is a current epoch, social and cultural phenomenon of humankind.  It is a scientific worldview that encompasses natural-scientific explanations for all phenomena, shuns supernatural and paranormal theories, and embraces empiricism and reason as the twin pillars of a philosophy of life appropriate for an Age of Science.  Scientism is a overpass spanning the chasm between the "two traditional cultures" of science and the arts/humanities (neither encampment being able to communicate with the other).
     Scientism's influence can best be see through the late 20^th century literary genre for both lay readers and professionals that includes the works of such scientists as Carl Sagan,  E. O. Wilson,  Stephen Jay Gould,  Richard Dawkins,  , who sequenced the first complete diploid human genome, and a groundbreaking advance by creating the first self-replicating bacterial cell constructed entirely with synthetic DNA Craig Venter.  Scientism has generated a new literati and intelligentsia passionately concerned with the profound philosophical, ideological and theological implications of scientific discoveries.  Its modern incarnation began in the early 1960’s when Richard Fenyman’s  gave a series of lectures at Wash. U. that were published after his death in 1988 as the book The Meaning of It All.  It continued in  1970s with mathematician Jacob Bronowski's  The Ascent of Man, took off in the 1980s with Carl Sagan's  Cosmos  and finally hit pay dirt in the 1990s with Stephen W. Hawking's, A Brief History of Time, which spent a record 200 weeks on the Sunday Times of London's hardcover best-seller list and sold more than 10 million copies in 30-plus languages worldwide.
     Cosmology and evolutionary theory ask the ultimate origin questions that have traditionally been the province of religion and theology. Scientism is courageously volunteers natural science answers that supplant super-naturalistic ones and in the process is providing spiritual sustenance for those whose needs are not being met by these ancient cultural traditions. Humans are, at their foundation, a socially hierarchical primate species. We show deference to our leaders, pay respect to our elders and follow the dictates of our priests. This being the Age of Science, it is Scientism's priests who command our veneration. Because of language we are also storytelling, mythmaking primates, with Scientism as the foundation of our story and scientists as the premier mythmakers of our time.  
       However, science is a human endeavor thus Scientism and scientists are not infallible.  Scientists will sometimes just plain be wrong: witness, the Hubble telescope, withdrawl of the discovery of element 118, flip-flops on dietary fat and breast cancer recommendations, etc... [see  FRAUD* Bungles & Lies].  Interpretation of scientific evidence leaves room for errors. And scientists  are not saints... they can be swayed by careerism, money, and ego. Biases and prejudices can blind them. As human individuals they are no more or less flawed than anyone else from any walk of life.

       But, over time, Science rises above narrow interests and corrects itself more reliably than any other human institution or process, through such practices as...   
                            OPEN PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATION of METHODS and RESULTS.
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