Posted on 09/22/2005 8:25:42 PM PDT by Crackingham
A court case that begins Monday in Pennsylvania will be the first to determine whether it is legal to teach a controversial idea called intelligent design in public schools. Intelligent design, often referred to as ID, has been touted in recent years by a small group of proponents as an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution. ID proponents say evolution is flawed. ID asserts that a supernatural being intervened at some point in the creation of life on Earth.
Scientists counter that evolution is a well-supported theory and that ID is not a verifiable theory at all and therefore has no place in a science curriculum. The case is called Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. Prominent scientists Thursday called a teleconference with reporters to say that intelligent design distorts science and would bring religion into science classrooms.
"The reason this trial is so important is the Dover disclaimer brings religion straight into science classrooms," said Alan Leshner, the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and executive publisher of the journal Science. "It distorts scientific standards and teaching objectives established by not only state of Pennsylvania but also leading scientific organizations of the United States."
"This will be first legal challenge to intelligent design and we'll see if they've been able to mask the creationist underpinnings of intelligent design well enough so that the courts might allow this into public school," said Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), which co-hosted the teleconference.
AAAS is the world's largest general science society and the NCSE is a nonprofit organization committed to helping ensure that evolution remains a part of public school curriculums.
The suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of concerned parents after Dover school board officials voted 6-3 last October to require that 9th graders be read a short statement about intelligent design before biology lessons on evolution. Students were also referred to an intelligent design textbook to learn more information about the controversial idea. The Dover school district earlier this month attempted to prevent the lawsuit from going forward, but a federal judge ruled last week that the trial would proceed as scheduled. The lawsuit argues that intelligent design is an inherently religious argument and a violation of the First Amendment that forbids state-sponsored schools from funding religious activities.
"Although it may not require a literal reading of Genesis, [ID] is creationism because it requires that an intelligent designer started or created and intervened in a natural process," Leshner said. "ID is trying to drag science into the supernatural and redefine what science is and isn't."
And if I keep nearly drowning someone, eventually they'll grow gills.
Frequency probability is useless in situations where no possible test can be made, e.g. cosmological models, abiogenesis. Thus I assert in those situations we are stuck with either combinations or Bayesian probability.
Thus choosing combinations over Bayesian is still a prejudice.
Of course, in making a Bayesian assertion people may offer supporting evidence and reasoning. Nevertheless, without a determination of the “system” – such assertions can be misleading or false. It’s not the known but the unknown that causes the problems. And if it were known – or knowable – then we would indeed be able to use frequency probability.
The shell game I wish to stop around here is the tendency of correspondents - on both sides - to pick and choose probability or complexity models to support their prejudice moment to moment, bouncing between embracing and eschewing the same model. The problem is not in the various models (which each have a purpose) - but rather in the disingenuous application of them.
It would not make sense for me to herald the virtues of Kolmogorov complexity in situation A and then turn around and decry Kolmogorov as a complexity measure when the subject changes to situation B. If it cannot be used in B, I should be able to explain why.
Correlation is not causation. Just because a lot of storks happened to show up when a lot of babies were born does not mean one caused the other to happen.
Concerning your question about my position on creationism and intelligent design, I already posted it on this thread in reply to you at post 203
A Randian thesis, yes? Mankind is endowed with certain unalienable rights by virtue of the fact that his nature demands this status for his proper functioning 'qua man'?
> And if I keep nearly drowning someone, eventually they'll grow gills.
Ah, Lamarckism. What the Soviets bought into. And what ignorant Creationists think evolution is.
> Concerning your question about my position on creationism and intelligent design, I already posted it on this thread in reply to you at post 203
OK. Now, what did you say: " Intelligent Design, on the other hand, is the hypothesis that ”certain features of the universe and life are best explained by intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.” "
How does this differ from "God did it?" You've can't be referring to something like an alien scientist creating life on Earth, because that's just a dodge: you now have to explain how the alien evolved. For ID to be at all consistent, it *must* posit some sort of supernatural god. otherwise, it's a meaningless and useless step in the process of explaining life. And thus ID is just Creationism.
