Like most of the world around it, the Church of England is so caught up in busyness and anxious make-work that it has ceased to attend to what is truly happening in the world around it; and as attention is simply another word for prayer this is a grievous fault.
Scientism will topple yes, but not science. So few revolutions have ever been successfully carried out by the poor. The middle class and marginal members of the upper estate will have to lead the charge. Without that charge, the mindset will outlast the society that supported and formed it. But the middle class sort will not toss the work of scientists but the ideology of "consensus" (well said there!). Martin Gurri has written a lot about "publics". The information age has flowered into too many publics to continue to maintain the mirage of consensus. "Media" are technologies built upon an the infrastructure of an electronic age. McLuhan wrote that electricity is the essence of them all: immediate, interconnected, and embedded in a materialistic framework. How long did it take Edison to identify the right filament to make a light bulb work? The first two led McLuhan to predict the global village. His prediction look a lot like the group think and massive vertical integration of our media landscape at present. Scientism is just another way of saying that the truth is what the powerful providers of that materiality that makes everything (that connects us everywhere and immediately) hum along. The battle of religion (scientism vs a traditional faith) is won or lost at the owners of that material. Can we have an electric age without the world of scarce minerals and oil that make up our modern information carriers (cell phone, incandescent light bulbs, etc)? That is an earnest question. If we can't, I can't see the idol toppling that you eloquently identify in this piece as it will lead to a truly dark age (we'd be essentialy winding the clock back further than even the Amish are willing to go). If another kind of electronic infrastructure can exist that is appropriate, abundant, and renewable, then even if it means a major contraction in the interconnection of our lives, there is hope of another world past the powers of the present. But I have to say, this feels about as naive a hope as those who believe a power source as rich as fossil fuels will be discovered to wean us, just in time, slowly off of fossil fuels.
Scientism will topple yes, but not science. So few revolutions have ever been successfully carried out by the poor. The middle class and marginal members of the upper estate will have to lead the charge. Without that charge, the mindset will outlast the society that supported and formed it. But the middle class sort will not toss the work of scientists but the ideology of "consensus" (well said there!). Martin Gurri has written a lot about "publics". The information age has flowered into too many publics to continue to maintain the mirage of consensus. "Media" are technologies built upon an the infrastructure of an electronic age. McLuhan wrote that electricity is the essence of them all: immediate, interconnected, and embedded in a materialistic framework. How long did it take Edison to identify the right filament to make a light bulb work? The first two led McLuhan to predict the global village. His prediction look a lot like the group think and massive vertical integration of our media landscape at present. Scientism is just another way of saying that the truth is what the powerful providers of that materiality that makes everything (that connects us everywhere and immediately) hum along. The battle of religion (scientism vs a traditional faith) is won or lost at the owners of that material. Can we have an electric age without the world of scarce minerals and oil that make up our modern information carriers (cell phone, incandescent light bulbs, etc)? That is an earnest question. If we can't, I can't see the idol toppling that you eloquently identify in this piece as it will lead to a truly dark age (we'd be essentialy winding the clock back further than even the Amish are willing to go). If another kind of electronic infrastructure can exist that is appropriate, abundant, and renewable, then even if it means a major contraction in the interconnection of our lives, there is hope of another world past the powers of the present. But I have to say, this feels about as naive a hope as those who believe a power source as rich as fossil fuels will be discovered to wean us, just in time, slowly off of fossil fuels.