"Values, life meanings, purposes, and qualities slip through science like a sea slips through the nets of fishermen. Yet man swims in this sea, so he cannot exclude it from his purview. This is what was meant when we noted earlier that a scientific world view is in principle impossible. Taken in its entirety, the world is not as science says it is; it is as science, philosophy, religion, the arts, and everyday speech say it is. Not science but the sum of man's symbol systems, of which science is but one, is the measure of things.
With science itself, there can be no quarrel. Scientism is another matter. Whereas science is positive, contenting itself with reporting what it discovers, scientism is negative. It goes beyond the actual findings of science to deny that other approaches to knowledge are valid and other truths true. In doing so it deserts science in favor of metaphysics-- bad metaphysics as it happens, for as contention that there are no truths save those of science is not itself a scientific truth, in affirming it scientism contradicts itself. It also carries marks of a religion-- a secular religion, resulting from overextrapolation from science, that has seldom numbered great scientists among its votaries."
Huston Smith, Forgotten Truth: The Common Vision of the World's Religions
