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69-524: (Redirected from Integral Humanism ) Integral Humanism may refer to: Integral humanism (Maritain) , an aspect of Catholic social teaching originally advocated by French philosopher Jacques Maritain as "Integral Christian Humanism" Integral humanism (India) , the political philosophy practised by the Bharatiya Janata Party and the former Bharatiya Jana Sangh of India Topics referred to by

138-439: A Dominican friar named Humbert Clérissac, introduced her to the writings of Thomas Aquinas. She read them with enthusiasm and, in turn, exhorted her husband to examine the saint's writings. In Thomas, Maritain found a number of insights and ideas that he had believed all along. He wrote: Thenceforth, in affirming to myself, without chicanery or diminution, the authentic value of the reality of our human instruments of knowledge, I

207-968: A Natural Phenomenon by saying that accusations of scientism "[are] an all-purpose, wild-card smear ... When someone puts forward a scientific theory that [religious critics] really don't like, they just try to discredit it as 'scientism'. But when it comes to facts , and explanations of facts, science is the only game in town". Non-religious scholars have also associated New Atheist thought with scientism and/or with positivism. Atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel argued that philosopher Sam Harris conflated all empirical knowledge with scientific knowledge. Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton argued that Christopher Hitchens possessed an "old-fashioned scientistic notion of what counts as evidence" that reduces knowledge to what can and cannot be proven by scientific procedure. Agnostic philosopher Anthony Kenny has also criticized New Atheist philosopher Alexander Rosenberg 's The Atheist's Guide to Reality for resurrecting

276-406: 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 Mary Midgley , the later Hilary Putnam , and Tzvetan Todorov to describe (for example) the dogmatic endorsement of scientific methods and the reduction of all knowledge to only that which

345-469: A critique of the philosophical aspects of modern science, through analogy to an account of the existence and nature of God as it is known philosophically and through mystical experience. Maritain was a strong defender of a natural law ethics. He viewed ethical norms as being rooted in human nature . For Maritain, the natural law is known primarily, not through philosophical argument and demonstration, but rather through "Connaturality". Connatural knowledge

414-419: A democracy scientific institutions, research programmes, and suggestions must therefore be subjected to public control, there must be a separation of state and science just as there is a separation between state and religious institutions, and science should be taught as one view among many and not as the one and only road to truth and reality. Physicist and philosopher Mario Bunge used the term scientism with

483-765: A distinct and narrowly self-defined tradition. In his essay Against Method he depicted the process of contemporary scientific education as a mild form of indoctrination , intended for "making the history of science duller, simpler, more uniform, more 'objective' and more easily accessible to treatment by strict and unchanging rules". [S]cience can stand on its own feet and does not need any help from rationalists , secular humanists , Marxists and similar religious movements; and ... non-scientific cultures, procedures and assumptions can also stand on their own feet and should be allowed to do so ... Science must be protected from ideologies; and societies, especially democratic societies, must be protected from science ... In

552-402: A favorable rather than pejorative sense in numerous books published during several decades, and in articles with titles such as "In defense of realism and scientism" and "In defense of scientism". Bunge said that scientism should not be equated with inappropriate reductionism, and he dismissed critics of science such as Hayek and Habermas as dogmatists and obscurantists : To innovate in

621-606: A kind of university in exile that was, at the same time, the centre of Gaullist resistance in the United States". After the war, in a papal audience on 16 July 1946, he tried unsuccessfully to have Pope Pius XII officially denounce antisemitism . Many of his American papers are held by the University of Notre Dame , which established The Jacques Maritain Center in 1957. The Cercle d'Etudes Jacques & Raïssa Maritain

690-422: A lot about theology, he was a philosopher, and he knew something about biology, but he knew next to nothing about politics and economics." Catholic philosopher Alice von Hildebrand referred to Maritain as "treasonous" and criticized his negative views on Engelbert Dollfuss , whom Maritain had spoken of positively in the past, but later became critical of. A cause for beatification of him and his wife Raïssa

759-656: A philosophy. During the Second World War, Jacques Maritain protested the policies of the Vichy government while teaching at the Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies in Canada. "Moving to New York, Maritain became deeply involved in rescue activities, seeking to bring persecuted and threatened academics, many of them Jews, to America. He was instrumental in founding the École Libre des Hautes Études ,

