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Sunday, December 04, 2005
Fuller’s Dover Testimony
Michael Bérubé’s been wondering about how Steve Fuller, a leading figure in the sociology of science, could testify on behalf of ID proponents in Dover and also be blurbed on the back of a volume by Meera Nanda, criticizing the reactionary tendencies of post-modernism.
The ACLU has made Fuller’s testimony available, and I thought we might take a look at what he actually says there.
Fuller’ graduate training was at the University of Pittsburgh, which he says is the best history and philosophy of science program in the U. S. and probably the world (AM 5.7-10). (Note that here we established that NYU had the best philosophy department in the world. Though this can be kind of confusing to keep track of, remember that the University of Florida has the best literary and cultural studies department in world.) Fuller has published quite a lot--somewhat curiously, since the University of Pittsburgh seems not to encourage large numbers of publications, Rescher being the paradigm example here--and is undeniably an important scholar in the field.
His dissertation applied Herbert Simon’s concept of bounded rationality to scientific and legal reasoning (AM 9.17-19). He is asked to describe the contents of his books, and relays how they examine the statistical drift of scientific decision making and consensus-formation and how they examine the funding structures in which scientific research takes place. After discussing his interpretation of Kuhn and Popper, he begins to outline his view on intelligent design theory:
So this sort of idea of design which, you know, a lot of people think of as a purely religious idea is, in fact, an idea that is probably going to be of great significance as a kind of heuristic for doing science in the future as more and more science goes on computers. (AM 28.1-5)
Fuller describes how being a scientist means that you are trained in a very narrow way as a technical specialists (AM 32.20-25). He then says that the sociologist of science is better equipped than the practicing scientist to make decisions about long-term scientific trends and to distinguish science from non-science (AM 33-14). The next part of his testimony is concerned with why he believes that ID is scientific. Fuller rejects methodological naturalism and notes a strong correlation between non-conformist religious belief, scientific practice, and natural theology (AM 76.2-19). He notes that Charles Babbage sought to “operationalize free will” through simulation and suggests that artificial life and similar research is similarly motivated, if unacknowledgedly so (AM 80.2-23).
I recently delivered a paper on some sociological and literary implications of transhumanism and the “simulation hypothesis", which seems to involve an evolutionistic theism of man becoming demiurgic through computational technology. Thus, Fuller’s claim interests me here in that it itself seems to be have a latent technodeterminist origin. But I confess that I can’t follow Fuller’s stated objections to methodological naturalism in the testimony (AM 80-106, passim). His main point seems to be that claiming that ID is theistically motivated is confusing context of discovery with context of justification. The fact that there’s nothing produced by it to justify bothers him not, because this could be a by-product of discrimination against it by establishment science. He also mentions Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics and the idea that the scientific impulse contains within it a desire of mastery over nature that entails transforming the human condition (AM 119-22).
Fuller’s direct testimony concludes with some remarks about the potentially stultifying effects of peer review and elites reproducing narrow orthodoxies within such structures. Before moving on to the cross-examination, I want to make clear that I strongly disfavor teaching ID in science classrooms. There’s a relevant comment from an article in today’s NYT:
Derek Davis, director of the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor, said: “I teach at the largest Baptist university in the world. I’m a religious person. And my basic perspective is intelligent design doesn’t belong in science class.”
Mr. Davis noted that the advocates of intelligent design claim they are not talking about God or religion. “But they are, and everybody knows they are,” Mr. Davis said. “I just think we ought to quit playing games. It’s a religious worldview that’s being advanced."
The fact that Newton and Mendel may have had religious motivations for their scientific work is not relevant, I think, to ID, because their motivations were not to undermine an existing scientific theory for those religious reasons but rather to discover and explore the mind of God. Fuller’s desire for methodological pluralism and his invocation of discovery and justification both neglect this key distinction. This statement from his cross-examination reveals his awareness of this:
I mean, but it is true that these guys define their position very much in opposition to the evolutionists.And I do --yes, there’s a sense in which it would be better if there was a little space between these two so they could develop their programs independently.(PM 65.4-8)
Some of the discussion I’ve seen about Fuller’s testimony has been very quick to invoke various Sokal-induced chimeras and don’t seem to have paid much attention to what he actually is arguing. So perhaps this could be a beginning to a more detailed discussion (and please point me towards other places where this has been considered in detail).
Comments
I read about 40 pages or so of Fuller’s testimony and until someone changes my mind, I’m appalled.
He seems to set up history and philosophy and sociology of science as a meta-science explaining to the poor dumb scientists what they’re really doing. Those are interesting fields, but they don’t have that much power. He also seems not to care that none of the ID people have done any work in biology except in ID itself, which is really just an armchair philosophical critique of science. That strikes me as a fatal error on his part-- something that the autonomous development of the h & p & s of science has allowed him to do, by repicturing science to fit their theories.
