Criticisms of anti-scientific viewpoints
Criticisms of anti-scientific viewpoints are many and varied. Most seem to focus on the confusion of conceptual metaphors arising in the process of learning science and negotiating acceptance of scientific truth in the larger culture. In Western education, for instance, students are encouraged to make systematic neutrally-based thinking central, as not taking sides in regard to cultural / ethical / religious traditions and conflicts between them. A common result is that other viewpoints tend to be ranked in comparison to the sciences, particularly the most experimentally-based sciences such as physics or chemistry: they are taken to be the model of neutral systematic reasoning. Mathematics and physics thus tend to be valued more highly as sources of insights into reality, than, say, music or religion. But many societies see those as sources of truth too, and have been skeptical of claims based on mathematics or the sciences — particularly since this mode of thought has been understood to be characteristic of the West and therefore to have something in common with such things as imperialism and colonialism. What is necessarily in common is rarely specified. Recent philosophic manifestos by literary deconstructionists, radical feminists, and opponents of science generally (e.g., religious, cultural,