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828-684: A pluralistic age. In this account he develops a theory of cooperation, to show how people of different intellectual positions can nevertheless cooperate to achieve common practical aims. Maritain's political theory was extremely influential and was a primary source behind the Christian Democratic movement . Along with Albert Einstein , Maritain was one of the sponsors of the Peoples' World Convention (PWC), also known as Peoples' World Constituent Assembly (PWCA), which took place in 1950–51 at Palais Electoral, Geneva , Switzerland. Citing

897-420: A ponderous writer who managed to amalgamate Hegel, Marx, and Freud, and decreed that "science is the ideology of late capitalism ." In 2018, philosophers Maarten Boudry and Massimo Pigliucci co-edited a book titled Science Unlimited? The Challenges of Scientism in which a number of chapters by philosophers and scientists defended scientism. In his chapter "Two Cheers for Scientism", Taner Edis wrote: It

966-462: A science against those who would degrade it, and promoted philosophy as the "queen of sciences". In 1910, Jacques Maritain completed his first contribution to modern philosophy, a 28-page article titled, "Reason and Modern Science" published in Revue de Philosophie (June issue). In it, he warned that science was becoming a divinity, its methodology usurping the role of reason and philosophy, supplanting

1035-609: A self-refuting epistemology of logical positivism and reducing all knowledge of the universe to the discipline of physics . Michael Shermer , founder of The Skeptics Society , discussed resemblances between scientism and traditional religions, indicating the cult of personality that develops for some scientists. He defined scientism as a worldview that encompasses natural explanations, eschews supernatural and paranormal speculations, and embraces empiricism and reason . The Iranian scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr has stated that in

1104-500: A small list of French liberal thinkers. Major criticisms of Maritain have included: Catholic philosopher and historian Thomas Molnar , who praised Maritain as "a man of charity", also wrote that Maritain's work contained "baffling paradoxes". Molnar said that while Maritain's philosophy was "Orthodox and Thomist", he nonetheless unfortunately had "occasional excursions into strange semi-spiritual lands." Catholic political theorist Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn wrote that "Maritain knew

1173-426: A spatio-temporally neutral model for processes of social development in general. Furthermore, it breaks the internal connections between modernity and the historical context of Western rationalism , so that processes of modernization ... [are] no longer burdened with the idea of a completion of modernity, that is to say, of a goal state after which " postmodern " developments would have to set in. ... Indeed it

1242-596: A theological context. While a Christian could engage in speculative thought about nature or metaphysics in a purely rational manner and develop an adequate philosophy of nature of metaphysics, this is not possible with ethics. Moral philosophy must address the actual state of the human person, and this is a person in a state of grace. Thus, "moral philosophy adequately considered" must take into account properly theological truths. It would be impossible, for instance, to develop an adequate moral philosophy without giving consideration to proper theological facts such as original sin and

1311-426: A view are entitled to have two cheers for an ambitious conception of science; and if that is scientism, so be it. Thomas M. Lessl argued that religious themes persist in what he terms scientism, the public rhetoric of science. There are two methods of describing this idea of scientism: the epistemological method (the assumption that the scientific method trumps other ways of knowing) and the ontological method (that

1380-488: Is a kind of knowledge by acquaintance. We know the natural law through our direct acquaintance with it in our human experience. Of central importance, is Maritain's argument that natural rights are rooted in the natural law. This was key to his involvement in the drafting of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights . Another important aspect of his ethics was his insistence upon the need for moral philosophy to be conducted in

1449-460: Is an association founded by the philosopher himself in 1962 in Kolbsheim (near Strasbourg , France), where the couple is also buried. The purpose of these centres is to encourage study and research of Maritain's thoughts and expand upon them. It is also absorbed in translating and editing his writings. Maritain's philosophy is based on the view that metaphysics is prior to epistemology . Being

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1518-430: Is defensible to claim that scientific, philosophical, and humanistic forms of knowledge are continuous, and that a broadly naturalistic description of our world centered on natural science is correct ... At the very least, such views are legitimate —they may be mistaken, but not because of an elementary error, a confusion of science with ideology, or an offhand dismissal of the humanities. Those of us who argue for such

1587-475: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Integral humanism (Maritain) Defunct Defunct Jacques Maritain ( French: [ʒak maʁitɛ̃] ; 18 November 1882 – 28 April 1973) was a French Catholic philosopher. Raised as a Protestant , he was agnostic before converting to Catholicism in 1906. An author of more than 60 books, he helped to revive Thomas Aquinas for modern times, and

