems to me to be a perversion<\/em> . . .<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">Putnam does not need the MP&#39;s <em>imprimatur<\/em> and <em>nihil obstat<\/em>, but he gets them anyway, at least with respect to the above quotation. The italicized sentence is vitally important. In particular, you will be waiting a long time if you expect evolutionary biology to provide any clarification of the crucial concepts mentioned. See in particular, Putnam&#39;s &quot;Does Evolution Explain Representation?&quot; in <\/font><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hup.harvard.edu\/reviews\/PUTREN_R.html\"><font face=\"Georgia\">Renewing Philosophy <\/font><\/a><font face=\"Georgia\">(Harvard University Press, 1992).<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hilary Putnam, Mathematics, Matter and Method (Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. xiii (emphasis added): . . . I regard science as an important part of man&#39;s knowledge of reality; but there is a tradition with which I would not wish to be identified, which would say that scientific knowledge is all of man&#39;s knowledge. I &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/12\/15\/wisdom-from-putnam-on-science-and-scientism-2\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Wisdom from Putnam on Science and Scientism&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-metaphilosophy","category-scientism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}