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.
Umm, perhaps because, Discovery Institute misinformation and mendacity aside, no fossil ever has pointed in the opposite direction? Or did someone unearth a fossilized angel and I missed it?
Correct.
It's another prediction of SR; time slows down the faster you go. It wasn't testable until the advent of atomic clocks and jet airplanes to provide the combination of precision and speed needed to measure the effect.
In any case, it's worth noting that despite the anti-Evos being all over this thread for more than 60 posts, it was the Evo's who first noticed and pointed out the errors. Thankfully, the historical errors are not relevant to his analysis and conclusions regarding Popper's falsification principle and it's application to ID "theory." In that regard, he is entirely correct: ID is not scientific.
I think it was Galileo who measured the acceleration of gravity by direct observation.
Newton applied his equations to the universe, an object he could not possibly observe directly. It was the successful calculation of the orbit of a comet by Halley that first confirmed Newton's gravitation -- long after Newton was dead.
But don't let facts impede your ranting.
Now there's a surprise. :)
Well, that's kinda my point. I do agree that ID is more of a philosophical posit than a scientific one and I would be more happy if it were approached in a philosophy class. But, then again - I would also label string theory a new religion because of the faith involved. (there is more evidence for String Theory than for God at the moment - go figure)
Do you think we can create a "Church of Advanced Physics" and get a tax exemption?
Maybe we should relabel and refer to ID as RD (random design).
Evolution would be proven false if someone could identify a billion year old human fossil. I'm not aware that has been done.
But this reasoning is fallacious: a bad scientific theory is still a scientific theory, just as a bad car is still a car.
No, that reasoning is fallacious.
Words mean things. "Theory" has a very specific meaning when used in a scientific context.
To use the car example, if you build a machine that doesn't have any wheels, doesn't contain an engine and isn't intended to move people and objects from place to place, then it isn't a car. You can make your object look a little like a car, but it isn't a car.
For the same reason, ID isn't a theory. It looks a little bit like a theory, if you squint hard enough, but that doesn't make it so.
Exactly; that's why the starlight bending observation during the solar eclipse was so important; it represented a prediction made by ahead of time by GR for a phenomona that had not previously been observed or predicted. And he nailed it. It was a "Full Monty" falsification test of GR.
Still waiting for any creationist (or anyone else) to supply that rigorous proof of something in the physics or chemistry fields. It's funny, there are all these Freepers who think that the physical and chemical sciences are somehow much more hard and rigorous than the biological sciences. We see that particular claim again and again, but I've never met a single practicing physicist or chemist who agrees with them. Some limited areas of mathematics deal in rigorous proof. Everyone in the natural sciences deals with evidence and predictions and falsification.
I am not aware of any falsification test for ID.
A DNA retrovirus shared by humans and gorillas but not chimps would neatly falsify the theory of evolution. (one of many, many, many possible falsifications that ToE has survived over the last 150 years, it wasn't so long ago that the creationists were predicting that the molecular evidence from genomes *would* falsify ToE when it came in. How wrong they were; it has vindicated ToE in spades.)
But it does clarify your almost total ignorance of the issues. Galileo was the first to calculate the acceleration due to gravity at sea level; so the observation that you randomly supplied in response to my request for a mathematically rigorous proof of something in the real world was both wrongly attributed *and* irrelevant. What a double whammy.
You're right.
ID is just a right-leaning PC. It's every bit as silly, and every bit as dangerous.
ID, in practice has proved to be false but, there's a sucker born every minute.
Funny ... ID is the only non religious body of thought I have ever seen which is been so vociferously attacked and being denied an audience.
Funny... perhaps. Non religious? Sorry, but you can't fool me with that bit of doublespeak.
No its not random, in fact it is a common linkage made by maybe not you, but your side here on these threads.
Wolf
It's an interesting question- under the generally accepted definition, if two types of animals cannot breed to create fertile offspring, that would make them different species.
Under that definition, we would have to carve up dogs into several different species, as many breeds of dog cannot naturally mate with other breeds (Great Danes and chihuahuas).
You're right- species is a human construct.
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