1656-522: Is first apprehended implicitly in sense experience , and is known in two ways. First, being is known reflexively by abstraction from sense experience. One experiences a particular being, e.g. a cup, a dog, etc. and through reflection ("bending back") on the judgement, e.g. "this is a dog", one recognizes that the object in question is an existent. Second, in light of attaining being reflexively through apprehension of sense experience, one may arrive at what Maritain calls "an Intuition of Being". For Maritain this

1725-401: Is measured or confirmatory . More generally, scientism is often interpreted as science applied "in excess". This use of the term scientism has two senses: It is also sometimes used to describe the universal applicability of the scientific method, and the opinion that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or the most valuable part of human learning, sometimes to

1794-516: Is not "critical" in Kant's sense, which held that one could only know anything after undertaking a thorough critique of one's cognitive abilities. Rather, it is critical in the sense that it is not a naive or non-philosophical realism, but one that is defended by way of reason. Against Kant's critical project, Maritain argues that epistemology is reflexive; you can only defend a theory of knowledge in light of knowledge you have already attained. Consequently,

1863-638: Is philosophically inconsistent or even self-refuting , as the truth of the two statements "no statements are true unless they can be proven scientifically (or logically )" and "no statements are true unless they can be shown empirically to be true" cannot themselves be proven scientifically, logically, or empirically. Philosopher Paul Feyerabend , who was an enthusiastic proponent of scientism during his youth, later came to characterize science as "an essentially anarchic enterprise" and argued emphatically that science merits no exclusive monopoly of "dealing in knowledge" and that scientists have never operated within

1932-424: Is precisely modernization research that has contributed to the currency of the expression "postmodern" even among social scientists. Habermas is critical of pure instrumental rationality , arguing that the "Social Life–World" of subjective experiencing is better suited to literary expression, whereas the sciences deal with "intersubjectively accessible experiences" that can be generalized in a formal language , while

2001-470: Is self-refuting since it requires its adherents to assent to beliefs that violate its own stated requirements for knowledge. Christian philosopher Peter Williams argued in 2013 that it is only by conflating science with scientism that New Atheists feel qualified to "pontificate on metaphysical issues". Daniel Dennett responded to religious criticism of his 2006 book Breaking the Spell: Religion as

2070-439: Is so both in principle and in the various moments of knowledge?" In contrast, idealism inevitably ends up in contradiction, since it does not recognize the universal scope of the first principles of identity, contradiction, and finality. These become merely laws of thought or language, but not of being, which opens the way to contradictions being instantiated in reality. Maritain's metaphysics ascends from this account of being to

2139-517: Is the point of departure for metaphysics; without the intuition of being one cannot be a metaphysician at all. The intuition of being involves rising to the apprehension of ens secundum quod est ens (being insofar as it is a being). In Existence and the Existent he explains: "It is being, attained or perceived at the summit of an abstractive intellection, of an eidetic or intensive visualization which owes its purity and power of illumination only to

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2208-459: Is widely mistaken for the method of science". In 2003, Mikael Stenmark proposed the expression scientific expansionism as a synonym of scientism. In the Encyclopedia of Science and Religion , he wrote that, while the doctrines that are described as scientism have many possible forms and varying degrees of ambition, they share the idea that the boundaries of science (that is, typically

2277-592: The Christian philosophy , both because the church is never weary of putting it forward as the only true philosophy and because it harmonizes perfectly with the truths of faith, nevertheless it is proposed here for the reader's acceptance not because it is Christian, but because it is demonstrably true. This agreement between a philosophic system founded by a pagan and the dogmas of revelation is no doubt an external sign, an extra-philosophic guarantee of its truth; but from its own rational evidence, it derives its authority as

2346-938: The Collège Stanislas . He later moved to the Institut Catholique de Paris . For the 1916–1917 academic year, he taught at the Petit Séminaire de Versailles . In 1930 Maritain and Étienne Gilson received honorary doctorates in philosophy from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum . In 1933, he gave his first lectures in North America in Toronto at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies . He also taught at Columbia University ; at

2415-519: The Order of Saint Benedict . In a 1938 interview published by the Commonweal magazine, they asked if he was a freemason. Maritain replied: That question offends me, for I should have a horror of belonging to Freemasonry. So much the worse for well-intentioned people whose anxiety and need for explanations would have been satisfied by believing me to be one. Jacques and Raïssa Maritain are buried in