None of it is really relevant to whether ID should be taught in HS, except insofar as it relativizes science to the point that anything can be science (albeit revolutionary science), so that no parent can object to anything the school does. (While doubting the authority of biologists, however, he speaks at great length about his own credentialed authority).
His obliviousness to the actual context of this debate in the US is fishy (especially given his own sociological-historical specialization) and I wonder whether he isn’t setting himself up for a side job as an expert witness. He mentions that the British program he works in argues that science and religion are compatible, except that scientists are anti-religious, and I suspect that there’s something fishy about that whole program.
To me the historical relationships between the mind of the scientist and the mind of God, with the engineer ultimately putting himself in the place of God and creating things, and Simon’s science of design or order (my paraphrase of some ideas he floated)—these are all interesting ideas, but his court testimony is a whole different thing.
I’m inclined to knock the U. Pittsburgh program down a few notches based on this guy’s testimony.
He then says that the sociologist of science is better equipped than the practicing scientist to make decisions about long-term scientific trends and to distinguish science from non-science
And yet, he does a stunningly bad job of distinguishing science from non-science himself. One hates to extrapolate from one single example (no matter how impressive the credentials) to an entire field, but it certainly seems to be the case that the minute they wade out of the shallows of the history or the sociology part and into the science part, there is a great cry for lifeboats.
How does one fill a hot air balloon?
You use a fire to heat cold air and capture it in the skin of a balloon. Science is the fire and the forethought to have a balloon on hand.
ID is just hot air, without a balloon in sight.
Post Modernism, at least Fuller’s brand, strikes me more as someone sputtering on your neck while trying to convince you it’s a tropical breeze that will fill all the world’s sails, and mix you a daqueri while we’re at it.
APS, his point seems to be that the deep waters extend to practicing scientists when they think about the larger context of what they do, which is at least partially what the trial addresses. I disagree with him about this--especially in this particular case--but I think it’s important to provide counterarguments, not complete dismissals.
On *The National Review*’s website, there’s a crazy piece of rhetorical blackmail by Mustafa Akyol:
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/akyol200512020813.asp
Akyol discusses how “Sadly, it was secularist Europe — and especially, theophobic France — rather than the religious United States that the Islamic world encountered as ‘the West.’ No wonder, then, that the West eventually became synonymous with godlessness.”
That’s right! So go terrorize France, you terrorists, because America is *really* a theocratic state in disguise. Islamists, we’re—just like you!
And how can we prove it to fundamentalist Muslims that we’re on their side? By supporting Intelligent Design! Take it way, Akyol:
“By its bold challenge to Darwinian evolution — a concept that claims it is possible to be an ‘intellectually fulfilled atheist’ — ID is indeed a wedge that can split the foundations of scientific materialism. ID presents a new perspective on science, one that is based solely on scientific evidence yet is fully compatible with faith in God. That’s why William Dembski, one of its leading theorists, defines ID as a bridge between science and theology.
“As the history of the cultural conflict between the modern West and Islam shows, ID can also be a bridge between these two civilizations. The first bricks of that bridge are now being laid in the Islamic world. In Turkey, the current debate over ID has attracted much attention in the Islamic media.”
So: the clash of civilizations can be eased, if only the US would become more religious. The war on terrorism will end once everyone is a fundamentalist. I’m just glad that the crew on *The National Review* are finally admitting that the Bushies and the Islamists are—wait for it—on the same side! As Akyol argues, the real problem is that the terrorists who hate materialism have targetted the wrong country because they think the America of TV and Hollywood is the real America. Actually, it’s *Europe* that’s to blame, so go bomb them. (And let’s all forget that Bush’s advice to get the country back in the saddle after 9/11 was to all go shopping. That’s just a case of materialism serving as the bitch of theocracy, I guess. )
The NR’s publication of Akyol’s essay gives the lie to the denial that ID is trying to bring theology in through the back door. Theology is coming right in through the front door, in fact, even if it feels, through all of this, that we’re all taking it in the rear.
I agree with you, Luther, that is a very bad argument, but you place a higher evidentiary value on the NROnline’s willingness to publish something than I do.
his point seems to be that the deep waters extend to practicing scientists when they think about the larger context of what they do, which is at least partially what the trial addresses. I disagree with him about this--especially in this particular case--but I think it’s important to provide counterarguments, not complete dismissals.
I’m not sure I get that - is the trial in Dover really about whether or not biologists get the cultural implications (the “larger context") of evolution? Or is the trial about whether or not something masquerading as science and designed to forward some larger cultural agenda should be admitted as science (on the strength of its cultural agenda)?
For that matter, frankly, as in the “larger context” of the ID debate, I think complete dismissal *is* in order. It sounds an awful lot like another attempt to invent a conflict in order to create an ersatz credibility (as in “teach the conflict"). Fuller blows some smoke, and people wonder - does he have a point? The more we debate it, the more it looks like he does.
