Posted on 09/19/2005 6:01:22 PM PDT by gobucks
In 1993, the journalist Jonathan Rauch published a book called Kindly Inquisitors, in which he catalogued contemporary threats to the Enlightenment tradition of seeking truth through logical or empirical discourse. One of Rauch's points was that, while this (classical) liberal system for amassing knowledge appeared to be under attack from both the religious right and the multicultural left, in fact the two groups were making a version of the same argument: Mainstream science didn't accord their beliefs the respect they deserved, whether it was creation science on the one hand or feminist or Afro-centric science on the other.
Rauch's book has held up remarkably well in the twelve years since it was published. This is particularly so in light of the current debate over intelligent design (ID)--the idea, popular on the right, that life is too complex to have resulted from random variation. Even President Bush has suggested, as the creation scientists (and multiculturalists) of the 1980s and 1990s did before him, that both sides of the supposed debate be treated as legitimate in public school curricula.
But there was one thing Rauch didn't anticipate. At the time, he suggested that, even though creationists had adopted the tactics of the academic left--the demand for equal time--they still believed in objective truths. They just didn't think all of these truths were discoverable by science. By contrast, today's IDers have gone further and adopted the epistemology of the left--the idea that ostensibly scientific truths may be relative.
The animating principle of the postmodern left is the notion that truth follows from power and not from its intrinsic rightness. It's a conceit that began in the humanities but eventually spread to hard sciences like physics. "The point is that neither logic nor mathematics escapes the contamination of the social," as postmodern pooh-bah Stanley Aronowitz has put it. What makes this approach so radical is its implication that the way to win intellectually is to win politically.
In making their arguments, the postmodernists rely heavily on the work of historians of science like Thomas Kuhn. It was Kuhn who famously argued that scientific knowledge proceeds as a sequence of "paradigm shifts"--revolutions in the way we understand the world--and that the shifts occur not simply when the evidence in favor of the new paradigm becomes overwhelming, but when the people invested in the old paradigm are in some sense defeated (which may not occur until long after they're proved wrong). Mainstream science has taken from Kuhn the belief that evidence and logic are necessary, if not quite sufficient, conditions for a paradigm shift and that, in the long run, successive shifts bring society closer to objective truth. Where the postmodernists go awry is in their emphasis on Kuhn's relativism.
Unfortunately, these postmodernist ideas have become a staple of the ID movement. As laid out in a strategic memo produced by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, the leading backer of intelligent design, "Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud portrayed humans not as moral and spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled by purely impersonal forces." There was nothing particularly objective about this view, according to the IDers. Instead, applying the same reading of Kuhn that the postmodernists embrace, they argue that it was simply the result of a political struggle between insurgents and the establishment. (In fact, the IDers frequently cite Kuhn to this effect.) Probably the clearest example of this comes courtesy of Bruce K. Chapman, the Discovery Institute's president. "All ideas that achieve a sort of uniform acceptance ultimately fall apart, whether it's in the sciences or philosophy or politics, after a few people keep knocking away at it," he recently told The New York Times. But that's nuts. Germ theory, relativity, the idea that the earth is round--with apologies to Tom Friedman, the fact that all have withstood the occasional challenge suggests that truth counts for something.
Chapman might protest that he's simply proposing a more accurate alternative to evolution, the same way Darwin proposed a more accurate alternative to creationism. But ID isn't a new theory, just a new attempt to advance an old one, with some new empirical claims thrown in for good measure. As Jerry Coyne has pointed out ("The Faith that Dare Not Speak Its Name," August 22 & 29), scientists can discredit ID using the exact same evidence they used to debunk creationism. Once you realize this, it's no longer possible to interpret Chapman as echoing the belief in a steady progression toward truth.
Like all conservatives, of course, the IDers claim to decry relativism and to embrace absolutes. But, for them, the claim is logically incoherent in a way it wasn't when it came from their creationist predecessors. When a proposition is empirically false, as both creationism and ID (to the extent that it makes empirical claims) are, you're free to assert its truth; you just can't call it science. The creationists had no problem with this; they just rejected any science that contradicted the Bible. But the IDers aspire to scientific truth. Unfortunately, the only way to claim that something empirically false is scientifically true is to question science's capacity for sorting out truth from falsehood, the same way postmodernists do.
