An Unwinnable Debate?
Monday’s discussion of the case of Dr. Richard Sternberg has had me thinking about intelligent design in more general terms. Many people label ID as “unscientific.” ITA’s own Paul Musgrave implied this in the comments to the Sternberg post. To the casual reader, that term may sound like a pejorative, similar to calling an FMA proponent “homophobic.” But is it an indictment of the merits of arguments in favor of ID, or an indication of the limits of science itself?
First, let’s dispel what I see as a couple of misconceptions about ID. (Again, I am discussing the concept in general; I’m not familiar with the formal presentations of ID theory.) ID is not “stealth creationism.” In my experience, creationism starts with the Bible and attempts to arrange facts in such a way as to fit with Biblical accounts. ID, on the other hand, starts with scientific facts and argues that they point to design in the universe, leaving the identity of the designer as an open question. It is a subtle difference, perhaps, but an important one.
The concept of intelligent design is also not “god of the gaps.” The latter consists of observing phenomena which are not understood by science and supposing they are caused by direct divine intervention, whereas ID looks at something that is well-understood–such as the fine-tuning of the universe–and argues that it is extremely unlikely that such a situation could have arisen by chance.
But is this conclusion simply beyond the realm of science…by definition? The generally accepted model of science is that it looks for natural, observable causes for phenomena. When this is one of the ground rules for scientific inquiry (and it is so for very good reason), it is inevitable that the best “scientific” explanation for the origin of the universe or of life on earth will be a naturalistic one.
In his novel Contact, Carl Sagan apparently describes what he would consider evidence for a transcendent creator of the universe. In Chapter 24, “The Artist’s Signature,” the protagonist discovers a pattern in the digits of pi written out in Base 2. When the digits are arranged in a square raster, there is a perfect circle of one’s in a field of zero’s. If such a thing were found, would the scientific community accept it as evidence for a creator? Certainly some would do so on a personal and philosophical level. But it seems to me that the enterprise of science would note the remarkable coincidence and set about looking for natural explanations for it.
In this modern age, science has been exalted in the opinion of many as the ultimate source of knowledge. A small amount of reflection, however, should show the error in this stance. What can science tell us about morality? Can scientific observation uncover the way to live “the good life“? Ultimately, it may serve Intelligent Design proponents better to set up their camp beside the realm of science rather than within it.
25 Responses to “An Unwinnable Debate?”
Certainly most biologists and physicists I know disagree with you that ID is scientific for the simple reason ID doesn’t appear to be falsifiable. I think this view is correct.
The positive case for ID–such as it is–has two parts. First is Michael Behe’s “irreducible complexity”. His 1996 book is rightfully criticized for (among other things) imprecision in language. But he has since tightened his definition of such complexity so that it is indeed falsifiable.
That being said: Even if such irreducible complexity were to be demonstrated, design in the ID sense would not necessarily be implicated.
The other half of the IDers arsenal is William Dembski’s “specified complexity”. Unlike Behe’s arguments, which come from a knowledge of biochemistry, Dembski’s are epistemic in nature and deal with how we properly infer design. Prior to becoming the ID movement’s wunderkind, he wrote this text on the general problem of inference to design. It’s a genuinely tricky problem, and one that can in principle be scientific: as Dembski himself points out, there are applications in forensic science and crytography.
Unfortunately, he makes an absolute hash of it.
The ID program has very serious, and probably fatal, flaws. (I’m writing a PhD thesis all about them; more here.) But unfalsifiability is arguably not one of them, or at least not in the same fashion as for the earlier abomination of scientific creationism.
For a good discussion on avoiding the pitfalls of “naive falsificationism”, see Ch. 2 of this Philip Kitcher text.
“But is this conclusion simply beyond the realm of science…by definition?” I’ve added an emphasis there, because I think that it’s an important phrase. For the question as phrased, I would agree with Eric that the answer is “no, ID is not merely by virtue of its definition unscientific.” I do think that one could, in principle, have good scientific evidence for some ID-type hypothesis. But the line that most opponents of ID are taking is that as a matter of fact the data are so overwhelmingly lined up against ID, that any particular version of it will turn out to be either (i) pretty seriously falsified or (ii) unfalsifiable. A lot depends on how much is built into the thesis about the intelligent designer: if you build a lot into it, then you get some robust predictions that seem to fail (e.g., that nature’s structures should not be very cobbled together or klugy); if you don’t build much into it at all, then it becomes unfalsifiable (because it is too devoid of content).
