Scientism is a philosophical position that exalts the methods of the natural sciences above all other modes of human inquiry. Scientism embraces only empiricism and reason to explain phenomena of any dimension, whether physical, social, cultural, or psychological. Drawing from the general empiricism of the Enlightenment, scientism is most closely associated with the positivism of Auguste Comte (1798–1857), who held an extreme view of empiricism, insisting that true knowledge of the world arises only from perceptual experience. Comte criticized ungrounded speculations about phenomena that cannot be directly encountered by proper observation, analysis, and experiment. Such a doctrinaire stance associated with science leads to an abuse of reason that transforms a rational philosophy of science into an irrational dogma (Hayek 1952). It is this ideological dimension that is associated with the term scientism. In the early twenty-first century the term is used with pejorative intent to dismiss substantive arguments that appeal...