Paul Nelson has an interesting post at IDtheFuture following up on the the Kansas hearings and the relative importance of such things in the long run. I actually tend to agree with much of what he says. And despite the fact that I pointed to his statement as an example of trivializing what was so important to the DI the day before the Kansas elections, the truth is that Nelson has been pretty consistent in downplaying the political battles and focusing on the ideas.
Nelson was the one honest enough to say that there is no general theory of ID and that this was a big problem in terms of trying to focus any actual research. And while the rest of the DI movement has been very much focused on fighting PR battles and scoring political points, Nelson has pretty much stayed out of such things. And he's certainly right to point out that the truth or falsehood of ID and/or evolution will not be determined by a school board vote or a judicial decision, but by whether they are actually able to produce anything that helps us understand the world or not.
In general, I think he's right when he takes his fellow IDers to task for spending so much time and energy on getting any hint of ID into science classrooms rather than focusing on research and development of their ideas. He writes:
Unfortunately, much of the ID movement seems to think that they are. More legal, legislative, or public policy action, they say, is the route to pursue, and the most important goal of all is to affect the public school science curriculum.
I disagree, strongly. What can be won by a vote can be lost by a vote. And science -- the gaining of knowledge -- is not, and never will be, a matter of ballot boxes, lobbying, commercials, billboards, clever campaigns, or any of the rest of the apparatus of political persuasion or force...
Nor is the public school science curriculum nearly as important as many ID advocates, or ID critics, think. The worst thing that could happen to the infant science of ID would be for it to be taught by teachers who neither understand nor accept it, forced to do so by administrators who know even less, to students who (as a result) "learn" a hopeless mishmash of this and that about "intelligent design" -- just enough to make them forever skeptical of the ideas.
This echoes the earlier statements by Bruce Gordon, now the director of research at the Discovery Institute. Gordon wrote:
Design theory has had considerable difficulty gaining a hearing in academic contexts, as evidenced most recently by the the Polanyi Center affair at Baylor University. One of the principle reasons for this resistance and controversy is not far to seek: design-theoretic research has been hijacked as part of a larger cultural and political movement. In particular, the theory has been prematurely drawn into discussions of public science education where it has no business making an appearance without broad recognition from the scientific community that it is making a worthwhile contribution to our understanding of the natural world...
But inclusion of design theory as part of the standard discourse of the scientific community, if it ever happens, will be the result of a long and difficult process of quality research and publication. It also will be the result of overcoming the stigma that has become attached to design research because of the anti-evolutionary diatribes of some of its proponents on the one hand and its appropriation for the purpose of Christian apologetics on the other...Insofar as the results of such research have a place in broader scientific discussion, though, they must be presented and defended on the basis of reasons that are accessible to all. If design theory is to make a contribution to science, it must be worth pursuing on the basis of its own merits, not as an exercise in Christian 'cultural renewal,' the weight of which it cannot bear.
Nelson goes on to quote an email he received from someone he describes as a "senior scientist". And I think one thing that scientist said was very important:
It seems to me that that the best thing today is to stop all the public promotion of viewpoints about evolutionary theory and put the money into research. If only this had been done from the start, a) ID would not be associated in the public mind with teaching the controversies in evolutionary theory; and b) the research might have moved ID to the point where it could contribute to biology...
This exponential growth in capabilities, combined with an increasing use by biologists of a systems biology approach, offers an extraordinary opportunity for ID to make a fresh start to address mainstream biology. ID will in fact be a viable contributor to biology if the major concepts (Irreducible Complexity and Complex Specified Information) can be shown to help biologists in their work. This has not happened yet, but biologists will welcome ID if it does happen. Then the stigma of ID will disappear and "teaching the controversy" will not arouse the opposition from the scientific community that it does now.
As I've been preparing for a presentation this fall, I plan to conclude by saying something very similar to this. I will point out that there are many ideas in the history of science that have been initially rejected, even scoffed at, that later came to be accepted. The most obvious examples from the 20th century are continental drift and big bang cosmology. The difference is in the way that the originators of those ideas did in response to seeing their ideas rejected.
George Gamow didn't go and hire a PR firm to promote his ideas and try to get school boards and legislatures to "teach the controversy" about steady state theory. Alfred Wegener didn't accuse mainstream scientists of being "Stalinists" and "fascists" for not recognizing the brilliance of his ideas, or accuse them of censorship. They simply got to work, developing their models, collecting data, trying to integrate that data into a coherent picture of the world, tinkering with their explanations for that data, deriving testable hypotheses and predictions.
