Posted on 11/10/2005 4:43:24 AM PST by Nicholas Conradin
In an election in Pennsylvania this week, voters tossed out eight members of the Pittsburgh school board who wanted Intelligent Design theory to be taught alongside evolution in school. But should Intelligent Design -- the theory that living organisms were created at least in part by an intelligent designer, not by a blind process of evolution by natural selection -- be taught in public schools? In one way, the answer to this question is simple: if it's a scientific theory, it should; if it's not, it shouldn't (on pain of flaunting the Establishment Clause). The question, however, is whether Intelligent Design (ID) is a scientific theory.
Opponents dismiss ID's scientific credentials, claiming that the theory is too implausible to qualify as scientific. But this reasoning is fallacious: a bad scientific theory is still a scientific theory, just as a bad car is still a car. There may be pedagogical reasons to avoid teaching bad scientific theories in our public schools, but there are no legal ones. The Constitution contains no interdiction on teaching bad theories, or for that matter demonstrably false ones. As long as theory is science and not religion, there is no legal barrier to teaching it.
To make their case, opponents of teaching ID must show not just that the theory is bad, but that it's not science. This raises a much more complicated question: What is science? What distinguishes genuinely scientific theories from non-scientific ones?
In one form or another, the question has bothered scientists and philosophers for centuries. But it was given an explicit formulation only in the 1920s, by Karl Popper, the most important 20th century philosopher of science. Popper called it "the problem of demarcation," because it asked how to demarcate scientific research and distinguish it from other modes of thought (respectable though they may be in their own right).
One thing Popper emphasized was that a theory's status as scientific doesn't depend on its plausibility. The great majority of scientific theories turn out to be false, including such works of genius as Newton's mechanics. Conversely, the story of Adam and Eve may well be pure truth, but if it is, it's not scientific truth, but some other kind of truth.
So what is the mark of genuine science? To attack this question, Popper examined several theories he thought were inherently unscientific but had a vague allure of science about them. His favorites were Marx's theory of history and Freud's theory of human behavior. Both attempted to describe the world without appeal to super-natural phenomena, but yet seem fundamentally different from, say, the theory of relativity or the gene theory.
What Popper noticed was that, in both cases, there was no way to prove to proponents of the theory that they were wrong. Suppose Jim's parents moved around a lot when Jim was a child. If Jim also moves around a lot as an adult, the Freudian explains that this was predictable given the patterns of behavior Jim grew up with. If Jim never moves, the Freudian explains -- with equal confidence -- that this was predictable as a reaction to Jim's unpleasant experiences of a rootless childhood. Either way the Freudian has a ready-made answer and cannot be refuted. Likewise, however much history seemed to diverge from Marx's model, Marxists would always introduce new modifications and roundabout excuses for their theory, never allowing it to be proven false.
Popper concluded that the mark of true science was falsifiability: a theory is genuinely scientific only if it's possible in principle to refute it. This may sound paradoxical, since science is about seeking truth, not falsehood. But Popper showed that it was precisely the willingness to be proven false, the critical mindset of being open to the possibility that you're wrong, that makes for progress toward truth.
What scientists do in designing experiments that test their theories is create conditions under which their theory might be proven false. When a theory passes a sufficient number of such tests, the scientific community starts taking it seriously, and ultimately as plausible.
When Einstein came up with the theory of relativity, the first thing he did was to make a concrete prediction: he predicted that a certain planet must exist in such-and-such a place even though it had never been observed before. If it turned out that the planet did not exist, his theory would be refuted. In 1919, 14 years after the advent of Special Relativity, the planet was discovered exactly where he said. The theory survived the test. But the possibility of failing a test -- the willingness to put the theory up for refutation -- was what made it a scientific theory in the first place.
To win in the game of science, a theory must be submitted to many tests and survive all of them without being falsified. But to be even allowed into the game, the theory must be falsifiable in principle: there must be a conceivable experiment that would prove it false.
If we examine ID in this light, it becomes pretty clear that the theory isn't scientific. It is impossible to refute ID, because if an animal shows one characteristic, IDers can explain that the intelligent designer made it this way, and if the animal shows the opposite characteristic, IDers can explain with equal confidence that the designer made it that way. For that matter, it is fully consistent with ID that the supreme intelligence designed the world to evolve according to Darwin's laws of natural selection. Given this, there is no conceivable experiment that can prove ID false.
