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Today's Globe has two important articles on the intellectual diversity debate. The first, from Cathy Young, represents a strong conservative argument against the teaching of"intelligent design" as part of an intellectual diversity campaign. As Young points out,"'intelligent design' is not science. A scientific hypothesis must be testable -- meaning that, if it is wrong, there should be a way to disprove it." The growing association between the anti-evolution movement and promotion of academic bills of rights in state legislatures (especially in Ohio and Florida) is deeply troubling. Young contends that conservatives should find much to like in evolutionary theory; more to the point, rather than alienating them, proponents of intellectual diversity should be reaching out to the sciences, where merit plays a much more important role in personnel actions and ideology much less.
In another Globecolumn, Ronald Crutcher, the president of Norton's* Wheaton College, shows how defenders of the status quo are trying to sidetrack complaints that colleges and universities have become overly one-sided ideologically. Crutcher cautions that the intellectual diversity movement could" weaken American higher education's greatest strength: the wide variety in types of colleges and universities and their unique missions." (In other words, public liberal arts colleges have a mission to be one-sided ideologically?) Rather than calling for an examination of hiring and curricular practices, Crutcher calls for increased attention to assessment. (In other words, confuse people with educational gobbeldigook.) And, when all else fails, resort to the old fallback for defenders of the status quo: Crutcher recommends"strategies identified by the Association of American Colleges and Universities." Best of luck to those students unfortunate enough to be enrolled at Crutcher's institution.
That said, I am not a big fan of ID, and I do not think it belongs in the classroom, for reasons I won't get into here. I just wanted to point out that the oft-repeated assertion that ID is "just creationism" or "disguised creationism" or whatever is simply and demonstrably untrue.
A R Jacobs -
8/10/2005
Jonathan Dresner writes, "There are, as far as I know, no actual ID proponents who are not creationist Christians." As far as *I* know, there are none who *are* creationists -- but perhaps Mr Dresner and I are using the term "creationist" in different ways. If Dresner means that ID proponents believe in a Creator, he’s right; but historically the terms creationism and creationist have been used to refer to that mocvement of fundamentalist Christians (led by something called the Institute for Creation Research) that insists that God created all species de novo, that He did so in six literal days, that the earth is only six thousand years old, etc. Intelligent Design proponents believe none of these things. They believe in evolution of species by natural selection, they believe in the reliability of carbon dating, they believe that astronomers have achieved reasonably accurate approximations of the age of the universe. Therefore they are despised by the so-called “scientific creationism” movement. Surely there is a big difference between people who support -- and in many cases contribute to -- the progress of science and those who reject it our of hand.
David Silbey -
8/9/2005
"I believe what I said to be true (that religion is often underestimated by historians as a factor in history) based on my general reading. "
I harped on this for specific reasons. First, the criticism, whether you intended it or not, was a harsh one. In essence, it called into question the ability of historians to measure and weigh motivations. That's pretty much a basic skill for any practicing historian, and you tarred all of us with the same brush of incompetency.
But second on a much more practical level, if you couldn't provide actual citations, there was no direction for the conversation to move. If you had provided citations, we could have looked at them, discussed their specific cases, and weighed whether they were representative. That's a critical component of any good historical discussion. Without it, we are left simply with assertions that lead nowhere and prove nothing.
John H. Lederer -
8/9/2005
"I do not judge ID by its adherents; I judge ID by the inability or unwillingness of its proponents to separate their faith from the science they purport to present."
Isn't that self contradictory?
Jonathan Dresner -
8/9/2005
I do not judge ID by its adherents; I judge ID by the inability or unwillingness of its proponents to separate their faith from the science they purport to present.
Your dictates about what we don't and won't know are pretty weak: we know a great deal more than we did ten years ago about the fossil record, the fundamental processes and species development. Arthur Clarke said "If an elderly and distinguished scientist says something is possible, he is most likely correct. If he says that something is impossible, he is most likely wrong."
You talk about a "theory that would ... augment evolution." Evolutionary scientists do that all the time, adding complexity and clarity to the theory. ID is, in my view, one of two things: admission that it's too hard to understand; refusal to accept a mechanistic universe.
John H. Lederer -
8/9/2005
Prof. Luker,
I previously apologized to David Silbey for not having provided support for my conlusion. I believe it was in comments on a discussion of Guadalcanal.
I believe what I said to be true (that religion is often underestimated by historians as a factor in history) based on my general reading.
Nonetheless I have not taken the time to provide sources for my conclusion despite David Silbey having asked me for them repreatedly.
I will therefore withdraw the conclusion.
