Posted on 11/07/2002 7:07:47 PM PST by Nebullis
The AAAS Board recently passed a resolution urging policymakers to oppose teaching "Intelligent Design Theory" within science classrooms, but rather, to keep it separate, in the same way that creationism and other religious teachings are currently handled.
"The United States has promised that no child will be left behind in the classroom," said Alan I. Leshner, CEO and executive publisher for AAAS. "If intelligent design theory is presented within science courses as factually based, it is likely to confuse American schoolchildren and to undermine the integrity of U.S. science education."
American society supports and encourages a broad range of viewpoints, Leshner noted. While this diversity enriches the educational experience for students, he added, science-based information and conceptual belief systems should not be presented together.
Peter H. Raven, chairman of the AAAS Board of Directors, agreed:
"The ID movement argues that random mutation in nature and natural selection can't explain the diversity of life forms or their complexity and that these things may be explained only by an extra-natural intelligent agent," said Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden. "This is an interesting philosophical or theological concept, and some people have strong feelings about it. Unfortunately, it's being put forth as a scientifically based alternative to the theory of biological evolution. Intelligent design theory has so far not been supported by peer-reviewed, published evidence."
In contrast, the theory of biological evolution is well-supported, and not a "disputed view" within the scientific community, as some ID proponents have suggested, for example, through "disclaimer" stickers affixed to textbooks in Cobb County, Georgia.
"The contemporary theory of biological evolution is one of the most robust products of scientific inquiry," the AAAS Board of Directors wrote in a resolution released today. "AAAS urges citizens across the nation to oppose the establishment of policies that would permit the teaching of `intelligent design theory' as a part of the science curriculum of the public schools."
The AAAS Board resolved to oppose claims that intelligent design theory is scientifically based, in response to a number of recent ID-related threats to public science education.
In Georgia, for example, the Cobb County District School Board decided in March this year to affix stickers to science textbooks, telling students that "evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things." Following a lawsuit filed August 21 by the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, the school board on September 26 modified its policy statement, but again described evolution as a "disputed view" that must be "balanced" in the classroom, taking into account other family teachings. The exact impact of the amended school board policy in Cobb County classrooms remains unclear.
A similar challenge is underway in Ohio, where the state's education board on October 14 passed a unanimous, though preliminary vote to keep ID theory out of the state's science classrooms. But, their ruling left the door open for local school districts to present ID theory together with science, and suggested that scientists should "continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory." In fact, even while the state-level debate continued, the Patrick Henry Local School District, based in Columbus, passed a motion this June to support "the idea of intelligent design being included as appropriate in classroom discussions in addition to other scientific theories."
The Ohio State Education Board is inviting further public comment through November. In December, board members will vote to conclusively determine whether alternatives to evolution should be included in new guidelines that spell out what students need to know about science at different grade levels. Meanwhile, ID theorists have reportedly been active in Missouri, Kansas, New Mexico, New Jersey, and other states, as well Ohio and Georgia.
While asking policymakers to oppose the teaching of ID theory within science classes, the AAAS also called on its 272 affiliated societies, its members, and the public to promote fact-based, standards-based science education for American schoolchildren.
All objects outside of that domain are "not true" with respect to the methodology.
Here I would have said "not relevant", rather than "not true", but I'm nit-picking.
Wasn't that a Star Trek TNG episode?
I use the language in deference. There are reasons to say "not relevant" and that language would be safer, if not neutral. In either case, we can recognize that the character of scientific thinking is in part an election, and with that election, what falls outside of its domain can be, for good or ill, ignored. Meanwhile, the success of a methodology has no bearing on this limiting feature. Short of recognizing this limiting feature of scientific thinking, the correspondence between the method and the object it chooses is popularly termed "objective" at the expense of its participation with other "irrelevant" objects. And while the election of a method determines the domain of its objects, that determination is not to be confused with the domain of human knowledge.
Hi Nebullis. I don't recall Wolfram had much of a bone to pick with logic. His book challenges many of our accepted ways of thinking about key issues in science. But I don't think he "threw out the baby with the bathwater"; for without that "baby," he wouldn't have been in a position to mount any challenge at all. FWIW. Thanks for writing, N.
"If you can read this, you have way too much time on your hands."
-- Regards,
-- ID
I'm glad you mentioned the Sphinx, Alamo-Girl. I was just thinking about it this morning. I'd read about the now commonly-accepted view that the Sphinx is much older than the pyramids. Which only compounds the mystery! Talk about an intellectual challenge....
Your conclusion strikes me as entirely just: It's time to take off the blinders and take a fresh new look at the world. IMHO FWIW. Thanks, A-G -- hugs!
Yes, it's the methodology which defines the possibilities for science, not the underlying assumptions about why proof, predictability, etc. seem to give us knowledge about the world. That's why IDist become regular scientists when they use science methods to make claims of truth about the world and the ID factor becomes irrelevant, and why IDists become crackpots when they don't use scientific methodology to make claims of truth about the world.
