{"id":245,"date":"2005-09-27T23:31:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-28T07:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=228"},"modified":"2005-09-27T23:31:00","modified_gmt":"2005-09-28T07:31:00","slug":"intelligent-design-and-the-philosophy-of-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2005\/09\/27\/intelligent-design-and-the-philosophy-of-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Intelligent Design and the Philosophy of Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> on Evangelical Outpost<\/a> 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).<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em> 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.)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-3X","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}