A common assertion of the history or sociology of science crowd is exactly this:
“But rather, what you have is kind of a statistical drift in allegiances among people working in the scientific community over time, and especially if you add to it generational change.” (from his testimony: AM 12:8-11)
Which I suppose is interesting to watch for a sociologist. And a not very careful sociologist might even conclude that the resulting science is driven by the “drift in allegiances” rather than that the drift in allegiances is driven by the science. In part, perhaps, because it means that not just those drifts but all of science are part of the pleasant (for the sociologist) realm of sociology instead of the hard to understand realm of science. And when the sociologists can set themselves as more expert than biologists in biology or physicists in physics, well, how much more relevance can an academic want? (Why have science envy, when you can condescend to them instead? “You think you are moving to uncover truths about nature, but really, you just playing a social game, the rules of which you aren’t as privileged as I to see")
It’s no great leap from this equivocation or obfuscation or confusion (depending on how you assess the practitioner’s motives/intelligence) to the idea that the only thing wrong with ID is that scientists haven’t had time to drift that direction yet.
But the argument is a fraud, right from the start; the conclusion is, too.
Throw this in the bin with ID and holocaust revisionism as mendacious and irresponsible argumentation which expects to gain ground through publicity rather than force of reason, and for ulterior motives rather than a disinterested search for the truth.
So, there you go. Counterargument *and* dismissal, served with an attitude.
his cv doesn’t indicate any natural science background. i think that someone who wants to engage in meta-scientific chatter should at least have some basis within science ahead of time so that one is familiar with the culture. kuhn had a background in physics.
Hyperspecialization is a serious problem here. Acquiring technical mastery of one subset of electrical engineering, optical physics, contemporary eugenics, etc. doesn’t imply a conceptual understanding of the logic of scientific discovery, particularly over long periods of time.
jon,
i’m not talking about getting a science ph.d., i’m talking about someone who wants to study the sociology of science would be well prepared if they did a double major with a science as an undergrad. patent attorneys often have a science degree (or even doctorate) under their belt. a guy who runs a lab i know has an undergrad double major in english and biology (he has a ph.d. in bioloyg obviously). at lab meetings he has some pretty precise critiques of grammar and style in terms of future presentations or papers, and we never realized until a few weeks ago when he mentioned that he’d done an english degree.
to understand how science is done a minimal stint in a laboratory as an undergrad would help a lot of people. the long view is irrelevant if you don’t know about the day-to-day epiphenomena upon which it is built.
Razib, I disagree very strongly with Fuller’s position about this--to the point of mystification--but it’s parochial to suggest that more time taking multiple-choice tests and dissecting things would have affected his later thinking. It’s just completely irrelevant to the argument he’s making.
Science is a strictly defined disciplin. ID dosen’t meet this definition. Fuller (and others) are suggesting we should change the definition. This is a highly radical and political suggestion. It would be a big step towards theocracy. I don’t think it will succeed becasue it is so radical, but it is importatn to realize that a large segment of americans want a theocracy. We should be on the watch for instances like DOver. It isn’t written in stone that the US will always be a secular democracy.
I quote Fuller from Berube’s thread:
“Some of the later posts actually get at this one quite well. It seems that people think that just because we talk about Hindu, Muslim and Christian ‘fundamentalism’, there must be some ‘fundamentalist’ essence they share. So-called Hindu fundamentalism strikes me, having read Nanda, as simply an Indian nationalist movement whose modus operandi isn’t so different from the nationalist movements that, say, Benedict Anderson talks about in ‘Imagined Communities’. Its use of history is basically a pastiche of rather different strands that project a mythical Indian past. Christian and Muslim fundamentalism, in contrast, are attempts to revive and update religious traditions that have actually motivated good science in the past, and the latter have to do with the postulation of a monotheistic God as being the source of the order we perceive in the universe. In this respect, it’s quite significant that Darwin was trying – and of course failed – to discover design in nature. Why try in the first place, if you didn’t think some order was put there? Basically ID is the disinherited sibling of the history of our own science. It isn’t some ‘alternative science’ that starts from radically different cultural assumptions – real or imagined.”
Religious and cultural bigotry, nothing more. I suspected that might be the case from his repeated mentions in that thread of atheist scientists being against Christianity instead of against religion, and from his how-dare-you rhetoric where Christianity was concerned. This confirms it. And he’s proud of it.
"Acquiring technical mastery of one subset of electrical engineering ... etc. doesn’t imply a conceptual understanding of the logic of scientific discovery, particularly over long periods of time.”
Evidently, to judge by Fuller and his fine credentials, neither does technical mastery of the sociology of science.
Can we all please quit equivocating between the social and professional behavior of scientists and science?
