World Bank calls on countries to take urgent steps to protect 'natural capital'

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22. Scientism is a bit more than that.

The scientific method gave me my car, computer, insulated and heated home, all the trappings of Empire that make life worth living. I have a degree in computer science, and grew up in a household headed by a research biochemist and a physicist. I'm all for the scientific method.

Scientism, however, is a different kettle of carp, and not nearly as benign as your offhand comment would make it seem:

From Wiki:

Scientism is a belief in the universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints. The term frequently implies a critique of the more extreme expressions of logical positivism and has been used by social scientists such as Friedrich Hayek, philosophers of science such as Karl Popper, and philosophers such as Hilary Putnam to describe the dogmatic endorsement of scientific methodology and the reduction of all knowledge to only that which is measurable. (Emphasis added)

That is a fair description of the position I reject, because it limits (unfairly and unnecessarily, in my view) the topics that are deemed acceptable for investigation as to their "truth". You have picked up on the fact that I have a more elastic definition of truth than that. I'm a died-in-the-wool relativist, so the nature of "truth" is for me strongly context-sensitive. To you this represents "truthiness", while for me it's just another day at the office.