Anyone who assumes that miracles can be verified by science just doesn't quite get the picture. Science is in the business of looking for natural explanations. Science assumes that phenomena are regular and lawful.
Abiogenesis will not remain out of reach.
I await disclosure of your test.
If that is the case then you should have been clearer with your definitions. Your repeated use of the term philosophy lead me to believe you were saying that scientists had to study how they made decisions rather than using methods epistemology has determined are effective. My statement still stands that you conflated, you blurred the lines between, the study of, and the lessons learned from, epistemology.
You seem to have a need to pigeonhole science and scientists into your neat little narrow definitions. Remember that theories come from science, methodology comes from practice, and definitions come from use, not the other way around.<<
Theories come from scientists who use a methodology to test a hypothesis about a phenomenon using the best methodology they believe will yield a true result that expains the phenomena better than other theories that may compete with it. They use common definitions to communicate the results with other scientists and people in general.
I'm sorry you have such difficulty understanding what epistomology is, and it's effect on science, like the scientific method. But I did quote definitions that made my point EXTREMELY CLEAR. You on the other hand said some of the silliest posts I have heard:
To: Dark Knight
Scientists have successfully ignored epistomology and most other isms for centuries. Too busy solving actual problems.
Do you wish to argue that biology is not making progress or acquiring knowledge? You certainly welcome to set up a competetive shop. There are hundreds of well funded religious colleges.
I know some of them are teaching creationism, but I don't see any massive research output.
51 posted on 09/23/2005 8:21:19 AM PDT by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
Scientists DO have to study how they make decisions about experimental design. They don't necessarily walk up to a epistemologist and ask what methods should I use to investigate the heretofore unknown phenomenon. But they might.
I am sorry to pigeon hole science and scientists into that NARROW hole of reason, logic, and epistemology. It is a terrible thing to require proof for a theory...wait, that is your argument against ID.
I must be you!
What are you doing in my house?
LOL
DK
How does this differ from "God did it?" You've can't be referring to something like an alien scientist creating life on Earth, because that's just a dodge: you now have to explain how the alien evolved. For ID to be at all consistent, it *must* posit some sort of supernatural god. otherwise, it's a meaningless and useless step in the process of explaining life. And thus ID is just Creationism.<<
ID would have to be positing a NATURAL God. Either God can produce phenomena occuring in the natural world or not.
If God has no effect in the world, then there is no phenomenon to describe. And there is nothing for science or man to look at.
If God can produce phenomena in the natural world, it is phenomena, and subject to scrutiny.
Until man can explain ALL phenomena (omniscience) God cannot be dismissed. (I think at that time an introduction is in order)
I think that is Alamo-Girl's point.
I think Nels Bohr said it best:
God does not play dice with the universe.
--Albert Einstein
Albert, stop telling God what to do.
--Niels Bohr
DK
By the way, LGM ID does not require our understanding. Clark said a technology sufficiently advanced would appear to be magic.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your
philosophy.”
Why can’t Intelligent Design be part of the evolution equation? Is it feared to be the camel’s nose in the tent?
Again, you confuse doing something with talking about it. I am going to ask you again for instances in the history of science where great discoveries have resulted after a scientist asked for help from a philosopher.
It could happen. I'm not trying to trash philosophy, but I doubt if it happens often.
Writers are not usually grammarians, and writing was well established before anyone thought of codifying grammar and spelling. Shakespeare, Chaucer and the King James Bible were written before anyone accepted uniform rules of grammar.
What I have been arguing and what you have been ignoring, is that science invented new methods for acquiring and testing knowledge long before philosophers came along and attempted to regularize the rules. The writing of science was a done deal before anyone attempted to create formal rules. The real check on scientific merit is productivity, not formal rules. Productive ideas trump well formed ones.
I just found that in Faraday's age they called themselves Natural Philosophers (scientists). Maybe that's why all PhDs are Doctors of ...LOL.
Here's the condescending version. Many of the great scientists with fundamental contributions to science WERE philosophers.
If you would note, Konrad Lorentz bio specifically mentions epistemology. Newton would have considered himself a philosopher. Einstein was too.