Let me put a simple question to anyone who wishes to stand-in for Fuller: was Special Relativity accepted by the scientific community because Einstein was an iconic figure? Or did Einstein become an iconic figure in part because of his work on Special Relativity? If Lorentz had more personal magnetism, would there be an aether?
I don’t doubt that scientists have their own peculiar social behaviors, and that these might even act to steer the direction of research or slow the acceptance of better theories. But you have to make a dishonest argument to get from there to the idea that a sociologist is in the best position to determine if string theory will win the day, or that recruiting more bodies will make ID true.
Lotta fancy words here.
I think this Fuller guy is saying, “Look, in the spirit of compromise, if we simply redefine what science means, then ID could be taught as science.”
He needn’t have gone through all the trouble.
The Kansas board of education has gone through all the trouble of doing that already.
I haven’t read his entire testimony and failed to understand much of what I did read (especially the parts having to do with computers, which seemed utterly bizarre) but is Fuller arguing nothing more than that ID could potentially be science? I’d actually agree with that position but it’s incredibly minor and really besides the point in the Dover trial: there are, of course, a great number of things which could potentially be science which we would never consider teaching in science classes. What we should teach in science classes is, of course, what scientists actually think.
This debate was about what will be taught, not what potentially should be taught. If Fuller ignored the context in which he was making these statements then I can’t help but think that he was behaving very irresponsibly.
Victor
“there are, of course, a great number of things which could potentially be science which we would never consider teaching in science classes”
Yeah, like the theory that we are all puppets in a show being put on by the Styrgiungling Myropids of Galaxy 43 and we’ll discovery that the show is over when they turn the gravity machine off.
I’ve got a lot of other theories, too, all of which are more interesting than “ID theory” and which don’t lead to the sanctioning of institutionalized discrimination against gay people.
As a Pittsburgh HPS grad studnet, I would like to respond to the first comment about ‘knocking down PItt...”; I find this disheartening. Indeed, it seems to be a move that the ID folks would use, as it its similar to the inference from ‘he has got a science degree and he thinks evolution is wrong’ to ‘even SCIENCE thinks evolution is wrong’. Just because one of our graduates thinks ID is science, it seems a bit rash to judge the whole department. Judging the work of a whole group of people, based on one of their former colleagues (who, you should note, now works in a sociology department) is a bit unfair and hardly justified.
And, in any event, you should note that the one of the other expert witnesses was another HPS grad, Rob Pennock. His position is somewhat more representative of Pittsburgh HPS on the ID issue.
As for the comments about Fuller’s credentials in science, I do think that they are relevant, and they can never hurt, but judging his arguments based on whether he has a BA or MA or whatever in biology or some other scientific field is Ad Hominem; it may be true that those exposed to the actual practice of science are less likely to promote ID (at least, one would hope!), but we must judge arguments on their own merits, not on the credentials of those who make up the argument.
Personally, I agree with most of you; ID is not a science. And, even if Fuller had good arguments to support his position regarding ID’s status as a science (and I don’t think he does, but I won’t comment on this now), it is still incredibly irresponsible for him to argue a subtle philosophical point (to be charitable) in a court of law. The courtroom is not a philosophy journal, there is more at stake than one’s pet theory or opinion.
Cheers,
Benny Goldberg
"we must judge arguments on their own merits, not on the credentials of those who make up the argument”
“(who [Fuller], you should note, now works in a sociology department)”
And would you include disciplinary ad hominems within your prescriptions or do they just not apply when taking jabs at sociologists?
Benny Goldberg: “it may be true that those exposed to the actual practice of science are less likely to promote ID (at least, one would hope!), but we must judge arguments on their own merits, not on the credentials of those who make up the argument.”
Fuller’s argument is a waste of time. At this point, I’m more interested in the odd ideas that people have about science who have never done any science. Try Jonathan’s “it’s parochial to suggest that more time taking multiple-choice tests and dissecting things” for example. Multiple-choice tests? I can’t remember a single multiple-choice test in an undergraduate science course, ever.
I would say that academics really shouldn’t write about science professionally until they’ve done even a little of it. I mean real research, not just labs where you know what you’re supposed to find. People have the oddest ideas about what science is, and I don’t mean only the sceptics, or the people like Fuller for whom opinions about science are really just a way to ratify opinions about Christianity or something; there are also a lot of people who seem to favor a weird scientism.
As a non-academic, popular example try this passage from Norman Spinrad. (A good mid-range SF writer; anyone who reads a good deal of SF who has not read _The Iron Dream_ should do so.)
Spinrad: “Let’s [...] consider “science” as a worldview. Deeper even than the scientific method is the conviction that reality has a knowable nature, that all of creation is of a consistent pattern, that it is all interrelated, that what is is real, and what is real is ultimately knowable [...]”
