Materialism vs. Pseudoscience
[I will try to explain philosophical and scientific concepts in simple, albeit highly simplified, terms — without focusing on the endless nuances and subtleties of the matters discussed.]
I. Types of materialism
There is no single definition of materialism, as it all depends on which discipline’s perspective we look at it from.
The history of materialistic philosophies dates back to ancient times. Materialists had their own schools in Ancient Greece, India, and China. For instance, the Hellenes practiced naive (or spontaneous) materialism, which viewed a specific primary element as the foundation of existence. Depending on the school, this could be water, air, earth, fire, or an indefinite element — the apeiron. Their opponent, the idealist Plato, would have called the material part of existence the “world of things” and the non-material part the “world of ideas.”
One of the ancient materialist philosophers, Democritus, proposed the concept of an elementary particle. He called it the “atom,” which means “indivisible” in Ancient Greek. Similar views were shared by their Ancient Indian counterparts, the representatives of the Lokayata school. This idea is still used in modern science today, primarily in physics and chemistry.
Historically, materialism often considered matter itself to be the foundation of the universe. Today, there is a view among materialists that physical energy is primary.
According to ontological theory, materialistic monism recognizes matter as the foundation of everything, while viewing other, non-material components as secondary or derivative. Matter can be understood in various ways: as substance, physical fields, physical energies, the physical world as a whole, etc. It can even be equated with objective reality or existence itself. Materialism takes two forms: metaphysical and dialectical. While the former can be described as stable or stationary, the latter is dynamic and constantly changing. Its antipode is idealistic monism, where the non-material (for example, a transcendent deity, the world spirit, an information field, or a non-material principle) serves as the foundation of everything. However, in ontology, there are other intermediate options between idealism and materialism: neutral monism (matter and non-matter as manifestations of the world), dualism (their opposition), and pluralism (the consideration of many components of the world, not just these two), as well as ontological nihilism (the rejection of a foundation of existence, or recognizing Nothing as the foundation).
There is an ongoing debate regarding the relationship between physicalism and materialism. Physicalism asserts that the world is fundamentally physical. Some researchers view both concepts as synonymous, while others distinguish between them, because the “physical” is not identical to the “material” (see above regarding the primacy of energy).
Materialism concerning the question of randomness in existence and free will takes two forms. First, it can be deterministic, where a strict causal chain exists, and free will is typically a fiction. Second, there is an indeterministic form of materialism, where randomness plays a major role (such as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle), and free will usually exists within limited bounds.
Materialism is often confused with atheism and naturalism. Let’s start with atheism, which simply asserts the absence of belief in God — and nothing more. The issue here is purely theoretical. First, atheism can adhere to other ontological models. For instance, one idealistic variant of atheism posits information, which is clearly non-material, as the foundation of everything. Second, materialists can assume the existence of at least one God, meaning they can be theists in a broad sense, such as in mystical materialism. In practice, the situation is somewhat simpler: atheism is usually materialistic, while its idealistic forms are rather the exception. A similar situation applies to naturalism. Ontologically, it asserts that the supernatural does not exist, and that in both theoretical and practical endeavors, one must assume every effect has a natural cause. Although naturalism is prevalent in its materialistic form, it can also have a dualistic expression. Thus, the concept of “nature” can include an idealistic component, such as a collective of souls.
Within epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, materialism can be represented by both gnosticism (the world is inherently knowable) and agnosticism (existence is generally unknowable). The latter approach is more common among materialists.
In ethics, two directions of materialistic morality are distinguished. The first is vulgar materialism, which values only what brings material (practical, monetary, reputational) benefit. It resonates to a greater extent with nihilism (according to which nothing is substantiated and meaning does not exist) and hedonism (pleasure in life is paramount), and to a lesser extent with pragmatism (which prioritizes practical application over “empty” theory). The other direction is “high” materialism, which strives for spirituality but without religious or supernatural justifications. It involves, for example, cultivating high ideals of human coexistence, as seen in Marxism or secular humanism.
Theologians, idealist philosophers, and staunch agnostics critique materialistic philosophies sharply from various perspectives. However, from the standpoint of the philosophy of science, there exists a methodological principle known as methodological materialism. This concept refers to a method of scientific activity according to which the primacy of the material is recognized in practice (rather than in theory). According to the norms of academic science, this is the only way to work with objects of study. This principle overlaps with methodological naturalism, which in practice operates on the assumption that every effect has a natural (rather than supernatural) cause.
For the scientific community to recognize a given hypothesis as scientific (from the perspective of the sociology of science), a conscientious researcher must adhere to methodological materialism in practice. This is one of the prerequisites for publishing their results in reputable (peer-reviewed) scientific publications. It is worth noting that theoretically, scientists have the right to adhere to any ontological model or be agnostics.
