| | Science or Objectivism?
First, to compare Objectivism and science, you must define your terms as some have done above. If you identify Objectivism strictly with all of the writings of Ayn Rand and her authorized co-writers (such as the authors of writers who appeared in The Objectivist) and with the "authorized" writers at ARI, then Objectivism can certainly be seen as differing from scientific consensus on various issues.
 For example, while the scientific consensus posits that the known universe is apparently an entity of heretofore finite duration, which originated in the Big Bang, (and that there was nothing "before" the big bang - since there was no time or space before or outside of the universe prior to its existence) then one can hear in Peikoff's DIM lectures that science must be wrong on this account, not due to the evidence, but because it smacks of creationism and lends comfort to theists. In so far as this is an a priori position held by certain self-identified Objectivists for whatever reasons, it not only counters scientific consensus, it also seems to claim some sort of cosmological omniscience or prescience which Peikoff himself had disavowed in his discussion of "meta-puffs" in his Objectivism, the Philosophy of Ayn Rand.
Likewise, you have to define science. If one regards science as all systematized knowledge, then ideally, philosophy is the method and science is the product. But science as it is viewed nowadays is usually defined as dealing with matters largely limited to what is describable in physico-chemical terms, with biology being a borderline area where the concepts of purpose, progress, and "advanced" development are look upon with suspicion. Anything that implies evaluations and value-judgments is seen as somehow lying outside the conventional scientific realm.
Now, some scientists challenge the Big Bang theory on theoretical grounds, but none of whom I am aware are scared of it because it smacks of theism. And the fact that certain self-identified Objectivists criticize the theory, contra the evidence, on ideological grounds alone, does not mean that Objectivism itself, if defined as "the primacy of existence and the contextual objectivity of concepts" stands in opposition to science.
 Indeed, as Ayn Rand herself said, "there is no such thing as Objectivism." There are just concrete people who may hold valid or invalid ideas about reality. Likewise, there is no such thing as science, there are just people and the ideas and concepts that they hold about the world which may be based upon observation, hypothesis, and experiment, or which may be based on confusion or blind faith.
The simple bottom line has been put forth well enough above - Objectivism is a philosophy which avers that knowledge is possible. Science is that knowledge, systematized and, when based on reason and observation, like Objectivism, it should be self-correcting.
 Of course, ethics, and its sub-branches of aesthetics and politics are not usually thought of as sciences in the conventional sense. But these too are systematizable bodies of knowledge which should be based upon induction from the observation of reality. What is conventionally called science often excludes the ethical from its purview as being either subjective, relative, unfalsifiable or meaningless. This viewpoint is as widespread as it is false. So what is the difference between Objectivism as it should be and science as it is? Objectivism excludes no possible realm of thought from rational criticism, while science as conventionally conceived excludes, for reasons grounded in our traditionally dualistic culture, the humanities and the arts in so far as they espouse values. So one might say that the difference between science and Objectivism is that while the sciences largely view values as arbitrary or unapproachable, Objectivism does not.
Were Aristotelianism the dominant ideology in all the sciences and humanities, this dichotomy would disappear, and Objectivism would either mean simply Randianism in so far as it was particular to Rand, or it would be synonymous with reason and the truth. (It is for this reason that I distinguish between "Randian" and "Objectivist" as terms, and why I call myself an "objectivist" in the lower case.) As it stands, nothing in Objectivism should contravene scientific fact, if indeed it is fact; while the scope of science, as it currently defines itself, is smaller than that of Objectivism.
Ted Keer
(Revised and Expanded)
(Edited by Ted Keer
on 3/25, 4:35pm)
(Edited by Ted Keer on 3/26, 12:13pm)
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