Lesson 2 –
Does Science Explain Everything?

Shakespeare was right. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” And there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in all of science. Scientism is an exaggerated understanding of what science is and what it can do for us. Scientism blows science as such all out of proportion, and then aims to organize the world according to the exaggeration. We can say that scientism is the view that science alone explains all things, and science alone is the guide to life.

Course Reading

Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, tr. C. I. Litzinger, O.P. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1964), bk. 6. | St. Thomas Aquinas

Summa Theologiae Ia Q. 1, a. 1 | St. Thomas Aquinas

St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, tr. C. I. Litzinger, O.P. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1964), bk. 6.

“It is clear that, as the man who is wise in some handicraft is most sure in that art, so also that knowledge that is wisdom in an unqualified sense is the most certain of all modes of knowledge, inasmuch as it treats first principles of being—in themselves most known, although some of them, the immaterial, are less known in regard to us. But the most universal principles are also more known in regard to us, such as those belonging to being as being—the knowledge of which pertains to wisdom taken in this sense, as is evident in Metaphysics 4.”

Course Listening

Beyond Scientism: Philosophical Knowing | Fr. James Brent, O.P.

Supplemental Aquinas 101 videos from Season 1

This episode was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this project are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.