This is not an issue I am eager to get involved in, but Jonathan Alter's column on the basis of the intelligent design theory of evolution is quite good: Monkey See, Monkey Do.
As an aside, I'm reminded of what my Grade 12 biology teacher said: the theory of evolution is no longer a theory, but a law.
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Mark,
That, in fact, was a terrible partisan hack job of an article on the subject. Not because I disagree necessarily, but because we learned absolutely nothing upon which we could form an opinion. We have to take Alter's word for it that the science of intelligent design has been debunked, because he provides no explanation besides some appeals to authority. It's a partisan hack job because he takes all kinds of little shots at people with whom he disagrees, including calling the president a monkey. That's the way to continue the debate, Mr. Alter.
TB
Yeah, I probably should've put a disavowal about the partisan junk, most of which wasn't really relevent to the article. But still, within the context of a Newsweek piece, it does point out some of the differences between intelligent design and Darwinian evolution.
I take people who support intelligant design as seriously as I take people who deny gravity, deny the holocaust or support astrology.
dc
The difference being that one of those people who supports ID is now the most powerful political leader in the world, and, despite ostensibly saying that federal politicians have no business creating policy on what should be taught in the classroom, in the next breath he says something ridiculous about how ID should be taught as a balancing theory to evolution.
So yeah, I would take people who support ID about that seriously as well, if there weren't a lot of really credulous and easily swayed folk out there ready to unquestioningly support those people.
PS - I liked the article. It's no less partisan than some of the other stuff that gets linked here.
P.P.S - And it's not a news article, it's an editorial, which means that the author is free to choose his diction, his allusions, and his epithets, and also to assume that if you want the data and details behind the story and the sources, you'll go inform yourself.
[deleted: notice to Mark about the article being in its print-friendly form]
Maple Sugar, the fact that the article is no less partisan than other things we link here is not an argument. And yes, it is an editorial--the author is free to choose to not provide any evidence to back up his broad assertions. Then I am free to call it a hack job of an article.
No doubt someone could quote all kinds of people with impressive sounding credentials to say intelligent design is a credible scientific theory. Would you respect that appeal to authority without any further explanation? Would you laud that article as a great example of argumentative style? Would you take on your haughty dismissive tone ("you'll go inform yourself") with someone who questioned the content of that article?
No doubt someone could quote all kinds of people with impressive sounding credentials to say intelligent design is a credible scientific theory. Would you respect that appeal to authority without any further explanation?
Probably not, but then again, it would be because the authorities they appealed to would have very little to stand on in the first place, which I would have discovered on following up on them.
Would you take on your haughty dismissive tone ("you'll go inform yourself") with someone who questioned the content of that article?
Takes one user of dismissive tones ("hack job") to know one (though not sure why you thought this was haughty and dismissive in the first place, unless you thought the "you" was you, which it wasn't; I could have said "one", but that sounded much snootier).
A challenge, then, Tom: find me an article on this subject that presents the material in a way that you find suitably non-partisan and non-hack. Because this is a subject that interests me, I'd be interested to read what you recommend on it.
Gee, I wonder why I was reluctant to post this column, or anything on the evolution debate.
One, this is not a debate about evolution, it is a debate about the style and quality of Alter's article.
Two, calling something a hack job and then explaining why is not dismissive, it is an argument based on evidence. Telling readers (why do you assume I thought you were talking about me?) that they should inform themselves because an author (with whom you happen to agree) is too incompetent to back up his own arguments with evidence is haughty and dismissive.
I am not an expert on the various theories of evolutionary biology. I do not have an advanced degree in any related fields. I do not know who the experts are, which are the best institutes or think tanks, or the nature of the prominent individuals' agendas. These are not things I can learn through a simple Google search. I would also be careful about dismissing experts in fields that are not in my area of expertise just because I disagree with them generally, or deferring to the same just because I happen to agree with their work.
I have to rely on others to explain the key issues of the debate in a way that makes sense and follows the rules of evidence. A solid example seems to be this article in The New Yorker. It does seem to me that the author's conclusions are somewhat stronger than the evidence allows, but he does make a good case overall, and a hell of a lot better than Jonathan Alter, who should spend less time name calling and more time using evidence.
