The Science Delusion: Asking the Big Questions in a Culture of Easy Answers Hardcover – May 28, 2013

I looked forward to reading White's comments about those who think my mind is no more than physics and wet chemistry. Strangely, professors deny the existence of mind while claiming to teach people to think. If thinking is no more than chemical reactions governed by the laws of physics, then what is there to teach?

I was disappointed to find that White's book exhibits the same patterns of thought and habits of rhetoric for which he berates the proponents of scientism.

On page 38, White describes capitalism as the most massively destructive social system in human history. Really? Did he miss National Socialism, Communism, Bolshevism, Italian Fascism, and Stalinism? Has he never heard of the hundred million people slain in the 20th century by practitioners of those social systems?

White is, of course, correct that there are many delusions about "science." Unfortunately, he is not very effective in describing them. His gratuitous comments in favor of socialism and against Ayn Rand are sprinkled lightly through the book, but they detract from whatever his point might be about science.

White laments that the rich and powerful are bereft of moral imagination, whatever that might be. Does he think that the poor and weak have greater moral imagination? If so, he presents no evidence, not even anecdotes, to demonstrate his point.

Of course, the morality of men, both rich and poor, was well explained more than 3,000 years ago. I have heard no better explanation. Neither the weak nor the powerful, neither the rich nor the poor, seem to have been favored with greater moral imaginations.

White's tirade against Lawrence Krauss is not without justification. But he falls over his own pen by throwing in charges against what he calls evangelical Christians and fundamentalists. He is trapped by his own imprecision of language in which he uses multiple similar words with dissimilar meanings in differing contexts to suit the flow of his polemic. By failing to define just who he is talking about, he ends up in a stewpot of bubbling emotions that fail to edify his readers.

I thought perhaps I was failing to understand the book. White himself seems to think that his book is unclear. He includes a 21-page Afterword and a six-page interview in which he tries to explain what it is that his book is supposed to explain.

There are far better books on the ideology of scientism. Off the top of my head I can recommend "The Magician's Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society"
along with its related website and video.

Perhaps the most humorous, even laughing out loud funny, book is David Berlinski's "The Devil's Delusion". Berlinksi is wonderfully snarky in dismantling the words of scientists claiming to know it all. And his thinking is satisfyingly deep. At one point he asks what it is that makes the electrons continue to follow the laws.

Also there are far better critiques of Lawrence Krauss's mental confusion and faulty thinking than is presented by White. In particular William Lane Craig has dismantled Krauss in several podcasts that are easily found.

To believe that scientific thinking and reason lead inevitably to right conclusions is like believing that competitive sports inevitably build character. Both science and sport require a moral commitment to the end result before the discipline of exercise can move one toward that result.

This modern faith in science is puzzling given the fact that science has nothing at all to say about the things that are most important to human existence and flourishing: hope, loyalty, friendship, love, and honesty are just a few things valued by humans that cannot be studied by the techniques of science because none of them have material existence.

I had hoped that White’s discussion about neuroscience and the nature of man's mind, would be better than the first half of the book. Alas, it was not so. But White did trigger various thoughts about others who have better described the pretensions and delusions of "scientists" who claim to know the nature of man's mind.

For example, we might recast King David's question, as "What is man that he is mindful of himself?"

Surely we don't think that any machine programmed by us is going to start asking itself where did I come from, why am I here, where am I going?.

Naturally these thoughts led me to recall David Stove's "Darwinian Fairytales." Stove argues effectively that whatever might be explained by Darwinian evolution, it certainly is not us.

Then there are Chesterton's "The Everlasting Man" and "Orthodoxy."

Chesterton thinks there a chasm between man and the animals. Today we imagine that primitive man walked around clubbing women and dragging them into his cave. The reality was quite different. We know for a fact that when primitive man went into his cave he made art. The question for science is why is it that primitive man could draw pictures of monkeys but the smartest monkey today cannot draw pictures of men.

Chesterton notes that no matter how deep one digs into an ant hill (populated by ants living together in what some will tell you is a society, even a civilization), you will never find a chamber containing statues honoring the queens of old. Man is unlike any other animal to an extraordinary degree. Attempts to say that we are no more than smart apes are simply ludicrous.

Sometimes understanding comes when we become as little children. Scientists often remind me of a Peanuts cartoon in which Lucy Van Pelt declares to Linus that space is too big. While she herself is incapable of crafting a universe suitable for mankind, she is absolutely certain that God did it wrong.

The strange social mentality suddenly visible in much of the New Atheism debate, but prevalent throughout a culture of scientism, is exposed at length is this robust 'dawn raid of the Romantics' against the Fankenstein hulks of reductionist omniscience. It is not hard to straddle both sides of this debate: after all, the compelling interest of much science is not really in question. But the fact remains that the overspecialized study of science has produced a strange culture of derisive commentary on religion, the arts, and philosophy. It is hard to see how the hauty disdain for philosophy could ever have gained such a foothold, and the interest of Shrodinger in Schopenhauer points to an era now long lost on the current generation of science-mongers.
The author aptly points to the Romantic period at the climax and passing of the height of the Enlightenment: the dilemma of much scientific Reason was becoming obvious to a generation trying to both absorb and pass on from the failures of overly physicalized science. The figure of Kant in solemn grandeur at the key transition stands in evidence of the 'critique' that got underway. And many of the insights were soon lost, and in fact the onset of positivism was just beginning. And we can see this reflected in the confusions over evolutionary theory which was soon the darwinized cult of the gene and natural selection that so graphically illustrates the 'theory delusion' in action.

It's ok. Makes some interesting points and the "romantic" perspective is unique and keeps the atheist attackers at bay. It would have been better if he had taken time to flush out his argument and go a little deeper.

Mr White is feisty and pulls no punches--his critique is not from the standpoint of Creationism or "Intelligent Design" but from a Romantic/Marxist perspective and his points are well taken regarding the lapses of thought, and in fact, shoddy thinking that is promulgated by some leading spokesman in the scientific community and that are embedded in a reductive-materialist point of view.

He is particularly critical of neuroscientists who believe that brain scans and mapping of neurons will illuminate the irreducible mystery of consciousness itself, and here is where Mr White shines--I highly recommend this treatise to anyone with the slightest interest in the philosophy of science and the culture of scientism, the prevailing priesthood of our day.

Not sure I read the same book as other reviewers, but I thought White was erudite, very funny and overall a good read. He does take apart some of of the more god-like scientists whose atheism seems to over-ride their ability to actually practice science as a discipline. These scientists seem as open minded as a sealed can unless you believe as they do...hmmm...sounds historically familiar. It must be quite the Ego trip to go through life being absolutely convinced that everything you believe and say is the only "right" possible and everyone else is ignorant of the "real truth". I hope readers realize that the group portrayed as ignorant by the current orthodoxy are not right wing fundamentalist creationists Christians but rather a large number moderate, tolerant and open minded members of the scientific community who are actually practicing science.