Sensory Empiricism And Scientism

A person who simply stands outside and blankly stares at the environment around them without any objective in mind could hardly be said, in any honest sense, to be engaging in science.  This should come as no surprise to anyone concerned with correctly defining science, but empiricism might nonetheless erroneously conflated with scientism.  This is ironic given that empiricism only entails that experience (which includes the use of rationality and introspection) is involved in all knowledge, not that all knowledge involves sensory experience, with scientific observations falling into a subcategory of sensory experiences just as sensory experiences fall into a subcategory of experience.

All scientific observations involve the senses, yet not all sensory perceptions involve science.  A hypothetical physical event that cannot be repeated, for example, could be observed by the senses even though the observers are incapable of recreating it.  Science is the application of a particular method of sensory observation, not sensory observation itself--hence why individual events must be analyzed through repetition before a scientific law can be identified.  A lone experience is not enough to reveal scientific laws.

In the same way, blankly receiving sensory perceptions without active paying attention to repeatability is not synonymous with scientific investigation; watching a phenomenon without consciously considering repetition cannot be legitimately called a scientific endeavor.  It follows that to equate all sensory experiences with science is to wildly overestimate the scope of scientific activities and to blur categories within one's sensory perceptions.  That some people brazenly confuse the two simply reveals ignorance or stupidity on their part.  Those who confuse them might call the distinction pointless, but it is actually quite worthy of attention.

Sensory empiricism (as opposed to a wholistic empiricism that is entirely compatible with rationslism) and scientism alike are self-refuting and incapable of being correct epistemologies, but they still need to be properly distinguished from each other.  In refuting sensory empiricism, one has refuted scientism as well; in refuting scientism only, one has not necessarily refuted sensory empiricism.  This reason alone is enough to make the distinction important, but that hardly seems to deter many prominent Christian apologists and their admirers from mistakenly equating them.