2484-700: The Western world , many will accept the ideology of modern science, not as "simple ordinary science", but as a replacement for religion. Gregory R. Peterson wrote that "for many theologians and philosophers, scientism is among the greatest of intellectual sins". Genetic biologist Austin L. Hughes wrote in the conservative journal The New Atlantis that scientism has much in common with superstition: "the stubborn insistence that something ... has powers which no evidence supports." Repeating common criticisms of logical positivism and verificationism , philosopher of religion Keith Ward has said that scientism

2553-432: The epistemological validity of feelings and experiences such as love, emotion, beauty and fulfillment. He predicted that "in coming years, the chief political dividing line will fall less and less among the traditional division between ' right ' and ' left ', but increasingly between the adherents of scientism, who advocate ' technological progress at any price', and their opponents, i.e., roughly speaking, those who regard

2622-919: The myth of progress . Intellectual historian T. J. Jackson Lears argued in 2013 that there has been a recent reemergence of "nineteenth-century positivist faith that a reified 'science' has discovered (or is about to discover) all the important truths about human life. Precise measurement and rigorous calculation, in this view, are the basis for finally settling enduring metaphysical and moral controversies." Lears specifically identified Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker 's work as falling in this category. Philosophers John N. Gray and Thomas Nagel have made similar criticisms against popular works by moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt , atheist author Sam Harris , and writer Malcolm Gladwell . There are various ways of classifying kinds of scientism. Some authors distinguish between strong and weak scientism, as follows: Both religious and non-religious scholars have applied

2691-433: The social sciences , and the humanities )". Francis Bacon has been viewed by some scholars as an early proponent of scientism, but this is a modern assertion as Bacon was a devout Anglican , writing in his Essays, "a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism , but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." With respect to the philosophy of science , the term scientism frequently implies

2760-500: The "disintegration of religious world views" that resulted in modern secular societies and capitalism . "Modernization" was introduced as a technical term only in the 1950s. It is the mark of a theoretical approach that takes up Weber's problem but elaborates it with the tools of social-scientific functionalism  ... The theory of modernization performs two abstractions on Weber's concept of "modernity". It dissociates "modernity" from its modern European origins and stylizes it into

2829-444: The "superstition of science" as the most contradictory of all superstitions , since this would be the "superstition that one should not be superstitious ". He wrote: "science had become a new magic and the man in the street believed in it the more the less he understood it". Reviewing the references to scientism in the works of contemporary scholars in 2003, Gregory R. Peterson detected two main general themes: The term scientism

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2898-717: The Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago ; at the University of Notre Dame , and at Princeton University . From 1945 to 1948, he was the French ambassador to the Holy See. Afterwards, Maritain returned to Princeton University. In 1952, he gave the inaugural A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts . Four years later, he achieved the "Elysian status" (as he put it) of a professor emeritus. Raïssa Maritain died in 1960. After her death, Jacques published her journal under

2967-571: The Integral humanism of Jacques Maritain's L'humanisme intégral , Pope Paul VI declared in Populorum progressio that the "ultimate goal is a full-bodied humanism". Senator John F. Kennedy (later President of the United States ), once quoted Maritain in a 1955 address to Assumption College . President Joe Biden has cited Maritain as immensely influential in his thinking. In an interview from 2016, Pope Francis praised Maritain among

3036-472: The Sorbonne, Jacques and Raïssa soon became disenchanted with scientism , which could not, in their view, address the larger existential issues of life. In 1901, in light of this disillusionment, they made a pact to commit suicide together if they could not discover some deeper meaning to life within a year. They were spared from following through on this because, at the urging of Charles Péguy , they attended

3105-594: The cemetery of Kolbsheim , a little French village in Alsace where he had spent many summers at the estate of his friends, Antoinette and Alexander Grunelius. The foundation of Maritain's thought is Aristotle, Aquinas, and the Thomistic commentators, especially John of St. Thomas . He is eclectic in his use of these sources. Maritain's philosophy is based on evidence accrued by the senses and acquired by an understanding of first principles. Maritain defended philosophy as