I don’t think that Spinrad could have written this if he had done any grad school level science. You just don’t need a lot of this stuff about “ultimate knowability” or even, quite, consistency in order to research something. It’s no more necessary than Fuller’s fantasy about how scientists needed to believe that the world had a monotheistic designer in order for science to get started. It’s a projection of faith. If a scientist has “faith” in anything, it’s faith in a method, not faith about some aspect of the universe.
I can’t remember a single multiple-choice test in an undergraduate science course, ever.
amen! i’m sorry jon, but as i said, that sort of statement is what prompted me to post what i posted (as i noted). even excluding the day in and day out of lab minutiae, cranking your way through a problem set in 60 minutes where there are questions which are not exactly modeled on anything you see in homework, and which have a precise and clear answer, is something i have never seen in a liberal arts course. i only have a minor in history, to go along with a b.s. in biochemistry along with a lot of course work in evolution and ecology, so i can’t say i have the biggest data sample. but, i never took a history course below a 300 level (junior), and all but one of my courses i took in history were 400 level (senior), so i think i have some idea of what upper division liberal arts is like. and it is simply qualitatively different from a physical chemistry course in the mentality. similarly, a physical chemistry course is nothing like the general chemistry stuff that pre-meds end up taking. once the pre-meds leave chemistry (after organic) the classes shrink and grades become less important so professors don’t write multiple choice exams.
anyway, i wouldn’t go as far as rich. myself, i’ve done stuff in labs as an undergrad, so i don’t have the graduate school mentality. but i don’t think making an issue of background is ad homimem. i don’t think it invalidates someone’s perspective, but, it does give less credibility than they would otherwise have.
i commented mostly because what i saw of fuller’s testimony suggested he didn’t have close up contact as a working scientist with its day-to-day minutiae. I.D. simply doesn’t cut it as science, where’s the bench work?!?! jon’s quip about multiple choice exams and dissection trivialized my point. as i stated in my post, would you trust an anthropologist who made generalizations about a tribe in amazonia if they had never lived amongst them?
First of all, there’s no doubt that multiple choice tests feature prominently in undergraduate science education in the U. S., particularly at the introductory level. My original comment about them was flippant, but the more serious point is that the kind of technical training provided by scientific education in an era of hyperspecialization is not necessary to make arguments about the social reception of science or its processes of discovery and justification. The problem I see with Fuller’s argument is conceptual, not technical.
Latour’s anthropological analyses of science in action are worth noting here as well.
the more serious point is that the kind of technical training provided by scientific education in an era of hyperspecialization is not necessary to make arguments about the social reception of science or its processes of discovery and justification.
It is still a specious argument.
Look, the Ph.D. sociologist has just as specialized a training as the Ph.D. biologist or physicist - except that he is *not* trained in doing science. Why this makes him *more* qualified on what it means to *do science* (rather than on the social behavior of scientists) continues to elude me.
Frankly, I think a few more dissections and few more multiple choice tests in science *are* worth more than a few more statistical surveys of how kids turn their hat brims and a few more multiple choice tests in sociology if what you want to know about is science. That’s what an education is for.
It is more clear if you use the same argument on a similar case: Perhaps the hyperspecialization of the surgeon means that a surgeon won’t have the broadest view of human health and medicine, but he is going to know a lot more about health than someone who studies the social patterns of surgeons. (Sociologists are a lot cheaper than surgeons, too. You can save a bundle in health care costs if you are commited to this argument.)
Gah - it’s a variant of the whole ID argument - evolution hasn’t answered all the questions about the development of life on earth, therefore it must be designed. No scientist knows everything about science, therefore we should ask a sociologist.
Why does anyone take this seriously?
"the kind of technical training provided by scientific education in an era of hyperspecialization”
No one has said anything about technical training. What I’ve written and what I’ve seen other people write here are variations on saying that people who professionally study science should have actually done some very slight amount of science. No one expects people in philosophy of science to really know anything technical, but it would be good if they had once had the experience of setting out to investigate something scientifically that was not a simple problem for which people knew the “correct answer”. I would add, given the propensity of sociologists to think that everything is sociological and the confidence of people in the humanities to think that everything has an author, that it would be good if they briefly studied something involving the physical or biological sciences.
As for Latour, APS has already written on this one: “Can we all please quit equivocating between the social and professional behavior of scientists and science?”
Is is possible to know anything about science without receiving a university credential? What is it that you take the word to mean? Reflecting on this for a moment will reveal how much both of you are overreaching.
The problem here and even more so at Bérubé’s, is that many of you seem to be allowing indignation to prevent you from focusing on what Fuller actually has to say.
Hmm, and I’d say that you seem to be allowing your usual reflexive defense of authority within your field to prevent you from focusing on what Fuller actually has to say. How’s that for instant psychological analysis? Maybe that’s why you’re so mystified.