Some people here might also be more qualified to be dismissive than others. The blogosphere allows us all to pretend that we are equals. That little affectation is nice, it just ain't true.
dc
Thanks, Tom, I enjoyed the New Yorker article. I recognize that you're not a biologist, but I did want to read something on the subject that you considered valid, simply because reading different voices and discussing opinions of them are the kinds of things that are useful to me in my own teaching.
And now here I must tread softly, lest I again be accused of unwittingly committing the sin of being dismissive: the New Yorker article serves a different purpose than Alter's editorial. Despite its clear statement of bias from the outset, it's still exactly the kind of informative, primarily expository piece that I would seek out when reading an opinion-centric piece like Alter's.
Also, a significant difference between Orr's and Alter's pieces (besides style and purpose) is the context in which each was written: Orr's was written in May, before the President made his recently-publicised statement in support of teaching ID. My sense was that it was this statement that Alter was reacting to most, not ID itself.
Over and out. :)
I forwarded the post and comments onto a friend of mine who works in neurobiology at Columbia. Although evolution isn't exactly his field (short version: finding a cure for jetlag), he did suggest that instead of relying on poor sources such as Newsweek and the New Yorker, we might try Nature or Science. Since Science online is pretty much all subscription based, if you do want to get some more background on the design debate, there is this article at Nature (for free): Intelligent design: Who has designs on your students' minds? (also a pdf version from a link at the top-right).
Tom, I'm not sure why you include "think tanks" as somehow possibly comprising a "best" source of information on anything pertinent to the natural sciences. As a historian, can you cite when science was advanced as primarily a means of furthering an agenda sufficienctly ideological to supercede its mission of publishing the objective results of natural, reproducible phenomena observed under defined, controlled circumstances? I'm getting the impression you don't understand the purpose of a think tank, an institution which might serve a useful role in understanding the social sciences or determining the course of policy generally, but whose role in the natural sciences has never been established as anything useful in this regard. It's a small slip that you would mention this, but a telling one.
In science, interpretation comes second to experimentation. Even the theory of relativity wasn't science without observable experiments to give it credence. Einstein didn't need propagandistic institutions to make what he said plausible - instead he measured the bending of starlight around the moon during a solar eclipse; others later found that they could apply his theories through the development of atomic weaponry or further support them by observing the differences in time elapsed between variable velocity atomic-timed flights. Curiously, this has not been the case with religion, where observable phenomena comes second to the explanation behind it - or not behind it, or behind something entirely different altogether. Ditto Lamarckism, creationism, or the theory that proposed frogs, etc. could come alive, over time, from pieces of mud that previously resembled them only in form. They are all variations on the same theme of degrading the importance of controlled, reproducible observations in favor of something more psychologically comfortable or culturally relevant. I would think a historian, who should be, by definition, familiar with such horribly flawed yet predictably recurrent trends in human interpretation as these, should understand how they are not dissimilar to "intelligent design," and the approach which it necessarily also favors.
See, Montana (why don't you say who you are, otherwise, call me Dr. Bruscino), when I said "I do not know..." that meant, "I do not know." So if there are no good think tanks for the hard sciences, that's news to me. Way to go, Sherlock Holmes, you were able to see through my 'telling slip' to discover what I already told you.
Also, good job beating me up over defending intelligent design as a science, which I did not do. You are on a roll.
Dr. Bruscino,
If you take intelligent design as even a serious challenge to the science of evolution, (which would seem to be a prerequisite for a science teacher to be compelled to bother spending time mentioning it in the same breath as they do teaching evolution), then it would be right for a defender of the scientific method to vigorously challenge such a view. Science teachers might address common misperceptions, which "intelligent design," as a recently coined idea, surely is not. Also the first post on this thread (@7:51 PM) describes intelligent design as a "science," since, I quote you, "We have to take Alter's word for it that the _science_ (emphasis added) of intelligent design has been debunked..." If I was wrong for taking your description of "intelligent design" as a science, as an _acknowledgment_, on your part, of "intelligent design" as a science, then I regret the error. However, based on the context and the language employed, it is difficult to see what else you could have meant. Apologies if you meant something else, such as "the pseudo-science of intelligent design," or the "idea of intelligent design," or "the proposition of intelligent design," has been exposed as nothing more. I would not disagree with any descriptions of this sort.
