ABSTRACT
There are old and new forms of scientism in philosophy, and in different degrees all are unsavoury. One old form of scientism is conveyed by Bacon's classification of learning: poesy and history are second-class subjects with limited scope; natural science is both incomparably more inclusive and, in principle, incomparably more valuable. Another old form of scientism is close to the surface in D’Alembert's and Diderot's Encyclopaedia: the reason one gives an exhaustive presentation of the sciences is to make people more knowledgeable and thereby more virtuous: religion is not the way to inculcate moral knowledge, and the really elevating arts are the ones that enable human beings to do more, not to feel more: they are the science-based mechanical arts, not the fine arts. The scientific empiricists in our century were not the immediate successors of Bacon and the Encyclopaedists, but they were propagandists for the success of science, and they renewed an interest in the unity of science. They did more, calling into question the worth of sectors of culture that were anti-scientific, and undertaking the scientific reform or reinterpretation of sectors that were merely prescientific. The scientific empiricists thus continued the old form of scientism.