Conservatives were quick to point out the danger of this view in the '80s and '90s. They argued that a science that rejected the idea of truth was vulnerable to the most inane forms of intellectual hucksterism. And they were right. It's not hard to imagine scams like cold fusion or the Scientologist critique of psychiatric drugs gaining ground in a world where science's ability to identify knowledge has been undermined. (Among other monuments to postmodern thought was the idea that E=mc² might be a "sexed equation" that "privileges the speed of light over other speeds," as Belgian-French theorist Luce Irigaray once asserted.)
Americans don't like thinking of themselves as backward. As a result, the risk from science-rejecting creationists hasn't been particularly acute in recent decades. But most people don't have very strong views on the philosophy of science. If, unlike the postmodern left, the ID movement can enlist mainstream conservatives in questioning science's capacity to produce objective truth, then it's by no means clear the effort won't succeed. In that case, it will end up threatening a whole lot more than just evolution.
Okay...
Mere assertion does not "establish" science. Science is, mostly, a method of inquiry, and certainly not a collection of assertions. What science does require, on a prima facie basis, is that objectivity and empiricism prevail.
This entire debate suffers from myopia.
"Mere assertion does not "establish" science. Science is, mostly, a method of inquiry, and certainly not a collection of assertions. What science does require, on a prima facie basis, is that objectivity and empiricism prevail."
Okay.
Yes an assertion does need to be backed up with evidence and or logical reasoning. ID does quite well with that. Again, read Johnson's book. Evolustionists typically dismiss ID without giving it much thought....now that isn't scientific thinking either...its just ignorance.
Trust me, we're not worried about that
"Science is, mostly, a method of inquiry..."
In simpler terms, wouldn't it be better to say:
"Science is, mostly, a search for causes ..."
After all, ToE folks have found the 'cause', natural selection, which 'caused' the first living thing to end up as our common ancestor....
ID folks look for causes too....;
I do not see any (empirical) "evidence" from the ID community. And "logical reasoning," while seductive, is not the foundation of a science---data are.
"ID folks look for causes too..."
And when they come up with material, non-supernatural ones they can take part in a scientific discussion.
How?
I disagree with the idea that just because Kuhn is quoted by Discovery Inst folks, that must mean w/ buy into post modern methods of rhetorical fighting in order to win...
ID folks in my experience (and I'm not really a hard core ID type myself) do indeed strictly adhere to accepted scientific practices, and approach the problems of 'how' differently than do the scientists which presuppose a philosophic faith position they refuse to discuss: that 'natural' forces are the 'exclusive' cause of what we observe. It is the denial of that presupposition that is the issue w/ so many ID types, and me too.
That all said, I don't agree w/ the argument we're simply engaging in paradigm warfare, and thus validating the idea truth is merely relative to those who have the power to make it so.
ID folks, like the science folks in general, do indeed believe in a standard of absolute truth....
They just can't get it together about the origin of the standard.
I, and the other evolutionist-scientists here at FR, have been consistent in positing the view of this quoted paragraph for quite some time now---namely, that the ID "movement" could: (1.) undermine science and (2.) undermine conservatism (because of its association with ID as portrayed by the MSM.)
I'd just like to add to '(2.)undermine conservatism ' and destroy the currently governing conservative coalition.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
And so, instead of a weapon which helps them, it becomes to them a sword of damocles...; maybe that metaphor is a stretch...
Both creationism and creationism-lite are essentitally equivalent to postmoderndeconstructionism. Their political goals are identical, invalidation of scientific inquiry as a means of gaining knowledge.
I like Robert Heinlein myself.
Well, I'm glad you didn't resort to the---"it all just can't be random" critique.
I'm a life scientist (physiology/endocrinology). I admit that in my journeys I've encountered a few (2 or 3) who conduct their research as if they are trying to prove the ToE. The rest, however, are simply seeking data which may shed some light on how a particular phenomenon works. The problem is, because of the requirements of most grant-funding agencies, is that---in the research proposal itself and in the published, discussion section---some form of "relevance to society" must be stated.
Basic science has no preconceived relevance to anything except curiosity, and most scientists are forced to stretch to write such required inclusions. Thus, the "conjecture" part of science (thanks also to the MSM) receives the most attention.
And whatever would be the substitute is a quick journey back to the dark ages.
And whatever would be the substitute is a quick journey back to the dark ages.
To Talibanland.
I knew the article said something. If only they had used fewer words, and better.
So easy to win the debate when you create strawmen - this statement couldn't be further from the truth if he had actually tried!
Creationists reject science. If you think otherwise, please explain.
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