We witness both types on these threads. Look at the long list of design research which AndrewC wishes to claim for ID. It's pure science. Look at the quote from Dembski by jennyp above. Use of a scientific tool to find information in biologic systems is science. It's superfluous to then claim that the answers have anything to do with ID. We, also, have the other types, who claim that no truth can be had about biology using scientific methodology. Further, that ID has enough explanatory power to explain what we don't know. (We also have a few who waffle between the two positions, likely because they don't know the difference.)
It's important to note that the scope of scientific inquiry is far from static. It grows as knowledge accumulates. Objects outside of the domain of current inquiry may well be part of that domain tomorrow. The origin of the new objects don't rest entirely on a base of evidence. It largely originates in researcher's imagination which is often fueled by various fantastic views of the world.
Great stuff, MHGinTN. If it's not too much trouble, I'd love it if you could dig up some more from Drs. West and Bauvals for me. Thanks so much for writing.
It wasn't your logic I was referring to. Once a simple system with simple rules is up and running, it is the nature of that system which allows it to evolve. The dichotomy you set up is based on incorrect assumptions. Each system is constrained by what it begins with and the rules it can live by. At the first generation these may be randomly acquired, but at each generation they are dependent on the previous generation. So, it isn't that something arises "entirely by means of spontanteous, random generation".
I'm so sorry, PH, but I just noticed I made a bonehead misattribution in my reply #222. Plato's treatment of Atlantis is in the Critias, not in the Crito. The latter is about the last days of Socrates, right down to the hemlock.
I was thinking over this discussion this morning, and the thought struck me that maybe we have a "legend of Atlantis" only because Plato claimed there was such a legend in his own time, supposedly transmitted by Egyptian high priests to Solon and then down the line to Socrates' own day. Perhaps Atlantis is, at bottom, only a literary device -- there's a theory that Atlantis is a construction of Plato's own imaginative powers.
Plato was absorbed by problems of political order. And in Atlantis we have the very type of a Utopia, an autocratic, authoritarian society ordered according to some arbitrary blueprint deemed fit by the monarchs, made compulsory for subjects and thus enforced if necessary. This type of society would be the perfect foil of Plato's view of the well-ordered state, one premised on the best realization of divine law of which man is capable, and inculcated in the citizens by enlightened education.
I hope my error hasn't caused anyone any confusion or inconvenience.
I'm not an Atlantis buff, but I've read that Plato was the very first to mention such a place. All subsequent writings depend upon Plato. There is no other "evidence." If that's correct, it's pretty thin soup. But there are always those who will take such a legend and build an entire mythology around it, and then write books and make a career out of it. And they find followers. Lots of followers. I've always marveled at that.
Oh, and I should add "or that species have a given nature that makes them what they are". It can be a little of both. Therefore, my mention of Wolfram.
This is the problem: Eldredge called the linear horse series on display deplorable, speculative and imaginary. Nowhere does he discuss anything else. Then he refers to the same display as good evidence for evolution. From the original sources, prove your point.
Tacitus mentions Atlantis briefly. he states that its west of the Pillars of Hercules and consists of 2 very large islands. Kind of like the American continents if you didn't know any better.
I have not for some time believed that you don't understand this. He cites the actual fossil evidence, not a particular display he elsewhere condemns, as good evidence for evolution.
Tacitus doesn't count as an original source. He lived centuries after Plato.
Yes N, but effectively, certain systems are "non-starters" because they don't really ever go anywhere in such a way that later iterations gain anything new from earlier ones. Only Class 4 systems transmit information in meaningful ways from earlier to later iterations. Class 1 systems quickly generate uniformity of behavior; Class 2 systems quickly develop regularly patterned or nested behavior. Class 3 systems generate patterned behavior, but not in such a way that there is a transmission of information from earlier to later iterations.
Only Class 4 systems are characterized by behavior in which later generations are dependent on earlier stages of their evolution. So I gather macroevolution would therefore have to be classified as a Class 4 system. (Oddly, there seem to be rather few Class 4 systems among the 256 cellular automata that Wolfram depicts.)
But this discussion we're having really begs the question. For the dispute between macroevolution and ID basically devolves on what were the initial conditions, and why are the rules constructed as they are. Macroevolution not seeming to shed any light (into my mind at least) on precisely these issues -- being a skeptic and a humanist of conservative persuasion -- I stick with what I know.
Which is: Things are the way they are -- that is, they have a particular nature -- for a reason, and reason implies intelligence. And they evolve according to the laws that were built into our universe, which are themselves the product of intelligence.
This is not a scientific answer. But the questions that macroevolution tries to engage don't seem to be properly scientific questions. IMHO FWIW
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.