Also, it’s important to specify what domains or phenomena one is offering an ID hypothesis for. The curricular debates are almost entirely about biology, but the few places where a plausible ID account might even begin are in physics (like the fine-tuning argument, as Eric cites). It’s entirely conceivable that a creator might have designed the physical laws of the universe but left it at that, yielding a sort of ‘physicist’s deism’ but leaving biology still entirely in the hands of the evolutionary theorist. One doesn’t see ID proponents recognizing this very often — usually they take evidence for design in some domain as somehow evidence for design elsewhere. But such reasoning would in fact be a non sequitur.
In physics, the obvious application for ID would be the Big Bang. Scientists don’t even try to explain how a singularity containing all the mass in the universe could explode, and the bizarre sequence of events in the first few seconds could suggest some conscious intervention.
In biology, the real application for ID is not evolution so much as human self-awareness. Mind/body dualism, spirit/matter and all that. Nothing new here, but if you want to give it a new name that’s fine with me.
“In biology, the real application for ID is not evolution so much as human self-awareness.”
…except that neuroscientists are making significant progress explaining human self-awareness without recourse to omnipotent intelligences, thank you very much. Part of the difficulty, unfortunately, is nailing down exactly what people mean by “consciousness” or “self-awareness”, terms that conflate a number of concepts that are almost certainly arise from different neural processes: the self-concept, awareness, and attention, to name just a few. Substantial work has been done in each of these areas. If you answer in protest that none of these terms does justice to your concept of consciousness, and therefore science has still not even begun to explain it, perhaps you should consider the possibility that your definition of “consciousness” is “whatever scientists can’t explain about the brain.”
When the digits are arranged in a square raster, there is a perfect circle of one’s in a field of zero’s. If such a thing were found, would the scientific community accept it as evidence for a creator?
It is surely perverse to imply Carl “Science as a Candle in the Dark” Sagan believed in a ‘creator’ in the sense that most advocates of intelligent design want to believe. In the scene you are describing, there was a creator, as there is a creator of this comment I am writing. However, when we come to the issue of whether there is ‘irreducible complexity’ in Behe’s sense–which is what ID proponents tend to base their more avant-garde (or perhaps rearguard) arguments on–that is not clear in any sense. And why would an intelligent designer stop with the cell? Why not tighten up the design of the human body by editing out the appendix?
I didn’t mean to imply ID was unscientific in my earlier comments: I meant to state that contention, categorically and unashamedly. It adds precisely nothing to our understanding of biology, while the Big Bang theory does, for instance, explain why static noise exists.
I agree with Paul on the interpretation of Contact: the entire point of the book is that there may or may not be a God / Higher Intelligence out there.
Without spoiling the plot of one of the best books ever written (in my opinion), the final few chapters of the book conclusively demonstrate any reasonable scientist’s agnosticism, and do so quite explicitly. A quick re-read should bring to light that one of the final characters introduced to the reader specifically notes his/her lack of knowledge about the existence of God.
Ditto to Tierney, w.r.t. consciousness. Appealing to ID to make sense of consciousness and/or the mind/body problem is to fall back on the sort of ‘god of the gaps’ thinking that Eric is right in admonishing us to avoid.
The criticism that ID is not falsifiable also applies to Darwin’s speculative hypothesis regarding evolution. Darwin’s condition – that it had to be shown that there was no possiblility for it not to be true – is also unfalsifiable.
On the other side of the question, so far as I am aware, there is not a single PROOF of Darwin’s hypothesis. Everything is in the realm of “might have been,” purely inferential connections.
The real problem is that Darwin was primarily motivated, as he stated in the original edition of his autobiography, to find something, anything to disprove the “damnable doctrine” of Christianity. His father and other family members were notorious anti-religionists long before 1859. In other words, evolution was not at all, as popularly supposed, an inductive conclusion drawn from indisputable facts. Darwin struggled for many decades to find some hypothesis that might support his predetermined conclusion.
His first love, inspired by Charles Lyell, was geology. As his diaries show, his consuming interest on the voyage of the Beagle was forming speculative geological theories, all of which proved to be nonsense. Despairing of using geology to disprove Christianity, Darwin then turned to biology.
Today, Darwinian evolution is merely a secular religious tool to batter the vestigial remnants of our 1787 Constitution and to establish socialism as the official religion of the United States. The purely religious nature of Darwinian’s doctrine accounts for the hysterical refusal of so-called scientists even to permit open debate.
If they are so dead sure of their “scientific” ground, why not permit students to hear both sides of the argument? Instead, like socialists in the Soviet Union, they opt for censorship to prevent anyone from hearing opposing views. People who dare to question Pravda must, in Soviet fashion, be made non-persons, caricatured as idiots, and expunged from the literature.
In addition to the question of free and open scientific inquiry, there is the huge problem of the political application of Darwinism. Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s “bulldog” made it crystal clear in the decades after 1859 that evolutionary theory proved, in his judgment, that there is no such thing as sin, or right or wrong; there is just the struggle for survival.