It’s possible to do science with only a high school education. The point is in the experience of setting out to investigate something and knowing that there is no one who can tell you the answer, not in doing cutting-edge work.
I’ve been following this thread with some interest over the last few days, but I’ve been responding to another blog (Michael Berube’s) as well as attending a conference. I won’t be able to participate anymore than the statement below, where I pick up on some issues that have been raised. Since it’s easiest to quote and respond, I’ll do that, whenever possible.
I’m actually not a methodological pluralist, in the Feyerabendian sense of ‘letting a thousand flowers bloom’. And I’m not a relativist or a postmodernist either. At least the people who normally call themselves these things would not see me as one of theirs. I actually support the promotion of ID because of the heuristic value of thinking about nature from a design standpoint, and historically this has very often meant adopting the standpoint of the mind of God. For me ID does not prove the existence of God, but it’s part of long-standing tradition in the history of science (including Newton, Babbage, Mendel) for whom the presupposition of God as the intelligence designer behind the universe (in whose image and likeness humans were created) has led to important science. Unfortunately, ID is not fully in touch with this tradition, and so the full pedagogical value of ID (regardless of whether Behe or Dembski can validate their particular theories) is not fully appreciated. I said this during the trial. I realize that trial transcripts are always a bit difficult to interpret since the court reporter (who is often unfamiliar with the subject) must transcribe things as they are said, not as they are meant. But that’s my basic line. I also said I thought Neo-Darwinism was much better supported than ID, but that is only one of many considerations when deciding what’s pedagogically valuable.
One of you queried Babbage: He was a successor to Newton’s chair at Cambridge in the 1830s who is often credited with having invented the computer (a.k.a. analytic engine). He presented a proof for the existence of God in one of the Bridgewater Treatises that basically imagines God as computer programme who sticks in some stochastic variables to allow for free will and perhaps even changes to the original programme. There are lots of different mechanical models for envisaging divine creation – not simply, or even most importantly, a watchmaker. The computer model has been perhaps even more important. ID should reclaim this from the evolutionists. Rob Pennock, who seems to be somebody’s idea of good historian and philosopher of science, basically rediscovered Babbage without realizing it, when he frothed about a glorified computer virus generating programme that he passed off as an ‘instantiation’ of natural selection. The defence lawyer queried whether such a programme, even with all its stochastic and self-changing qualities, could not be just as easily read as support for ID. Pennock gave a canned or stupefied answer to that and all the other questions concerning the historical development of science. Too bad the lawyer didn’t have enough background in HPS himself to tear Pennock to shreds.
This brings me to why I agreed to be an expert witness: I read the expert testimony statements of the plaintiffs: Pennock, Ken Miller, Barbara Forrest, and the rest of the anti-ID travelling road show (all nicely compiled by Ruse and Dembski in their 2004 CUP volume). They are uniformly appalling in their self-serving bluster and historical and philosophical fatuousness. If you think something called ‘methodological naturalism’ existed before the latest round of Creationist trials in the early 1980s, then you can’t tell the difference between a real and pseudo-philosophy. Yet, Pennock – a Pitt grad like myself – basically defended this made-up dogma, which is designed to conflate a metaphysical position (naturalism) with a methodological position (some extended version of positivism). The result is to give the impression that the only way you can do proper science is by presupposing that the world works according to natural causes as they are ordinarily understood.
I happen to be a naturalist but not a methodological naturalist because I don’t believe naturalism has a consistent track record in delivering good science (initial opposition to Mendel was largely on naturalistic grounds) but also anti-naturalism has had significant heuristic value. This point is more easily seen if you read the history of science from past to present (i.e. as it occurred) rather than present to past (i.e. Whiggishly). Methodological naturalism is an historiographical mirage that is created when you read the history of science whiggishly and hence notice that, say, an originally supernatural force like gravity was eventually ‘naturalised’ – rather than the fact that the force was originally conceived as supernatural (and indeed in relation to a particular view of divine action). Again, if we are talking about what should be taught in schools, you are interested in what stimulates ideas that eventually become scientifically proven. And here one needs to give supernaturalism its due. Methodological naturalism is just an attempt to impose thought control on what sort of person is eligible to do science. If you follow the mainstream philosophical literature – not the parallel universe that consists of Pennock and the other philosophers who make a living out of defending evolution – you repeatedly find philosophers not only disputing methodological naturalism on its own terms, but also wondering why such ‘naturalists’ don’t stress the traditional anti-monotheistic provenance of the metaphysical doctrine (from Spinoza). The answer of course, is that ‘methodological naturalism’, unlike metaphysical naturalism, is afraid of upsetting Christians who want to be evolutionists and believe in a monotheistic god too: i.e. so-called methodological naturalism is a bit of PC pseudo-philosophy tailor-made for our times.
