Science Unlimited?: The Challenges of Scientism

All too often in contemporary discourse, we hear about science overstepping its proper limits-about its brazenness, arrogance, and intellectual imperialism. The problem, critics say, is scientism: the privileging of science over all other ways of knowing. Science, they warn, cannot do or explain everything, no matter what some enthusiasts believe. In *Science Unlimited?*, noted philosophers of science Maarten Boudry and Massimo Pigliucci gather a diverse group of scientists, science communicators, and philosophers of science to explore the limits of science and this alleged threat of scientism. In this wide-ranging collection, contributors ask whether the term *scientism* in fact (or in belief) captures an interesting and important intellectual stance, and whether it is something that should alarm us. Is scientism a well-developed position about the superiority of science over all other modes of human inquiry? Or is it more a form of excessive confidence, an uncritical attitude of glowing admiration? What, if any, are its dangers? Are fears that science will marginalize the humanities and eradicate the human subject-that it will explain away emotion, free will, consciousness, and the mystery of existence-justified? Does science need to be reined in before it drives out all other disciplines and ways of knowing? Both rigorous and balanced, *Science Unlimited?* interrogates our use of a term that is now all but ubiquitous in a wide variety of contexts and debates. Bringing together scientists and philosophers, both friends and foes of scientism, it is a conversation long overdue.