Wittgenstein and Gramsci on Science and Scientism

Previous studies of the relationships between the thought of Antonio Gramsci and the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein have tended to focus on the possibility of Gramsci indirectly influencing Wittgenstein via Piero Sraffa (see, for example, Davis 2002a, 2002b, 2012; Sen 2003; Lo Piparo 2010) and upon Wittgenstein's philosophy of language. John Davis has claimed that since the three thinkers "devoted themselves to altogether different realms of ideas" (2002a, 384) we should not expect to find precisely the same claims about the same subject matter but rather should look for parallels where spelling out those parallels "requires translating those ideas into a discourse removed in varying degrees from their original ideas" (Ibid.). Franco Lo Piparo has made a case that Gramsci and Wittgenstein are a bit more closely linked than that in that both make very similar claims about language, grammar, and praxis. Here I am going to agree with Lo Piparo that Gramsci and Wittgenstein both make very similar claims about language and grammar but the focus here will be on another area in which Gramsci and Wittgenstein were largely in agreement: in their attitudes towards science and scientism. Gramsci and Wittgenstein both opposed the imperialistic tendencies of natural science: attempts to bring the methods of natural science into social sciences and the humanities. Both were annoyed by simplistic attempts to popularise science that ended up launching into "absurd popular semi-philosophical speculations" (Rhees, 1984, 117). Both were opposed to reductionism in disciplines like philosophy, psychology, history and economics. In all of these cases their opposition to scientism took on strikingly similar forms.