II. Defining pseudoscience
What does ignoring scientific methods in general, and methodological materialism in particular, lead to? It is worth recalling Lomonosov’s ironic remark: “It is easy to be a philosopher by memorizing three words: ‘God created it so’ — and offering them as an answer instead of all causes.” Or take a more modern example of scientific humor — the Intelligent Falling theory, according to which the law of gravity does not exist, and all things fall by the will of God. Rejecting one or more scientific methods leads to the emergence of pseudoscientific ideas.
Pseudoscience is a theoretical and practical activity that resembles science in form but is not science in essence. Pseudoscientists (or, in scientific jargon, cranks) use scientific-sounding terms and measuring equipment or laboratory tests either incorrectly or in a way that their effectiveness is unproven. Pseudoscientists can be broadly divided into three types:
— Non-specialists (artists, politicians, journalists, entrepreneurs, etc.) who lack competence in any scientific field.
— Specialists in one field (at least officially) who engage in another area where they lack the appropriate knowledge and skills.
— Scientists who violate methodological principles or “prove” an already debunked hypothesis.
Pseudoscientists oppose the current scientific paradigm (the modern scientific worldview). However, the latter is not dogma, as it contains a number of simplifications and assumptions, which is officially acknowledged by the scientific community. Science cranks also reject several principles of the philosophy of science. It should be noted that these principles are not universal; they are applied carefully and contextually. Key principles worth mentioning include:
— Occam’s razor (entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity, and the simpler explanation is preferred).
— Popper’s criterion (a theory is scientific only if it can be proven false — at least theoretically).
— The Sagan standard (extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence).
— Lindeman and Aarnio’s ontological categories (the physical, biological, and psychological levels of existence have unique characteristics that must not overlap or be conflated). For example, inanimate objects do not possess a psyche.
— Hitchens’s razor (what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence).
— Beyond a reasonable doubt (a claim is considered proven only when there is no rational basis for doubt based on evidence).
To be completely intellectually honest, both the scientific paradigm and the principles of the philosophy of science face theoretical and practical challenges, even though they remain functional within certain limits. Apparent problems within pseudoscience arise when its proponents ignore scientific methodology. Some of its key principles include:
— Methodological naturalism (mentioned above).
— Methodological reductionism (in practice, systems or processes are reduced to the functioning of their component parts). For example, the mental activity of the brain is viewed purely as the operation of the nervous system.
— Fallibilism (there is no ultimate truth in science, only the best and partially proven explanation available at the current time).
— Double-blind or triple-blind methods (the experimenters, subjects, and other participants in a scientific study do not know which sample or treatment is being administered).
— Randomization (tubes or samples are labeled using a random method, such as throwing a die or using a computer program). This overlaps with the previous point.
Get Andriy Tereсhenja’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
— Control groups. For example, a placebo is used when testing the efficacy of a drug or medical procedure.
— The correspondence principle (a new theory does not completely reject the old one, but rather incorporates it as a limiting case).
— The FFMD standard (fraud, flaw, misconception, delusion) according to professor of psychiatry Jonathan Smith.
— Replicability of an experiment (the foundation of practical science as such), which means it can be repeatedly reproduced by other scientists with the same result under clearly defined conditions.
In addition, methodological materialism is also not adhered to.
Incidentally, it is necessary to point out numerous errors in the understanding of a discipline such as logic. In particular, the rule of abduction — the adoption of plausible explanatory hypotheses — is flagrantly violated. According to it, naturalistic explanations are considered first rather than mystical or supernatural ones, or more plausible explanations within the framework of socio-economic laws rather than conspiracy theories.
As a result, we get complete unprovenness, as well as the unverifiability and unreplicability of pseudoscientific claims, along with a lack of functional practical applications. Unfortunately, pseudoscience is no less popular, and sometimes even more so, than official science. There are two reasons for this. First, it is the difficulty for the general public to understand scientific methodology, logic, and cognitive science (the multidisciplinary study of mind and intelligence). Second, science cranks have extensive ties to religion, commerce, and politics.
III. Antimaterialism and pseudoscience
Having superficially outlined the opponents — materialism and pseudoscience — we can now proceed to examine some specific examples of their confrontation. If desired, you can explore parodies of science in greater detail. However, it must be noted that science cranks can also exist within the framework of materialistic philosophies (Lysenkoism in biology, Marr’s Marxist-Leninist “New Theory of Language,” or Oparin’s theory of the abiogenesis of life in its Soviet dogmatic form).
The Ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras is credited with the thesis that numbers lie at the foundation of existence. As a consequence, a non-materialistic basis is formed for numerology — the belief in a supernatural connection between numbers and a person’s character or future. There is a practice known as isopsephy — divination by numbers (for example, when a name is converted into numbers). Interestingly, the famous “number of the beast” from the Bible was also spawned by this practice.
Derivatives of numerology include astrology and palmistry, which can also have numerical expressions. Astrological forecasts are “based” on the relationship between the positions of celestial bodies and a person’s fate, while palmistry, as is well known, deals with the lines on one’s palms.
Everyone is familiar with the unsuccessful experiments of alchemists attempting to produce gold. However, this is all so-called external alchemy. In contrast to it, there exists an internal form. Thus, alchemists asserted that the non-material components of a human being (the soul, the spirit) possess physicochemical properties, and that the psyche can be interacted with through spells, rituals, or magic. Consequently, alchemy opposes not only chemistry but also the disciplines that study the psyche and the brain. Nevertheless, it was the practical experiments of many alchemists that inadvertently laid the foundations of modern chemistry.
Since the dawn of the Early Modern period, there has been an “alternative” medicine known as homeopathy. The feature of its methodology is the extreme dilution of a substance that causes the same symptoms as the disease itself. In reality, the active substance is simply absent in most homeopathic remedies. Homeopathy is based on the debunked idea of “water memory.” Proponents of this concept are convinced that water can retain information about the substances it has interacted with.
Pseudoscientific non-material concepts were widespread both in the recent past and today. A brief description of them is provided below.
Parapsychology is a pseudoscientific analogue of psychology. Parapsychologists study the supernatural abilities of living beings (telepathy, extrasensory perception, etc.), as well as near-death experiences. Although they attempt to use scientific methodology, they have failed to provide any substantial evidence for over a century. A similar situation applies to the study of the paranormal in general (specifically, ghosts).
Peter Gariaev is the founder of the so-called wave genetics. According to his views, the information in DNA is contained in the form of electromagnetic vibrations and waves. A consequence of his ideas is the claim that DNA can allegedly perceive human emotions, and that cells can transmit information over distances. His views overlap with another pseudoscientific concept — telegony. According to it, a female’s (including a woman’s) first sexual partner influences all of her subsequent offspring, even if they are conceived by another male. In Gariaev’s work, this mechanism is explained by the action of a non-material medium — an information field.
The concept of torsion fields was developed by Anatoly Akimov and Gennady Shipov. In their understanding, there exist non-material information carriers that determine the behavior of all elementary particles.
Science cannot critique the ontological foundations of religion, such as the existence of God or the afterlife. Scientific methodology is designed for natural processes. This does not automatically mean that the supernatural exists; it is simply that it is effectively unproven by anything (at least as of today). However, when religion interferes in the study of the natural world, it typically takes the form of pseudoscience.
Biological evolution without a supernatural component is scientifically grounded. Some Christian communities oppose it with the ostensibly scientific concept of “creation science” and its variant, “Intelligent Design.” They fully (Young Earth creationism) or almost fully (Old Earth creationism) reject biological evolution, explaining the origin and development of living things exclusively through the activity of a supernatural Creator, while relying on the denial of arguments from genetics, paleontology, comparative anatomy, and other fields. Young Earth creationism additionally opposes the conclusions of astronomy and geology regarding the age of the Earth and the Universe. Baraminology is also linked to creationism, according to which there are baramins — “created kinds” in accordance with the biblical narrative of the creation of the world. The concept of a “biological species” in the scientific sense is either rejected or downplayed here. Dogmatic archaeology rejects the data of modern archaeology, basing itself purely on the religious authority of the Bible.
Jehovah’s Witnesses attempt to establish a medical basis for their ban on blood transfusions because, according to their interpretation, blood contains the “soul” (or the “spirit of life”).
In Islam, some theologians are convinced that modern scientific discoveries are described in the Quran. This movement is called “Bucailleism,” named after its founder, the French physician Maurice Bucaille. There are organizations (particularly in Saudi Arabia) dedicated to this field. Proponents claim that the complete correspondence of the Quran to the scientific worldview supposedly further proves the divine origin of their Holy Scripture. In their view, this will encourage conversion to Islam and protect Muslim students from apostasy.
In Hinduism, there is a philosophical school known as Advaita Vedanta. One of the features of this philosophy is the assertion of the illusory nature of the world: it is believed that separate things do not exist, and the entire world is the body of a deity. Its most prominent teacher (acharya) is Shankara, and modern followers of the school insist that their worldview aligns with modern physics [let’s call this “scientific Advaita Vedanta”]. However, this philosophy utilizes a pseudoscientific concept such as the “ether,” whereas the reality of elementary particles (a core materialistic concept) is not recognized.