John H. Lederer -
8/9/2005
Mr. Watson,
I don't substantially disagree with that.
Were I teaching say, high school students, and were free of a school board, I would advance evolution as the best theory we have so far, but one that seems less than a complete explanation for all that we have observed.
I would probably also stress the difficulties of science when the events are remote in time or are very slow moving. I would put forward the example of Darwin as a scientist whose brilliant deductions and theorizing were based on diligent, painstaking work and a keen awareness of his natural environment. I would also use him as an example of one who stood fast to his rational conclusions, and his character, when under immense pressure to renounce the first and change the second.
John H. Lederer -
8/9/2005
Prof. Dresner,
I was unaware that the validity of a theory was dependent on the religious beliefs of its proponents.
I will grant you, that on things we ourselves have not investigated, the presence of a tin foil hat on the proponent is not a good sign.
Still, what little knowledge I have leads me to conclude that:
1. We do not understand the origins or development of life completely or even substantially.
2. It is unlikely that evolution alone, or without substantial modification, will provide such an explanation. That probability increases with time as we fail to find an adequate explanation for discontinuities in the fossil record, and we fail to observe speciation.
Believing those two numbered propositions I am very open to a theory that would supplement or augment evolution. That theory need not be religious, Indeed, I would find a proven religious one very disturbing, as I am sure would most.
I have become increasingly troubled by expressions of support for evolution that seem to consist of either absolutist statements of evolution as proven fact -- which I do not think it is --, or ad hominem attacks on anyone with a different theory. Evolution is rapidly becoming dogma rather than science. Science suffers for it.
Interestingly, that dogmatic approach is exactly the opposite of what Darwin embodied. It was he who originally found as troubling to his theory the fossil discontinuties, and suggested that a failure to find the "missing" fossil links or an explanation for them would be evidence against his theory.
Brandon Scott Watson -
8/9/2005
I know several IDers who are not creationist Christians, ranging from creationist Muslims to vitalists who are not theistic at all. The major proponents largely seem to be Christians, though.
I'm also not convinced that testability is a good criterion for what's scientific or not, since there are some things, like the first steps of classification, which we would want to consider scientific, but which are hard to fit in a testability framework. The testability criterion seems to me to require either that testable predictions be relatively easy to make or that the hard work that makes it possible to engage in testable prediction is necessarily not scientific; and neither seems to me to be quite right. But on this point I'm in a very small minority, I think; and there are people who have studied the question much more than I have. (The reasons I've given for not regarding ID-as-biology as scientific are rather different: e.g., were IDers consistent they would recognize that they have quite a few hurdles to clear before they can reach the point of considering whether ID is found in biology at all. That is, if ID is to live up to its claims, then it must first be rigorously examined in other fields where intelligent design is uncontroversially a factor: cryptography, forensics, etc. The work actually done in this regard, however, is casual and occasional, whereas it should be the whole focus of the movement, if they were really serious about their claims.)
In any case, it seems to me that the whole question of whether it is scientific is a distraction from the real issue, namely, whether it is reasonable to teach it in science classes. The issues are not the same. There is simply too much uncontroversially scientific work to learn about it all in the classroom; ID has to show itself to be not merely scientific but that it should be regarded as relatively foundational. And it can easily be shown, I think, that the characterization of ID found in its major proponents (Dembski, Behe) is at this stage simply inconsistent with its being so. By the admission of most IDers themselves, however, the basic points of evolutionary theory <em>are</em> foundational (and again, I think it can easily be shown that ID as characterized by its major proponents is inconsistent with its being otherwise). Likewise it should show itself to be relatively uncontroversial among scientists; and it clearly is not doing that. And (again) I think the major proponents of ID, to be consistent, have to say that any controversy over aspects of evolutionary theory is not over whether these mechanisms exist (both Behe and Dembski admit that they do) but over their extent, i.e., how much you can get out of the various mechanisms of natural selection, sexual selection, genetic drift, etc. So on both accounts we get the conclusion that the basics of evolutionary theory should be classroom fare and ID should be left as the sort of thing one learns, if at all, from articles in scientific journals, if there are any.
Ralph E. Luker -
8/8/2005
Mr. Lederer, This is the third time that David Silbey has asked you to name specific historians who dealt badly with religious history. You were the one who brought up the subject and made a point about it. Professor Silbey merely asks you to cite evidence. Will you do so or, if not, cite for him the source of your revelation?