In short, they did what scientists do - they did science. And when their predictions turned out to be successful, the rest of the scientific world took notice. And within a short period of time, their theories became the dominant explanations. There is a lesson to be found there. The fact is that scientists are not some hidebound orthodoxy. The negative reaction to ID is a reaction to the largely dishonest manner in which it is promoted by its advocates. It's a reaction to the fact that they've spent millions of dollars on a deceitful public relations campaign and have produced nothing of any actual help in understanding the natural world.
The problem is that ID really was conceived by Phillip Johnson and the rest primarily as a cultural and poltiical movement. They paid a little lip service to science and the need for actual research, but they didn't really mean it. They skipped right over phase one of their wedge strategy and put all the time, money and effort into political maneuvers and PR campaigns. And as long as that is the case, their ideas will go nowhere in science. If they want to be taken seriously, they need to drop the PR campaigns and do some actual science.
All the talk of scientists being part of some atheist conspiracy is nonsense. As a whole, scientists really don't care about the philosophical questions, they care about understanding their little corner of the natural world. They care about developing explanations for the data they work with. They care about what works. And if ID can provide an explanation that works, they'll accept it. But they will not be swayed by commercials or accuations of censorship. Every crank that ever lived has claimed to be the victim of a hidebound scientific orthodoxy. And for every Wegener whose ideas were vindicated, there are a thousand who are forgotten because their ideas just never worked.
Do the science, and they will come. Show them some actual research that might confirm this idea, and they'll listen. But short circuit the process with false and exaggerated claims, with empty accusations of unfairness, with dishonest PR campaigns, and you will only get ridiculed. The bottom line for the ID movement is if they want to be taken seriously as an intellectual movement, shut down the PR campaign and get to work. Produce something useful and you'll be taken seriously. I don't think it will happen. Hell, I don't think it can happen. But I know for sure it won't happen until the whining, the empty rhetoric and the political maneuvering stops and the actual scientific work begins.
Update: This is actually in reply to the comment below from cserpent. For some reason, it won't let me post a comment to my own freaking blog at the moment.
cserpent-
I think the two issues are connected. I happen to agree with you, I don't think there is even hypothetically a means of testing ID as an explanation. At best, as Behe admitted under oath at the Dover trial, any proposed test of ID would really be a test of evolution as an explanation. But that is exactly my point: they don't produce research because they can't produce research. There are no predictions that flow from ID, because ID could explain any possible set of data. That's why ID can accomodate everything from Nelson's young earth creationism to Behe's old earth theistic evolution - because ID doesn't say anything specific enough to allow for testable hypotheses to be derived from it. But if that was possible, they would have no difficulty getting a hearing from scientists. If they could produce such research and confirm their explanation, then just like big bang cosmology and plate tectonics, scientists would quickly come around to accepting their explanation. The fact that they haven't surely implies that they can't, all their claims of hidden and secret research notwithstanding. Science doesn't work in secret. If you've got the goods, put them on display. With apologies to Cuba Gooding Jr: Show us the science.
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Good post. You're exactly right about university scientists; they just want to make sense of their data and get it published. And they sure as heck aren't uniform about their religious/philosophical beliefs. One has to be pretty ignorant of the process if one believes in some sort of broad conspiracy keeping out specific ideas.
Thanks for the thoughtful post, Ed. You say that "ID really was conceived by Phillip Johnson and the rest primarily as a cultural and poltiical movement." I think there's truth in that statement. As I understand it, a primary objective of Johnson and others is to convince people to recognize that, within the contemporary usage of the word science, there is a distinction between the philosophy of naturalism/materialism, on the one hand, and the methodology of empirical testing, on the other.
It was a good post. I've often marveled at the charge that scientists wouldn't want to see proof of an intelligent designer. Quite the contrary, I think even the most atheistic of scientists would be swayed by something that fantastic. In fact many would even welcome it. (Including myself, and I am about as obnoxious an atheist as they come.)
I think it stems from the idea that atheists (and by extention scientists) are cold, aloof and uncaring, that they lack the emotional depth to appreciate what it means to have faith, and that they are morally inferior. Of course someone like that is going to either ignore or suppress any science that doesn't toe the party line. When you start with premises like the ones above it almost goes without saying.