In this country, John Dewey’s whole theory of Progressive education, which he modeled upon the 1920 Soviet system that he called the future of the world, rested upon his assertion that Darwin had proved that there is no such thing as morality. That, in turn, is the foundation of Dewey’s Pragmatic philosophy that says that the end justifies the means, that anything that works for you is “valid.”
Darwin’s fellow socialists, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, used that doctrine very effectively.
Tom Brewton
If they are so dead sure of their “scientific” ground, why not permit students to hear both sides of the argument?
This is a ridiculous argument in favor of teaching ID and I am tired of hearing it.
We do not think that students should hear both sides of the story with respect to slavery – no, you’ll find very few people who think that students are being cheated by not hearing “alternative theories” about how whites are superior beings by virtue of the color of their skin alone.
For that matter, nor will you hear many people clamoring for alternative theories on how Persephone’s consumption of pomegranite seeds causes winter. Really, science has thus far drastically shrank the realm of what gods can do; until it stops or discovers those gods in their gaps, I see no reason to teach those gods as alternative theories, much less facts.
With regard to Mr. Blesch’s riposte, it’s not convincing to refuse to debate an issue because one is tired of hearing the other side. Note also, that Mr. Blesch adopts the all too typical ad hominem approach of liberal-socialists by characterizing the request for debate as ridiculous.
Why, by the way, waste two paragraphs erecting a pair of strawman issues about which no one is arguing?
I have advanced factual points, but “scientists” feel it beneath them to address reality.
I think my point was clear, no matter how obstinate you may wish to be: public schools in particular are no place for advancing fanciful thoeries that have no evidence to back them up (save some people’s wishing that they’re true).
Further, I don’t argue that people should not advance theories like ID (no matter how useless they are for advancing knowledge) because I am sick of hearing about ID, but I do argue against people who don’t even understand the scientific method crying about alternative thoeries and demanding proof when the burden rests on their shoulders. If you can offer proof of ID, then we’ll talk – but otherwise, you may as well beg that schoolchildren be taught about the invisible pink chipmunk in the corner that explains wave/particle duality.
And arguing that science needs to be willing to defend itself against every theory is ridiculous – science doesn’t need to defend itself against every theory that pops up, and claiming otherwise doesn’t make it so.
I do have to point out that given that Stalin was famously anti-Darwinian (relying on the disproved theories of Lysenko–theories dramatically challenged by IU’s own H. Muller), one of the comments above is laughable.
Darwinian evolution is splendidly falsifiable, in at least two ways: First, if we found a 4 billion year old fossil with vertebrae, and second, if we observed the spontaneous generation of new species. And I should note that original Darwinism has been falsified–Darwin couldn’t suggest a mechanism for natural selection; it wasn’t until Haldane (I think) proposed the Darwinian synthesis that included Mendelian genetics that we had a good theory of natural selection. (See, for instance, Bertrand Russell’s The Scientific Outlook, which treats Darwin as a brilliant dead end.)
It is surely perverse to imply Carl “Science as a Candle in the Dark” Sagan believed in a ‘creator’ in the sense that most advocates of intelligent design want to believe.
Uh… In what way did I imply that?? I clearly introduced that paragraph by saying that the hypothetical discovery in pi seems to be the sort of thing Sagan would have considered as evidence of a creator (note the lower case)…but of course, no such discovery has been made.
Intelligent Design…Time to Wade In
To make my final point a little simpler, allow me to restate it this way. When anyone claims that the theory of evolution says there is no God, they are making a claim that is as much based on their personal religious and philosphical convictions as …
I am a physicist and big ID proponent when it comes to cosmology. I am relatively agnostic when it comes to the biological side of the issue.
I tend to agree with the argument that ID is not science.
However, some points concerning the idea of falsifiability.
I would point out that some of the scientific theories developed to counter the appearance of design in cosmology, physics, and chemistry are themselves unfalsifiable. Parallel universe theories, in which Relativity precludes communication among the universes, are accepted as scientific and considered proper subject matter for journal articles — in spite of the fact that the other universes cannot even in principle be observed.
As for evolution, it may or may not be falsifiable, but Paul’s tired argument:
is not in the least convincing. If these are the typical of the ways one might falsify evolution, then evolution is essentially unfalsifiable. Paul is not telling us about a controlled experiment that might disprove evolution, he is saying that it would effectively take a miracle to disprove evolution. That means that, apart from such a miracle, evolution is sufficiently malleable to accommodate any observation. Paul’s examples are only slightly dressed-up versions of saying that only God appearing and creating a species ex-nihilo would disprove evolution.
