Pejorative term for the belief that the methods of natural science, or the categories and things recognized in natural science, form the only proper elements in any philosophical or other enquiry. The classic statement of scientism is the physicist E. Rutherford’s saying ‘there is physics and there is stamp-collecting’. Philosophers wary of scientism believe that it distorts or denies the special methods of psychology and interpretation (see Verstehen), or tries to impose a crass reductionism where it is neither plausible nor necessary.