3174-442: The complete exclusion of other opinions, such as historical , philosophical, economic or cultural opinions. It has been defined as "the view that the characteristic inductive methods of the natural sciences are the only source of genuine factual knowledge and, in particular, that they alone can yield true knowledge about man and society". The term scientism is also used by historians, philosophers, and cultural critics to highlight

3243-468: The critical question is not the question of modern philosophy – how do we pass from what is perceived to what is? Rather, "Since the mind, from the very start, reveals itself as warranted in its certitude by things and measured by an esse [the Latin verb 'to be', Aquinas' preferred term for 'existence'], independent of itself, how are we to judge if, how, on what conditions, and to what extent it

3312-559: The democratic community organizations built by Saul Alinsky". Accordingly, in 1958 Maritain arranged for a series of meetings between Alinsky and Archbishop Montini in Milan. Before the meetings, Maritain had written to Alinsky: "the new cardinal was reading Saul’s books and would contact him soon". Maritain advocated what he called "Integral Humanism" (or "Integral Christian Humanism" ). He argued that secular forms of humanism were inevitably anti-human in that they refused to recognize

3381-656: The enhancement of life, in all its richness and variety, as being the supreme value". E. F. Schumacher , in his A Guide for the Perplexed (1977), criticized scientism as an impoverished world view confined solely to what can be counted, measured and weighed. "The architects of the modern worldview, notably Galileo and Descartes , assumed that those things that could be weighed, measured, and counted were more true than those that could not be quantified. If it couldn't be counted, in other words, it didn't count." In 1979, Karl Popper defined scientism as "the aping of what

3450-474: The fact that the intellect, one day, was stirred to its depths and trans-illuminated by the impact of the act of existing apprehended in things, and because it was quickened to the point of receiving this act, or hearkening to it, within itself, in the intelligible and super-intelligible integrity of the tone particular to it." (p. 20) In view of this priority given to metaphysics, Maritain advocates an epistemology he calls "Critical Realism". Maritain's epistemology

3519-549: The humanities. In 1917, a committee of French bishops commissioned Jacques to write a series of textbooks to be used in Catholic colleges and seminaries. He wrote and completed only one of these projects, titled Elements de Philosophie (Introduction of Philosophy) in 1920. It has been a standard text ever since in many Catholic seminaries. He wrote in his introduction: If the philosophy of Aristotle, as revived and enriched by Thomas Aquinas and his school, may rightly be called

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3588-741: The lectures of Henri Bergson at the Collège de France . Bergson's critique of scientism dissolved their intellectual despair and instilled in them "the sense of the absolute." Then, through the influence of Léon Bloy , they converted to the Catholic faith in 1906. In the fall of 1907 the Maritains moved to Heidelberg , where Jacques studied biology under Hans Driesch . Hans Driesch's theory of neo-vitalism attracted Jacques because of its affinity with Henri Bergson. During this time, Raïssa fell ill, and during her convalescence, their spiritual advisor,

3657-415: The literary arts "must generate an intersubjectivity of mutual understanding in each concrete case". Habermas quoted writer Aldous Huxley in support of this duality of literature and science: The world with which literature deals is the world in which human beings are born and live and finally die; the world in which they love and hate, in which they experience triumph and humiliation, hope and despair;

3726-541: The natural sciences) could and should be expanded so that something that has not been previously considered as a subject pertinent to science can now be understood as part of science (usually with science becoming the sole or the main arbiter regarding this area or dimension). According to Stenmark, the strongest form of scientism states that science does not have any boundaries and that all human problems and all aspects of human endeavor, with due time, will be dealt with and solved by science alone. This idea has also been termed

3795-473: The nature of education, liturgy and ecclesiology . Maritain was born in Paris, the son of Paul Maritain, who was a lawyer, and his wife Geneviève Favre, the daughter of philosopher and educator Julie Favre and statesman and lawyer Jules Favre . His niece was librarian and Resistance member Éveline Garnier , who he later made his principal legatee and introduced to her life partner Andrée Jacob . Maritain

3864-546: The political, or the economic development [elsewhere] ... did not enter upon that path of rationalization which is peculiar to the Occident ?" According to the German social theorist Jürgen Habermas , "For Weber, the intrinsic (that is, not merely contingent ) relationship between modernity and what he called 'Occidental rationalism' was still self-evident." Weber described a process of rationalisation, disenchantment and