“it would effectively take a miracle to disprove evolution.”
Or gravity.
Darwin’s theory of evolution is quite falsifiable. Simply disprove the hereditary transmission of traits with minor modifications across generations, or disprove that heritable characteristics have any aggregate effect on reproductive success, or show some mechanism by which all species are immutably segregated from all others.
If you could show that sexual conjugation exchanged an “atom” of essential material that was indivisible, distinguishable from all other species but indistinguishable within species, and that the resulting offspring had a variation of traits that was random with reference to an unchanging “essential” type and statictically unrelated to the traits of the parents, you would have variation, species types and no evolution.
This type of system is certainly not impossible; it would be quite trivial to model something along these lines in software. But this is not at all how the real world works.
Brad,
Stating that I must disprove what is manifestly true is not making the case that evolution is falsifiable.
Exactly how could this be done? How can I do an experiment, for example, where the outcome supports or refutes the notion that left-handiness has no effect on reproductive success?
Now I am far from an expert on the biological ID antievolutionary claims, but I don’t believe that “all species are immutably segregated” is one of them. I thought that speciation in bacteria and even plants in the lab is documented. So this is more of the same –this so-called test of evolution requires me to disprove something that has been demonstrated. This is like claiming gravitation is falsifiable –all I have to do is demonstrate that planets do not move around the sun.
Same thing –setting up an obviously incorrect strawman and saying, “disprove it and you’ll have falsified evolution.”
No, what I want, and I am not saying there is not such thing, is the following: A substantive (non-absurd) experiment that has never been done. Evolution predicts the outcome to be X, and if it is not X, then evolution is in big trouble.
On falsification and experimentation in biology, a lot of people are taking concepts from physics and attempting to apply it to biology. They should read some of the growing literature on the philosophy of biology as an autonomous science, including the recently departed Mayr’s “What Makes Biology Unique”.
I will also note that while speciation in plants is regularly observed, it has not been observed in bacteria in a technical sense. New strains of bacteria with unique properties emerging after as little as 5 years of selection pressures (I do not include selecting bacteria which have had plasmids artifically transfected) have been observed, but technically bacteria are not even divided into species as sexually-reproducing living things are.
“Stating that I must disprove what is manifestly true is not making the case that evolution is falsifiable.”
No, that evolution is built on claims that are not false does not mean that it, as a theory, is not falsifiable.
“This is like claiming gravitation is falsifiable –all I have to do is demonstrate that planets do not move around the sun.”
Exactly! Gravitation is falsifiable precicely by these means. Or more simply, if, when Astronaut David Scott simultaneously dropped a feather and a hammer on the moon, the feather had taken longer to fall, Newton and Galileo’s theories about gravity would have been proven false. And, actually, Newton’s theory was proven false, and replaced by relativity, in part by showing that Mercury did not circle the sun in the way Newtonian gravity predicted! You might have potential as a scientist yet…
I wonder what it would take our ID-friendly interlocutor here to accept the wild claims of physicists that ‘dark energy’ didn’t come into existence yesterday since, obviously, it is not a falsifiable theory (it has never yet been directly observed, and we can’t do any controlled, laboratory experiments).
If only people would go a little beyond Popper in their philosophy of science….
I am confused here. Brad wrote
I really do not know how to respond to that.
Then, as a response to my claim of his previous example “This is like claiming gravitation is falsifiable –all I have to do is demonstrate that planets do not move around the sun,” Brad responded
Newtonian gravitation was falsified, but not by proving that planets do not move around the sun (my analogy), but by a subtle experiment concerning the precession of Mercury’s orbit. That’s my point –it is useless to claim that gravitation is falsifiable by disproving something manifestly true –that planets move around the sun –instead a more detailed experiment was required. All the examples I’ve heard so far are either that evolution is falsifiable if you show a miracle occurring or if you disprove something that even most of the detractors of evolution don’t dispute. Where is the equivalent of the Mercury experiment for evolution?
As for Paul’s comment, which I think was directed at me
I am not exactly sure what the point is –I have already acknowledged that some theories in physics are not falsifiable (parallel universes). Still, it is not obvious that theories concerning dark energy are unfalsifiable –experiments are in the works to map out the tug of war between gravity and dark energy.
Of course, while physicists ponder things like parallel universes –which in part are invoked to counter cosmological ID –I have yet to hear one claim that they are “not a theory, but fact.”
A whole spectrum of beliefs exist on the idea of parallel universes in the physics community. To me it’s a sign of the decadence of high energy particle physics and what bad things can happen when theory outpaces experiment. For a similiar opinion check out Peter Woit’s blog. He, like I, think this stuff is unscientific and wish the string theory hype machine would disappear.