There’s a debate raging in the U.S. about teaching “intelligent design” in schools. Although I find ID promising, I’m not sure ID is ready for the public schoolhouse yet, and I’m even less sure that it’s good stewardship to spend resources on litigation and lobbying to force ID into the public school curriculum. Regardless, the nastiness of the debate is startling. Take a look for example at a recent post on Evangelical Outpost and the resulting comments, in which yours truly is called an “illiterate moron,” a “pathological liar,” “deluded,” and “dopderdoink,” among other things (by one of the commenters, not by the site’s proprietor, who is sympathetic to ID). The same guy also suggested I “engage in something called self-reflection for the first time in many years,” which is particularly amusing if you know me at all (a lack of painful introspection, most definitely, is not one of my problems).
The ID debate seems to illutrate the tenacity of scientific paradigms. The tenacity of a paradigm seems for many to correlate with its inherent merit. That doesn’t square with history. Every scientific theory we now reject — from heliocentrism to Netwonian science — was held tenaciously in its day.
I’m also interested in the tenacity with which many people on the anti-ID side of the debate seem to hold a particular theory about theories — that is, the theory that Popper’s falsifiability criterion is the sine qua non of “science.” I’ve begun reading Imre Lakatos, and I think this rings true: “[i]s, then, Popper’s falsifiability criterion the solution to the problem of demarcating science from pseudoscience? No. For Popper’s criterion ignores the remarkable tenacity of scientific theories. Scientists have thick skins. They do not abandon a theory merely because the facts contradict it.” (Lakatos, “Science & Psudoscience,” in “The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes” (Cambridge 1978, Vol. 1)), at p. 4.) In the same essay, Lakatos states that “As opposed to Popper the methodology of scientific research programmes does not offer instant rationality. One must treat budding programmes leniently: programmes may take decades before they get off the ground and become empirically progressive.” (Ibid. at p. 6.)
It’s fascinating, and frustrating, to observe the vehemence with which some oppose ID on supposedly objective grounds. As Kuhn and later Lakatos demonstrated, those grounds aren’t in any event objective, but any pretense of objectivity is abandoned by some when a new theory relating to natural history proposes some intelligent agency.
3 replies on “Intelligent Design and the Philosophy of Science”
LOL…dopderdoink….:)
Lakatos may be on to something not only in the scientific realm but in humanity in general. When confronting Calvinists on portions of Scripture that simply cannot correlate with their understanding of TULIP it is dismissed in a whole host of ways….but rarely by actually presenting the text in its most naturally understood form. We are all very tenacious creatures aren’t we?
Well, if there is no possible observation that can contradict it, then it is not science. At least that is what Popper is saying and that is part of the definition of science. What good are theoretically unfalsifiable theories? They would not be theories, they would be Laws.
I’m not totally sure that the degree of tenacity with which a belief is held is any criteria for evaluating that theory. After all, there is tenacity all around us. It’s more a human thing than a science thing.
re: dopderdoink
LOL. That must have at least elicited a smile. Be honest. 🙂
The same guy also suggested I “engage in something called self-reflection for the first time in many years,”
ROFL. I guess he has not spent much time on your blog or listening to your podcasts 😉
Scientists have thick skins. They do not abandon a theory merely because the facts contradict it.
thick skins? … could this be a euphemism for describing the human condition? 😉
Interestingly, I am engaged in a never ending debate with a friendly materialist who insists that Michael Behe is being thick-skinned about letting go of his silly theory of irreducible complexity. The irony of his argument is delicious.
When confronting Calvinists on portions of Scripture that simply cannot correlate with their understanding of TULIP it is dismissed in a whole host of ways….but rarely by actually presenting the text in its most naturally understood form.
Whoa, what a sweeping generalization. I take it that the Calvinist readership on TAGD is rather slim …
At least that is what Popper is saying and that is part of the definition of science.
And is Popper’s definition of science falsifiable? Clearly some things which are not falsifiable have value … if Popper is to be taken seriously.
Science is wed to philosophy … so devaluing philosophy in the name of science is sawing off the branch on which it sits.
A strategy of drawing demarcation lines which cordon off science from the rest of knowledge ultimately is doomed to fail. Reality and knowledge about reality is far more nuanced than that.