Contemporary western philosophy has increasingly been dominated by materialism, reductionism, and scientism. From this mindset emerges an approach that treats humans as objects. As atoms and cells without purpose or non-material aspect. At the heart of this is a recurring pattern: whenever a scientific paradigm becomes prominent, bringing breakthroughs in our understanding of the material world, social thinkers attempt to apply that paradigm to human nature and the social order.
The dilemma is that man is viewed as an object, a measurable phenomenon rather than a moral and a spiritual being. Science goes from being a method of inquiry of the material world into a worldview attempting to explain everything. The central belief and assumption is: if something cannot be measured, it is not real; if it cannot be quantified, it does not exist. Based on this, the physicist models are borrowed and see the human being as atoms in motion; the biologist lens is used to assume survival is man’s ultimate destiny; and the economist reduces us to rational buyers and sellers pursuing material satisfaction.
As new scientific paradigms get established; other science-wanna-be disciplines start to borrow and emulate. As such, the materialistic and reductionist tendencies grew wider in the human “sciences”. Man became a collection of cells to fit Darwin’s evolutionary biology; a consumer and producer mapped into Adam Smith’s supply-and-demand equilibrium; a web of neurons optimizing utility functions adhering to the computational logic of modern AI. The big paradigms of the enlightenment age: mechanism, rationalism, and empiricism; overshadowed social science and came to define man. Newton’s laws of motion were exported into the humanities to produce the “mechanistic man,” a predictable human explained through mathematical equations and deterministic interactions. Darwin’s evolutionary biological insights morphed into social Darwinism, devoiding society from morality. Adam Smith’s moral philosophy was hollowed out by neoclassical economics, giving rise to homo economicus and the culture of consumerism.
The success of modern science is undeniable in transforming technology, medicine, and improving standards of living. But once science becomes scientism; a dogma, a total worldview, the only method to seek Truth; it begins to reduce human beings into simple, abstract, and more manageable units that can be observed and explained in the laboratory. The consequences of this are already clear. The rising loneliness and depression crises (*), especially in the most technologically advanced societies, are but warning signs. The view that pollution, poverty, and mental health crises are seen as “externalities,” and maybe an acceptable cost toward “progress” is backfiring. Progress can’t be a goal in itself without any answer to the question: progress toward what?
These observations are not new. Thinkers from both the Western and Eastern traditions warned about these concerns. From Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger in the West to Iqbal, Izetbegović, and Elmessiri in the East. They argued that science can explain processes, mechanisms, and systems but not purpose, nor value, nor moral direction.
What is needed instead is a renewed synthesis of the material, moral, and spiritual dimensions of human life. A framework that restores man as a moral and spiritual being seeking purpose and meaning not just an economic, biological, or computational unit. Without such a synthesis, modernity risks continuing its drift toward a civilization rich in tools yet impoverished in meaning; advanced in technique but lacking in humanity. Hollowed men and women do not build civilizations; rather they collapse from within.
AHMED BADRAN 
Leave a comment