Also, you did not state a confusion over whether think tanks exist in science, but what the best ones are, which presumes that they do exist. My apologies too if I misunderstood you in this context as well. I would not aim to disrespect your views, only to challenge how they can be used to obscure the problematic nature of intelligent design and how it has been uncritically advanced by its proponents. It is this basis which has allowed it to be furthered as something more substantial in the public sphere by continuing to allow it to be passed under the same missed hurdle in the discussions of others. Thanks!
1. Please. Read Alter's article. I was summarizing his argument.
2. Sure, you read my comment accurately, and used it to prove what I already said--I know virtually nothing about the prominent figures and institutions in the hard sciences. Glad we settled that. Again.
3. My views are not obscuring anything--they are trying to deal with this issue in an open way. As opposed to, oh I don't know, declaring that there are no serious questions to evolution posed by proponents of intelligent design, and therefore it should not even be mentioned in the classroom. Evolution becomes a stronger theory for explaining, or trying to explain, or making public the answers to the questions posed by intelligent design. That's a good thing.
I'm not sure what you stand to gain by not demonstrating the largesse of accepting an acknowledgment to the effect that you might have been misunderstood, despite using controversial terminology that Alter (who after re-reading him, I notice, uses the word "theory" to describe ID, and never "science,") clearly and intentionally makes it a point to avoid. I think you've made clear what you don't know, but how reiterating and reinforcing that lack contributes to a dialogue, rather than to merely talking past others (which I'm not interested in), is unclear. The "serious" questions either don't take seriously the scientific method or are just as intrinsic to any biological theory, but I can't know to which of these possibilities you refer unless you care to clarify that. And no theory becomes "stronger" based on whether lay people have the ability to comprehend it. The ability or willingness of the public to understanding science, even based on how a simplified, more palatable version is presented to them, is a different debate from whether a theory is "valid," which is how I would interpret "stronger."
If you are truly interested in how this sort of debate can make evolution a "stronger" theory - and please clarify how you mean that if that's your intention - by all means, I in no way shy away from such a discussion. I don't feel any hostility, but it's not my blog, so please feel free to describe what ground rules should apply with the recognition that science as an institution has well understood ground rules of its own that have made it the most successful method of inquiry devised for understanding the natural world; ground rules which neither intelligent design, nor those who take it or its disciples seriously, have ever sought to accomodate. To suggest that defenders or followers of intelligent design need to be taken seriously is to suggest that the scientific method itself is in jeopardy. Science has never been successfully made by mere public opinion (a flat earth), or by internal dissent for its own sake (cold fusion), and for good reason.
Alter: "The most clever thing about intelligent design is that it doesn't sound like nonsense. ... The scholarly articles are often well written and provocative. But the science within these papers has been demolished over and over by other scientists." (Emphasis added.)
Questions posed by proponents of intelligent design have forced evolutionists to explain, or explain better, or reword old explanations, for why the eye developed. I'm sorry if such so-called non-scientific questions stain the purity of scientific theory for some, but I think they are tremendously useful.
Concerning the eye bit, I have heard similar ID criticisms of bacterial flagellae and the motors that drive them. Could you cite where "evolutionists," (you could just as easily refer to them as "biologists," BTW, since that remains the prevailing, not very much challenged school of thought within the discipline) have been "forced" to modify an explanation for eye development? Even if so, I think this would be a minor point. It doesn't sound like it would affect the ideas of mutational or accumulated genetic change, pre-existing diversity within a population, mate selection, adaptation, survival of the fittest, general hallmarks of evolutionary thought. I could arbitrarily select any one of a number of ideological or even personal motivations to drive my own personal "criticism" of any narrow aspect of any particular idea within science, such as here where you go after a specific part of homeotic development. Your example doesn't change evolution as a theory, it doesn't say anything about an "intelligent designer" with a master plan on how to drive evolution, and until you provide evidence on how it sought to appropriate the scientific method, I think one could safely assume that role was serendipitous on the part of the ID yahoos, the high ground, as you suggest, having been taken back by supporters of evolution. If used by lowly evolutionists to refine their exalted explanations, it doesn't show that ID proponents have a better theory which should now be taught as part of the cannon of elementary biology.