Similar trends can be observed in “quantum Buddhism,” where proponents attempt to speculate on the paradoxes of modern physics. In this pseudoscientific concept, Buddhist metaphysical notions are directly equated with quantum states: for instance, maya (the illusory nature of the world) is interpreted through the observer effect, pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination) through quantum entanglement, and the dharmas themselves (momentary psychophysical elements of existence) are described as matter and non-matter simultaneously, akin to wave-particle duality.
Scientology spawned a pseudoscience known as Dianetics. The founder of this religion, L. Ron Hubbard, taught the existence of unproven “engrams.” According to the Scientology definition, engrams are a form of cellular memory, or “a mental image picture of an experience containing pain and unconsciousness.” According to Hubbard, there is also a part of the psyche known as the reactive mind, which is what causes mental and psychosomatic illnesses. Scientologists claim, in opposition to official medicine, that these diseases can be cured by clearing these engrams.
In Judaism, there is an esoteric tradition known as Kabbalah. Followers of Michael Laitman consider it to be scientifically validated, and one of the names for this movement is the “science of Kabbalah.” Among their works, one can find graphs and diagrams of “spiritual dimensions,” as well as unverified experiments concerning the perception of the “higher world.”
There are other esoteric movements that reference science as well. For instance, “Reality Transurfing” asserts that a person can alter reality through properly directed thought. In doing so, proponents refer to quantum physics, particularly the many-worlds interpretation, which posits the existence of parallel universes.
Vitalism is also present in religions. For instance, they have their own concepts of “vital energy”: in Taoism, Neo-Confucianism, and East Asian Buddhism, it is chi (qi); in Hinduism, it is prana; in Tibetan Buddhism, it is lung (wind); and in occultism, it is ether. All of these concepts are the object of study for a pseudo-discipline known as bioenergetics.
It is worth noting that pseudoscience does not include marginal fields, such as practically limited but theoretically outdated branches of modern psychoanalysis. This also applies to ideological trends that use methodological Marxism (socioeconomic analysis without political ideology) as a scientific backbone, or disciplines whose debates are purely semantic — such as neurobotany (hypotheses about “intelligent plants,” where the discussion centers around the definitions of the terms themselves). One can also mention left-liberal researchers and proponents of radical social constructivism who attempt to view the natural sciences through the methodology of social disciplines (for example, treating objective biological or physical facts purely as “social constructs”).
And finally, it is worth mentioning the so-called “quantum mysticism,” which combines esoteric worldviews with the terminology of modern physics. Proponents of this movement groundlessly use complex concepts of quantum mechanics (such as wave-particle duality, superposition, or quantum entanglement) to justify mystical practices, beliefs in telepathy, or the materialization of thoughts.
IV. Psychological antimaterialism
I propose a technical term, psychological antimaterialism — the belief that the will of intelligent beings is stronger than the laws (psychological, social, economic, or even natural) of reality. It acts as an antithesis to Karl Marx’s statement “Existence determines consciousness” and is close to the ideas of voluntarism (the recognition of the will as the primary foundation of existence and a supreme force over objective laws) and idealistic anthropocentrism (the conception of human consciousness as the primary creator and center of reality).
The theoretical foundation here is conspiracy theories. Some conspiracy theories attribute capabilities to secret groups that border on the supernatural. This includes a strategic vision of the future that could be perceived as extrasensory, the possession of unlimited resources, and knowledge of almost all secrets of nature and human psychology, which clearly exceed the achievements of modern science. It is also claimed that no significant historical event occurred without their knowledge, and that revolutions are not the result of the historical development of society. Scientists, according to conspiracy theorists, are also involved in conspiracies, as they conceal the “truth.” Examples of the latter include the anti-vaccine movement, as well as HIV and COVID denialism.
Nationalistically minded pseudohistorians engage in folk history, creating myths about the “hidden” history of their nations. Fomenko’s “New Chronology” revises world history altogether. Language cranks describe the origin and development of languages from a nationalistic perspective. Proponents of ancient aliens ignore the historical development of humanity, attributing a significant role in the past to extraterrestrials; within their circles, a field known as ufological archaeology has even emerged. The ideologization of science also leads to the appearance of concepts such as “Aryan physics” in the Third Reich, which rejected the materialistic achievements of “Jewish” quantum mechanics and relativity theory.
Drawing on data from neurophysiology and other sciences, modern scientists are skeptical about free will, and the very fact of its existence has been called into question. Some experts deny its existence altogether (such as Robert Sapolsky, Alexander Panchin, or Sam Harris), while others consider its influence to be quite negligible. However, personal development theories ignore these facts and often establish a pseudoscientific foundation for themselves.
