Situation: This piece of writing is argumentative based to discuss how scientism is not necessarily the answer to everything but plays a large role in society. In 2012, author Massimo Pigliucci uses the show “The Big Bang Theory” to discuss how science is highly important and necessary for our world to grow, but cannot replace literature, philosophy, and art because each aspect is needed for humans to thrive. An example from the text being that character Howard from the show has an equation to calculate his chances of having sex by figuring out the number of single women who may find him to be attractive (pg. 279). Pigliucci is pointing out that instead of exuding confidence and finding a female to talk to, Howard just uses science to justify why he can or cannot find a female to be with. The same issue is involving Sheldon when he creates “The Friendship Algorithm” in order to make friends (pg. 280). …show more content…
He answers that by saying how people cannot see the larger image of life due to scientism. He argues that people wouldn 't see the beauty in regular items and will only focus on the task and the goal of their experiments. He explains that people would aim for scientific accuracy instead of beauty, therefore, making people 's viewpoints less complex if it was seen only in numbers or equations. Thus, referring to his original point that scientism can hurt the natural world. Another example of how Pigliucci shows this is by mentioning how Sheldon cannot understand the beauty of humor. When his sister came to town, the two started talking and Sheldon pointed how his sister, Missy, thinks she is funny but he believes she isn’t. Missy responded, “That’s because you have no measurable sense of humor, Shelly” (282). Sheldon replies saying there is no real way to measure humor because there isn’t a “humor-mometer”. This relates to Pigliucci’s point because there is no “quantifiable analysis” of