It is sometimes complained that IDers resemble the Marxist historians who always found a way to modify and reframe their theory so it evades any possible falsification, never offering an experimental procedure by which ID could in principle be falsified. To my mind, this complaint is warranted indeed. But the primary problem is not with the intellectual honesty of IDers, but with the nature of their theory. The theory simply cannot be fashioned to make any potentially falsified predictions, and therefore cannot earn entry into the game of science.
None of this suggests that ID is in fact false. For all I've said, it may well be pure truth. But if it is, it wouldn't be scientific truth, because it isn't scientific at all. As such, we shouldn't allow it into our science classrooms. At least that's what the Constitution says.
The writer teaches philosophy at the University of Arizona.
I have no problem with Rockefeller having a lot of money. I have problems with any tactics he ever used that were intentionally designed to keep all others out of the oil market.
To the extent that he used goons to break kneecaps, lowball pricing to ruin others, and/or paid off politicians to prevent others, then I have a problem. That is not a free market.
It is clear in our day that extremely rich men draw a lot of attention to themselves when they try to influence politics. George Soros is an example.
I guess it is not possible for Soros to do ANYTHING at all with his own money that would be negative for the nation.
That's why everyone loves him so much.
A human generation is more like 20 years.
A generation is not a lifespan.
The big court case ended up being the Northern Securities Trust, which was Morgan's baby, but TR's anti-trust vision was pretty broad. It certainly wasn't confined to any one particular oligarch.
This is about science. Show me some scientific evidence to support "the first 10 words of the Bible" amd we can talk. Until then, it has no place in science class.
My personal religious beliefs are not the point here, because I don't get those beliefs confused with science.
Dodging the question, eh?
I don't know if you've been following the discussion, but the discussion has, for the most part, been on the issue of whether belief in evolution (or more specifically, the denial of intelligent design) is consistent with a belief in the God revealed in the Bible.
So why don't you just answer the question? Do you accept as truth the first 10 words of the Bible? Or does the Bible start out by spouting lies?
I really do oppose real distortions in free markets.
I don't oppose imaginary ones created by liberals.
I always worry about these big oil companies always funding environmental ads, PBS documentaries, and liberal politicians. You'd think they had overlapping directorates with the Sierra Club they're so cozy with each other.
Yes, that was my pre-caffeine version of "Golden Rule"
I do not see "Love thy neighbor as thyself" or Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" as being even the slightest bit self-sacrifcing
It's sort of like the iterated prisoner's dilemma...you be nice to me, I'll be nice to you; but if you're not nice to me you should have no expectation of me being nice to you and I perfectly well know that if I'm not nice to you I should have expectation of you being nice to me.
I do have a problem with a plan by one person to give oil away for free until he drives the competition out of the market.
The only reason for doing that is to create a "non-Free market."
But on a higher level, this is about philosophy. Science is a philosophy.
I'm not dodging the question. Personally, I believe that the Bible contains more parables than just the ones attributed to Jesus.
But again, that's not the point. If you have to believe that the first 10 words of the Bible (in whichever translation you prefer) are literally true for ID to make any sense whatsoever, then that tells us a lot about how "intelligent" it really is.
That doesn't mean all philosophy is scientific.
Just like not all fruits are apples. So?
So we shouldn't confuse the two.
Creationists confuse philosophy and science. That leads to bad science.
At the same time, science should be recognized as a philosophy. It is a philosophy that has played an important role, to be sure, but at root it is a philosophy. Other philosophies have played important roles too.
People do make sacrifices on their own behalf. To do that for your neighbor would be altruistic. There is no trade/swap/barter hints in there at all.
ID is not about God. ID advocates have sworn to that under oath. But I would conclude that the designer postulated by ID advocates is evil.
Not so.
When someone else INTENT becomes crystal clear, and that intent is to injure others, then there is good reason to act.
This is similar to freedom of speech and the "man shouting fire in a crowded theater."
He has no right to misuse his freedom to intentionally injure another.
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