3933-512: The possible dangers of lapses towards excessive reductionism with respect to all topics of human knowledge. For social theorists practising the tradition of Max Weber , such as Jürgen Habermas and Max Horkheimer , the concept of scientism relates significantly to the philosophy of positivism , but also to the cultural rationalization for modern Western civilization . Ernesto Sabato , physicist and essayist , wrote in his 1951 essay Hombres y engranajes ("Man and mechanism") of

4002-407: The rational mind represents the world and both operate in knowable ways). According to Lessl, the ontological method is an attempt to "resolve the conflict between rationalism and skepticism". Lessl also argued that without scientism, there would not be a scientific culture. In the introduction to his collected works on the sociology of religion , Max Weber asked why "the scientific, the artistic,

4071-431: The same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Integral humanism . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Integral_humanism&oldid=1048234642 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description

4140-557: The supernatural end of the human person in beatitude. Any moral philosophy that does not take into account these realities that are only known through faith would be fundamentally incomplete. Maritain corresponded with, and was a friend of the American radical community organizer Saul Alinsky and French Prime Minister Robert Schuman . In the study The Radical Vision of Saul Alinsky , author P. David Finks noted that "For years Jacques Maritain had spoken approvingly to Montini of

4209-449: The term scientism to individuals associated with New Atheism . Theologian John Haught argued that philosopher Daniel Dennett and other New Atheists subscribe to a belief system of scientific naturalism , which includes the dogma that "only nature, including humans and our creations, is real: that God does not exist; and that science alone can give us complete and reliable knowledge of reality." Haught argued that this belief system

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4278-633: The title "Raïssa's Journal." For several years Maritain was an honorary chairman of the Congress for Cultural Freedom , appearing as a keynote speaker at its 1960 conference in Berlin. From 1961, Maritain lived with the Little Brothers of Jesus in Toulouse, France. He had an influence on the order since its foundation in 1933 and became a Little Brother in 1970. Maritain was also an oblate for

4347-472: The whole person. Once the spiritual dimension of human nature is rejected, we no longer have an integral, but merely partial humanism, one which rejects a fundamental aspect of the human person. Accordingly, in Integral Humanism he explores the prospects for a new Christendom , rooted in his philosophical pluralism, in order to find ways Christianity could inform political discourse and policy in

4416-406: The young sciences it is necessary to adopt scientism. This is the methodological thesis that the best way of exploring reality is to adopt the scientific method, which may be boiled down to the rule "Check your guesses." Scientism has been explicitly opposed by dogmatists and obscurantists of all stripes, such as the neoliberal ideologist Friedrich von Hayek and the "critical theorist" Jürgen Habermas,

4485-539: Was already a Thomist without knowing it ... When several months later I came to the Summa Theologiae , I would construct no impediment to its luminous flood. From the Angelic Doctor (the honorary title of Aquinas), he was led to "The Philosopher", as Aquinas called Aristotle . Still later, to further his intellectual development, he read the neo-Thomists . Beginning in 1912, Maritain taught at

4554-476: Was being planned in 2011. Since then, there have been no advancements in the case. Scientism While the term was defined originally to mean "methods and attitudes typical of or attributed to natural scientists", some scholars, as well as political and religious leaders, have also adopted it as a pejorative term with the meaning "an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy ,

4623-559: Was influential in the development and drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . Pope Paul VI presented his "Message to Men of Thought and of Science" at the close of Vatican II to Maritain, his long-time friend and mentor. The same pope had seriously considered making him a lay cardinal , but Maritain rejected it. Maritain's interest and works spanned many aspects of philosophy, including aesthetics , political theory , philosophy of science , metaphysics ,

4692-405: Was popularized by F. A. Hayek , who defined it in 1942 as the "slavish imitation of the method and language of Science". Mathematician Alexander Grothendieck , in his 1971 essay "The New Universal Church", characterized scientism as a religion-like ideology that advocates scientific reductionism , scientific authoritarianism , political technocracy and technological salvation, while denying

4761-638: Was reared in a liberal Protestant milieu. He was sent to the Lycée Henri-IV . Later, he attended the Sorbonne , studying the natural sciences: chemistry, biology and physics. At the Sorbonne, he met Raïssa Oumançoff , a Russian Jewish émigré. They married in 1904, but they made a private vow to abstain from sex. A noted poet and mystic, she participated as his intellectual partner in his search for truth. Raïssa's sister, Vera Oumançoff, lived with Jacques and Raïssa for almost all their married life. At

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