So when I am feeling charitable, I might be inclined to say that many ID supporters may feel as if the science wouldn't matter anyway, given the perceived nature of the Evil Atheist Darwinist Complex. While that would be a stupid and defeatist attitude, it would at least be understandable. When I'm feeling less charitable I think the accusations of evidence suppression etc. are nothing more than ploys to garner public sympathy.
zwilson wrote:
The opposite is true. Johnson goes to great lengths to argue that there is no distinction at all between philosophical naturalism and methodological naturalism. Science, as currently done, is atheism to him. And he wants to replace it with "theistic science" - whatever that is.
It sounds as if Paul Nelson does not belong at the Discovery Institute. He's exactly right to criticize his colleagues for doing PR instead of actual scientific research. But a question nags at me: What kind of research can they do? It's as if someone founded an institute to engage in an entirely new field of scientific research; they have the funding, the laboratory space, a big inventory of reagents and equipment--next step, make up that new field. Furthermore, as many critics have noted, how can one research intelligent design without trying to characterize the designer in any way? Or trying to determine how to get from blueprint to production model?
I think I know what '(a)theistic science' is: A contradiction in terms.
- JS
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The proof of a scientific revolution is in the big problems it solves. In 15 years ID has never shed any light on anything. You'd have to be a religious fanatic to believe in it.
Can you imagine trying to get biology to make sense without evolution? No? Well, they can't either.
The problem with ID, as a whole, is that it is essentially a negative, a reaction to evolutionary theory. As such, its "predictions" are of things that cannot currently be answered.
Take irreducible complexity: What ID is saying is not that we don't currently know a mechanism whereby some design feature came to be, but that we can never find such a mechanism. The problem with this line of thinking is it is static, not taking into account unforseen scientific techniques. For instance, there are any number of structures (ie, most cellular organelles, aming others) which a biologist mught have described as irreducibly complex in 1950 that are well understood today, all thanks to the discovery of DNA and methods of exploring that information.
The original contention of ID is neither verifiable nor falsifiable. If there is a creator God, there is no reason to believe s/he left "fingerprints" in creation other than the creation itself. The God of the Gaps argument is just nescience coupled with pessimism.
I happen to believe in revealed religion, and, hence, in a Designer. But I see no way forward to prove such a contention scientifically. ID might have a useful role if it could highlight problem areas where Darwinists need to do some more research (and which, for some reason, Darwinists did not realize there was a problem). But that is a pretty limited role.
Ed - I don't think that the real difference was what the originators did in response to rejection. The real difference was in the nature of the ideas in the first place - they were scientific and made testable predictions. That is what allowed the originators or others to research their ideas despite widespread skepticism and ridicule. They were able to collect data that tested predictions based upon their theories. ID has no theory. It makes no predictions, testable or otherwise. That is why it is considered a dead end and why ID proponents are not taken seriously by scientists. The comparison of ID to big bang cosmology and continental drift does great injustice to those theories.
Let's take continental drift for example. Wegener's observations were not sufficient to establish a new field of research. What really got continental drift seriously considered was when, many years later, quite apart from any thoughts of Wegener and his work, patterns of magnetic anomalies were observed in the ocean. Further study of these anomalies, which occurred as bands, revealed that they differed in strength and direction. They were progressively older in one direction, paired with matching bands that were older in the opposite direction. This led to the concept of the spreading center, and convection cells in the Earth's mantle.
So plate tectonics, as continental drift came to be known, provided theory that explained the observations, using physical mechanisms that can (at least in large part) be measured or estimated. Wegener's observations were consistent with the theory. I don't think ID "research" can advance unless mechanisms that can be studied are proposed.
Ed, I think you and I are trying to say the same thing: Johnson argues that naturalists/materialists sneak philosophy into the definition of science, rather than limit its definition to a methodology of empirical testing. Agree?
But Ed, that's the same Paul Nelson who in the same post wrote
"Need for secrecy"? "Safely away from the relentless gaze of the Panda's Thumb"? That's simply bizarre. A secret research program hidden from the sight of science, in a mysterious laboratory somewhere on an island .. erm. Well, it's bizarre. You reckon maybe they're developing a supersecret ontogenetic depth detector?
The "senior scientist" writes:
I think the "senior scientist" is a little optimistic. Even should (some) ID theories prove to be fruitful, I would expect significant resistance and debates over whether they are scientific or not. However, I would expect them to attract capeable scientists interested in their potential. And unlike the current situation, there actually would be a controversy to teach. Hell, any ID theory that merely looked promising would be likely to attract attention from capeable scientists, but it would need to do more than merely be promising to be anointed "scientific".
No, science is not a perfect meritocracy. But the lack of merit in ID (so far) is the biggest hurdle of those "theories".