Scientism

Time, for scientism, is what physics says it is — the temporal component of relativistic spacetime, with its relativity of simultaneity, its thermodynamic arrow, and its eventual coupling with cosmological expansion. There is no privileged 'now' beyond what physics warrants; the lived experience of temporal flow is itself to be explained by cognitive neuroscience rather than treated as an irreducible metaphysical datum. The framework's reading as substantival and uni-directional follows the standard physical picture. Carroll's 'From Eternity to Here' and the broader scientistic engagement with the philosophy of time make the commitment explicit. Humanistic accounts of historical time, narrative time, and lived duration are either translatable into scientific terms or dismissed as folk-theoretic.

Space, for scientism, is what physics says it is — at the most fundamental level, the spatial component of the relativistic spacetime described by general relativity, locally approximated by the familiar three-dimensional manifold of everyday experience. There is no space of meaning, no sacred geography, no spatial dimension that escapes physical description. The framework's reading as substantival and locally configured follows: space is real, governed by physical law, and exhaustively characterised (in principle) by the physical sciences. The phenomenological and existentialist accounts of lived space are either reducible to scientific descriptions of perception or are merely heuristic. Cosmological and astrophysical results are taken as the authoritative source of large-scale spatial claims.

Reality is, in principle, exhaustively described by the vocabulary of the natural sciences. Other discourses are translatable into scientific terms or epistemically subordinate.

The observer, for scientism, is a physical system — a brain in a body — whose cognitive capacities are exhaustively describable in the vocabulary of cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and physics. There is no privileged first-person standpoint that escapes third-person scientific description; phenomenology, hermeneutics, and theology are at best preliminary heuristics. The framework's reading as embodied and metaphysically non-agential follows: observers are real physical systems with real perceptual and cognitive capacities, but they participate in no domain that natural science cannot in principle describe. Pinker's 'How the Mind Works', Dennett's 'Consciousness Explained', and the broader naturalistic philosophy of mind articulate this commitment.

Energy, for scientism, is precisely what the physical sciences say it is — a real, conserved, quantitatively tractable feature of the natural world described by thermodynamics, mechanics, and quantum field theory. There is no residual 'vital force' or 'spiritual energy' that escapes scientific description; talk of such things either translates into legitimate scientific vocabulary or is to be dismissed as confused. The framework's reading as substantival and conserved fits the scientistic worldview exactly: energy is real, the conservation laws are universal, and the irreversibility expressed in the second law of thermodynamics is among the deepest features of reality. Atkins's 'The Second Law' and Rosenberg's 'The Atheist's Guide to Reality' articulate this commitment without hedging.

Information, for scientism, is what information theory says it is — Shannon entropy, the bit, the quantitative measure of distinguishability between physical states. The semantic and pragmatic dimensions that humanists and theologians invoke either reduce to information-theoretic and broader scientific descriptions of behaviour and brain state or are dismissed as folk-theoretic. The framework's reading as substantival follows: information is a real feature of the physical world, tractable through the apparatus of physics and computer science. Rosenberg's eliminativism about intentional content and the broader programme of naturalising semantics articulate the strong scientistic position; weaker scientistic positions accept information-theoretic primacy without committing to full eliminativism.