Jonathan Dresner -
8/8/2005
There are, as far as I know, no actual ID proponents who are not creationist Christians. (there are some proponents of the other ID [intellectual diversity] who support ID-inclusive curricula just on the grounds that "there is no truth" but that's a whole different discussion) In theory, you are correct, and I suppose there might well be some X-philes out there who believe in alien intervention in the development of life. That view has no more explanatory power to it, without actual observed or tested evidence, than does the Genesis story.
Revelation is not observation.
John H. Lederer -
8/8/2005
"Mr. Lederer, Wouldn't you say that something that is not subject to being proved false is unscientific?"
I would not. Making a hypothesis and testing it is but one part of scientific knowledge. Observation is another, and the results of observation, even without hypothesis, can be scientific knowledge.
Indeed, I would suppose that most hypotheses are not defeated by another hypothesis but by a naked observation uncrowned by hypothesis. Is the observation unscientific?
Beyond that, what is or is not disprovable is highly dependent on our state of knowledge. Greater knowledge implies greater ability to disprove.
As I asked previously, if something is not yet provable or disprovable, does that make it "unscientific"?
I would concur with you that religion is unscientific. However, as I understand intelligent design, the theory is that life on earth was designed by an intelligent entity.
That is not religion per se.
If when examining a hydrogen atom at a new magnification we discover on the surface of the proton a code which decoded states : "Copyright 9112.35, Betelgeusean Concepts Inc. All rights reserved.", we might suspect intelligent design without a god.
Many years ago there was a TV show called "What in the World". A panel of scientific experts would examine some object and guess what it was. On occasion the producers would slip in a hooker -- a modern object that looked old, or a natural object that looked man made. These often gave the panel great difficulty.
I think it very hard at times to distinguish nature from intelligent intent. I know of no easy test, no "proof" I can imagine, short of seeing the object's creation. But that doesn't mean that I would discard one or the other hypothesis as not easilty susceptible to disproof and therefore "unscientific".
Robert KC Johnson -
8/8/2005
Corrected the location of Wheaton :)
The school, I know, has a quite good reputation--which makes all the more appalling its president's endorsement of the AAC&U philosophy.
Regardless of the merits of ID (and I don't consider it in any way science), from a tactical standpoint, this is a terrible issue for advocates of intellectual diversity. There's already enough of a problem in humanities and social science departments around the country without creating a problem, where one doesn't exist, in the natural sciences.
Jonathan Dresner -
8/8/2005
"Why is evolution science and ID not?"
Because evolution is based on observation, measurement, induction, deduction, and provides substantial explanations for natural phenomena that are reliable and repeatable. ID is based on faith, explains very little of the natural world, and uses as evidence only those few natural phenomena for which evolution has not yet provided complete (and comprehensible by children) answers.
Van L. Hayhow -
8/8/2005
Just for the record, Wheaton College is not in Boston but in Norton, Mass. a pleasant suburban town off of Route 495 in southeastern Mass. As the area gets more crowded and Boston more expensive, it is becoming a suburb of Boston but its an hour on the train (and you have to get to the train of course) and more if you drive in. The campus is near the Route 123 exit off 495 and is quite attractive. Two friends of mine teach there, (poli sci and French) and are quite dedicated.
David Silbey -
8/8/2005
"Why must a hypothesis to be a scientific one be one that can be proved or disproved? "
Because that's part of the foundational definition of science?
"oreover, if in fact, intelligent design is not subject to proof, doesn't that also imply that evolution is also not provable?" "
No.
After all doesn't the proof of evolution generally involve a disproof of intelligent design?"
No.
(Still waiting on citations of historians who haven't handled religious motivations well).
Ralph E. Luker -
8/8/2005
Mr. Lederer, Wouldn't you say that something that is not subject to being proved false is unscientific?
John H. Lederer -
8/8/2005
"As Young points out, "'intelligent design' is not science. A scientific hypothesis must be testable -- meaning that, if it is wrong, there should be a way to disprove it.""
Why must a hypothesis to be a scientific one be one that can be proved or disproved? Note that some hypotheses seem to have gone for a millenia or so before we had the ability to prove or disprove them. Were they unscientific until that point? Is a "scientific hypothesis" one that we just have not gotten around to proving or disproving?
Moreover, if in fact, intelligent design is not subject to proof, doesn't that also imply that evolution is also not provable? After all doesn't the proof of evolution generally involve a disproof of intelligent design? Are we just playing games here-- is ID unscientific until we can label it scientific and false in one fell swoop?
Granted the two could overlap (the "designer" designed evolution) but I think in a way that is a contradiction of the inherent nature of evolution. They seem like alternate hypotheses and the proof or disproof of one likely to disprove the other.
