All science is materialistic

[Jehanne]

All scientists that I have read (and, I think that the National Academies is of this opinion, also), is that scientific materialism is a useful, productive paradigm, one that is falsifiable with scientism being a completely acceptable philosophy (it was listed first in their laundry list -- scientism, deism, theism).  Yes, the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis, but, a "failed hypothesis".  Ditto for ghosts, the paranormal, the supernatural, fairies, pixies, Sasquatch, Creationism, OBEs, NDEs, Intelligent Design, etc.  When investigators have been able to conduct experiments (in the case of OBEs and NDEs, tests of veridicality in the remote viewing of concealed objects), they have all failed, without exception.  As time & funding are both limited, investigators who wish to continue these pursuits need, in my opinion, to secure their own funding.  On the other hand, a single, repeatable test of veridical experience (say, in some patient who has a myocardial infarction and who leaves their body to read the contents of some hidden LED screen and then who conveys that information upon resuscitation) would completely shatter the Newtonian/Einsteinian paradigm, and scientific materialism would come crashing down; well, that's at least my view.

As so, I, as a layperson, would claim that Science and the scientific method is intrinsically materialistic, if only as a paradigm, one that could, hypothetically, be falsified, but, at the same time I do not think that such is a reasonable and worthwhile pursuit in trying to falsify it.  As with evolution, too much evidence runs in favor of materialism; at a minimum, it is the horse to beat, and likely, the only one on the racetrack.

One of my basic problems is that I don't know what it means to be a 'methodological materialist'.

As a simple example, are electromagnetic waves 'material'? If so, why?

Are neutrinos 'material'? If so, how?

Is dark matter 'material'? If so, how?

Is a curvature of spacetime 'material' If so, how?

Is a quantum wave function 'material'? if so, how?


My point is that 'materialism' is a rather vague concept that has very little actual use in determining whether a hypothesis is scientifically supportable. Instead, the notion of testability via observation is very clear and precise and lets us eliminate many ideas as useless for explanation.

Maybe physicalism would be a better term.