I am preparing a set of upcoming guest lectures for a course on Contemporary Western Religiosity / New Religious Movements at NTNU, Trondheim. The last two of these concern, once again, science and esotericism. Briefly reading up on the literature for the course, however, gave me occasion to revisit the concept(s) of “scientism”, which have also been discussed earlier on this blog.
Types of scientism, types of religious doubt?

Some notes on scientism
The word “scientism” gets tossed around a lot in critical public debates about science’s place in society. Usually it is used derogatorily to dismiss a trend in using science which the user of the word doesn’t like. Used in this way, it is a rhetorical label without much analytic content. But it may also be turned into a useful category for analyzing historical data.