Here’s an interesting quote: “The fact that Newton and Mendel may have had religious motivations for their scientific work is not relevant, I think, to ID, because their motivations were not to undermine an existing scientific theory for those religious reasons but rather to discover and explore the mind of God.” I guess I don’t need to say that you can want to explore the mind of God and undermine an existing theory at the same time. But the more important point is: What’s so wrong with trying to want to undermine a scientific theory? It’s times like this that I realize that Karl Popper was saying something radical by proposing the criterion of falsifiability, which he always interpreted as something that scientists did to each other’s work, because each scientist would be expected to remain tenaciously wedded to their own work unless proven otherwise (by an equally determined colleague). So, the negative intent of ID is not itself a problem, as far as I’m concerned.
Another quote: “For that matter, frankly, as in the “larger context” of the ID debate, I think complete dismissal *is* in order. It sounds an awful lot like another attempt to invent a conflict in order to create an ersatz credibility (as in “teach the conflict"). Fuller blows some smoke, and people wonder - does he have a point? The more we debate it, the more it looks like he does.” I’d love read a non question-begging definition of the difference between a ‘real’ and an ‘invented’ conflict in science. It seems like another way of restricting who’s got the right to raise a criticism in science, regardless of the validity of the criticism. I actually don’t believe ID should be spending so much time finding holes in evolution. Better time would be spent in finding alternative hypotheses for what evolution claims exclusively for its own research programme (with some research horizons tossed in). Nevertheless, the hoels in evolution are holes whether Michael Behe or Steven Jay Gould says it. The fact that one might want to get some conceptual mileage for an anti-evolution position should not be at issue here.
Another quote, starting with a quote from me, and then the poster’s comment: “[Fuller:] Basically ID is the disinherited sibling of the history of our own science. It isn’t some ‘alternative science’ that starts from radically different cultural assumptions – real or imagined. [Poster]: Religious and cultural bigotry, nothing more.” I suppose I earned this response because the poster read ‘our’ in an exclusive (i.e. Western only) rather than an inclusive (i.e. all of humanity) fashion. The latter was intended. If the poster is still troubled, it would be interesting to learn why.
Here’s the real winner: “And, even if Fuller had good arguments to support his position regarding ID’s status as a science (and I don’t think he does, but I won’t comment on this now), it is still incredibly irresponsible for him to argue a subtle philosophical point (to be charitable) in a court of law. The courtroom is not a philosophy journal, there is more at stake than one’s pet theory or opinion.” Welcome to the Middle Ages! The mind boggles at what this guy thinks a philosopher should say under oath other than his considered philosophical judgement on the matter. Instead, we get Pitt’s answer to Averroes telling us that the US legal system can’t deal with philosophical sophistication. So what’s the alternative? Philosophers of science should stay out of the courtroom unless they’re epistemic lapdogs for the scientific establishment like Pennock? People sometimes call me cynical but this statement reveals just what a low opinion some people have of lay judgement, even in the context of courtroom deliberations. Finally, when thinking about all this, it’s worth recalling that the scientific method was invented by a lawyer, Francis Bacon, who was not a scientist, but someone who believed that science was very important for society but that scientists overhype their claims with metaphysics and so a neutral method – model on a judicial inquisition – is need to sort the wheat from the chaff.
END
Thanks to Steve Fuller for his response. But I have to take issue with one of his comments that I think is central to the problem of ID.
“Nevertheless, the hoels in evolution are holes whether Michael Behe or Steven Jay Gould says it.”
The important difference is not whether the holes exist, the important difference is how we go about filling them. Do we go about filling them by saying “hmmm. some mysterious intelligence must have wanted it that way.” Or do we go about filling them by asking “what natural forces could have led to this?” One of them is a seeking after reassurance. The other is a seeking after knowledge. One is religion. One is science. It *does* make a difference whether we look at those holes through Behe’s eyes or Gould’s eyes.
What never ceases to surprise me is how backwards the whole ID crowd has their agenda. There *is* a study of intelligent design based on the designer’s artifacts: archaeology. But that is the study of the designer through the designed. If the proponents of ID were serious, they would be asking what we could learn of the mind of the putative designer(s) from the creations. But no honest assessment in that direction is going to give the proponents the right answer (an omniscient, omnipotent, omnitemporal, benevolent being who created man in his image) and that’s why they work backwards from their conclusion to their argument instead. There are few proofs of the insincerity of the ID movement as clear as that.
The reason that ID is not in touch with that tradition (Newton, Babbage, Mendel) is that it is, as I have written a couple of times now, a theistically motivated attempt to undermine a theory perceived (wrongly) to be atheistic. You suggest that this doesn’t matter, but I don’t understand why.