In this discussion it is ultimately the theories themselves that compete against each other. Even if you "believe" that evolution and "ID" could coexist with minor, resolvable discrepancies, such as in the case with quantum mechanics and relativity, you still have yet to provide one shred of scientific evidence in favor of giving standing to ID itself as such, proving purpose, and how the "intelligent" nature of this speculative designer is necessary; for population diversity, genetic change, mate selection, and the incentive of adapting to one's ecological niche to be insufficient variables for explaining the diversity of the species and how they often appear to change over time in order to achieve that diversity. Please show me where you or anyone else has done that.
It is also worth noting the following:
You have also said that ID should be mentioned in the classroom 1) as a way to "limit" discussion on religion in a public school classroom, 2) so that religious kids don't feel they are part of a hostile environment. As someone who admits to not understanding how science evolves as an institution, your wish to have ideas in science explained in an easier, (even if perhaps less "pure" - whatever that means) way, also appears a motivation on your part for holding up evolution as a theory to be challenged. It is important to note that of these several motivations you have for pushing ID, none of them have to do with their own strengths as an idea in science, as such. If you don't like how science works, or what it takes for a theory to have any validity of its own, you have a much more formidable task then simply telling me how a more cool explanation for how eyes develop has been proposed. Refining one idea within a pre-existing theory doesn't ipso facto replace or change that _theory_. That's not a personal thing, that's just how science works, which you may or may not like, and are free to like or not like. But the fact that it's worked fine for explaining gravity, planetary motion, kinetics, electricity, chemistry, atomic physics, modern medicine, etc., etc., etc., is something I like just fine, haughty and dismissive, and unwilling to explain better though I(?) may be.
I would love to continue, but I have already answered all of your questions. If you are still confused, please read my previous comments.
What is science and what is not is hardly a confusing matter for me. We will have to disagree over your assertion that the unscientific arguments employed in this case necessarily improve the quality or state of scientific theories or of science generally, or even that they improve the understanding of either on the part of the lay public.
I have a hard time believing that high school kids would even need to get far enough into theoretical territory for the debate to matter-- or that most of their teachers are really qualified to talk about either theory in a meaningful way.
I guess we will have to wait until science proves that God doesn't exist or God reveals all of the secrets of the universe.
Don't you think it should first be concluded that the debate matters to scientists and therefore teachers of science before being molded into a curriculum? I highly doubt that cold fusion was a part of the relativity section of even college physics courses, and many controveries that are even widely accepted as such within science don't become a part of the curriculum, let alone one such as ID that is not taken as a serious challenge within the scientific community.
The debate is indeed beyond theoretical. Science already has ways to describe incredible displays of organization (entropy), or just as intricate recurrent patterns such as fractals, those predicted by chaos theory, or natural logarithms and sine waves. Whether or not this is just part of the natural beauty of the universe that scientists intrinsically appreciate, a form of "intelligence" in itself, or evidence of a supernatural deistic or theistic creator is an unrelated philosophical debate that detracts from science's necessary objectivity in determining why things occur rather than how humans reconcile those answers with their other beliefs, attitudes and sentiments. Such detraction has been a recurrent threat, and one often realized, since at least the decline of Greek civilization.
Given the discussion here, I would say that the philosophical debate is related. In addition, I don't see how ID detracts from the study of nature in all of its complexity.
I suppose if a proponent of ID in their research used methodology that adhered to the same standard of rigor employed by others in their study of nature, then that would be one thing. But since they generally don't, I will have to appreciate what they say in the same way I do the intersection of religion and science generally; metaphorically and inspirationally. This doesn't such qualities lack value, even in an academic sense. I think studying literature is also incredibly valuable, and even if the only device it employed were metaphor, I would still find this to be the case.
Human culture generally, and therefore, human nature, relies on mythology, metaphor, religion as Joseph Campbell pointed out. They are real and useful in a human sense, and I wouldn't think to detract from that. I think it is reasonable to ask for the same fairness in that they not seek to inform science in a way that undervalues the scientific method. It doesn't make much sense for scientists to expect that standard of other scientists and then make exception for proponents of intelligent design.
Regarding your comment about rigor, that sounds reasonable to me.
um, why was my comment cut? I maintain -- if you are even beginning to justify intelligent design, you are not especially smart.
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