Don't you want to quit yet?
The following list is from a small database of bio's, but it is late.
DK
>>Faraday, Michael (1791-1867):
Coming from a poor family, Faraday was apprenticed at the age of fourteen to a bookbinder: "he was allowed to spend as much time reading books as he did binding them." One of the books he found himself regularly binding was the Encyclopedia Britannica. After six years of book binding, to his very good fortune, Faraday, at the age of 21, was introduced to Sir Humphrey Davy; he went and joined Davy at the Royal Institution as Davy's personal assistant. (A story describing the relationship of Davy and Faraday would prove to be a mighty interesting one.) At any rate, Faraday led a very illustrious career as a scientist. (In those days they called themselves natural philosophers; and indeed, Faraday was a philosopher: his researches are pointed to as illustrative of the power of the inductive philosophy.) Though there developed quite a dispute over the point, Faraday is generally credited with the discovery of electromagnetic induction (1821), and described certain elements and chemical compounds such as chlorine and benzene.
<<
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832).
Though a philosopher, Goethe was a scientist carrying out work in biology and in optics. Goethe looked at things in a different manner, different than those thinkers up to his time; "he always attempted to see the individual phenomenon as part of an organic, developing whole ..."
Haeckel, Ernest (1834-1919):
Haeckel is known as "Germany's Darwin." He studied medicine but ended up as a zoologist at the University of Jena, where he spent his life's career. "Unlike the always cautious Darwin, who did not speculate on the origin of life or the nature of reality, Haeckel never hesitated boldly to consider the philosophical implications and theological consequences of taking the fact of organic evolution seriously." Like Thomas Huxley "Haeckel saw only quantitative, not qualitative, differences between the living great apes and the rational human animal." Haeckel made a major literary contribution, when, in 1899, he brought out his book, The Riddle of the Universe; "In a scathing attack on religious dogma, Haeckel examines, from a monistic standpoint, the place of mankind within the dynamic, eternal, and infinite universe." My copy is a recent print which was translated by Joseph McCabe with intro by H. James Birx (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1992).
Hippocrates (c460-377B.C.):
Hippocrates, a Greek, is the most celebrated physician of antiquity. He believed that "the four fluids or humours of the body (blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile) are the primary seats of disease." But, it is the ethics of Hippocrates to which, for many years, the medical doctor subscribed by the taking of the Hippocrates Oath.
Lorenz, Konrod (1903- ):
Austrian ethologist (study of animal behaviour under natural conditions), proponent of Darwin's theories, Nobel Prize winner in 1973, Lorenz "displays style, humour, an engaging personality, and an awareness of deep issues of epistemology and society."
placemarker
LOL. Faraday was a great scientist, but induction has never successfully been defined a way that describes what scientists actually do. New ideas do not come from following formal rules.
Haeckel, of course, is a model scientist. ;-) Unfortunately his name has become synonymous with wrongheadedness. Unlike the cautious Darwin, Haeckel leapt to a bunch of premature conclusions.
Most intelligent people will be aware of philosophy, just as writers are aware of grammar, and athletes can be aware of physics. What you are ignoring is that science has added new inventions to philosophy, and philosophy has struggled to keep up. There really isn't any good description of how scientists judge the merits of new ideas. And there certainly isn't any formal process for originating hypotheses.
Alternate Title: Whack-job Creationists attempt to destroy not only the Conservative Movement but hope to overturn a cornerstone of our advanced Western Civilization, 'Science'.
You missed Konrad Lorentz. You omitted the definition of PhD. and you keep inserting words like "FORMAL RULES", "DIRECTLY" etc. It is a mechanism of distortion.
PhD's are philosophers (it's in the name). Nobel prize winners are philosophers that are world class. Did the world consider Newton a philosopher? Of course! Did the world consider Einstein a philosopher? Of course.
But I included these in my previous post. I could go for more names, but you still haven't a clue.
I'm thinking that our communication problem is even more basic. You don't know what science is, and have an even less idea what a scientist does.
That's a problem based in epistemology.
Doh!
DK
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