You write that you can “attempt to understand the mind of God and undermine an existing theory at the same time.” But the only reason these two things would not be mutually exclusive w/r/t evolution is limited theology. The a priori insistence on evolution’s falseness restricts ID’s potential development. As a positive research program, it has nothing. As a positive research program, it will have nothing--not because of jealous disenfranchisement by the scientific establishment, but because its presuppositions cripple it. Supernaturalism as a negative motivational principle can only converge on reality by accident, and that rarely. (You seem to want to justify what a potential ID free of this dogma might create, but this involves ignoring the obvious social context of the trial and debate.) The mind of God, however, is open.
Steve Fuller: “I suppose I earned this response because the poster read ‘our’ in an exclusive (i.e. Western only) rather than an inclusive (i.e. all of humanity) fashion. The latter was intended. If the poster is still troubled, it would be interesting to learn why.”
All right. The particular strand of the argument that I find troubling (to the point of it making the whole thing dismissable) is the one that insists that Hindu Science and ID are different in kind because one is motivated by polytheistic religion while the other is motivated by monotheistic religion. I can understand a point of view that embraces both (as a criticism of methodological naturalism, say), or one that dismisses both (as religion intruding into science); dismissing one but not other, for the reasons given, seems to be bigotry even if bigotry is denied as a motive.
On Berube’s blog, you claimed, as an empirical fact, that science could not have come from a polytheistic society. I challenged this by saying that science descended, indirectly, from Greek thought, and that Greek society was polytheistic. You replied that Greek thought needed to be “re-branded” (horrible term, but OK) by the monotheistic Arabs before it could be transmitted to Christianity and turned into science.
I find this hypothesis to be excessively shaky as one to hang an “empirical fact” claim on. I really don’t want to get into the problems that I see with it in detail; frankly I don’t think it’s worth the time. But just as a general matter, you are making a sweeping claim about possible histories based on a single data point, that of how real history went. History is not a model that you can run over and over with slightly varying initial conditions in over to see different outcomes. Once science started in a particular society, that pretty much preempted its independent creation anywhere else, due to how globally connected advanced societies were at that time. So you have what I would consider to be a highly undue degree of confidence in your theories of religious-cultural superiority.
Now, proceeding from this undue confidence, you then go on to support that ID be what—Investigated by scientists? Given funding? Taken seriously?—no, taught in high school. That is completely incoherent. Whatever the merits of new approaches in science, they do not appear in high school before they appear in peer-reviewed literature.
So, as APS says above about archeology, a design tells us about the designer. The only coherent explanation I can construct out of this odd design is that of a designer who was taught that Christianity is good at an early age, that Hinduism was heathen nonsense, and who has gone on into adulthood with ever more sophisticated yet fundamentally unconsidered defenses for these basic beliefs.
Even if we concede that Fuller’s comments have some truth value they don’t belong in secondary school science. A course in HOW science is done would be the place to engage with these ideas-but on a college level.
tzipp, amen! props to steve fuller for coming here laying it all our there. i see more clearly where he’s coming from, but after all this, i’ve going to just have to say. to paraphrase a dover city (ex-)councilperson, someone died on the cross 2,000 years ago for us, isn’t anyone going to stand up for him? i mean, isn’t steve fuller is trying interpose a rather subtle vector into enormous forces of great social magnitude?
Fuller
“Finally, when thinking about all this, it’s worth recalling that the scientific method was invented by a lawyer, Francis Bacon, who was not a scientist”
What bunch of garbage.
As long as animals have had rudimentary brains they have been practicing the scientific method.
In it’s simplest form, the scientific method is “learning through trial and error”. Ever see a squirrel trying to get at an apple at the end of a tree branch?
Now ask yourself: ever seen a squirrel pray?
I find it interesting, as others have noted, that there seems to be almost a willful effort to make this “ID” business more complicated than it is.
If you are interested in the subject, don’t just read Fuller’s testimony. Read Michael Behe’s cross examination and the cross examination of the stooges on the Dover school board.
ID hails from the same swamp that brought us holocaust denial and it appeals to a certain group’s pre-existing prejudices in exactly the same way. Spend some time arguing with a holocaust denier and you’ll encounter the same types of argumentative that are ritually relied on by the ID peddlers. It will all boil down to the “close-mindedness” and “dogmatism” of “Darwinists” (a smear that translated to “atheists” to the converted) who “believe” that E.coli and S. typhimurium shared a constant ancestor but have “never” “actually” “seen” one “kind” of animal “turn into” another, or “seen” a “complex” protein “machine” “build itself” from “random” parts.
If we are going to teach ID in school than we damn well better teach holocaust denial like we mean it.
And while we’re at it I want those kids exposed to the best developed theories which support the inate inferiority of The Negro.
Anthing less is just discrimination against people whose religion forces them to believe that white people are superior.
Moreover, maybe white people ARE superior. Wouldn’t we doing human beings a great disservice if we refused to obtain and develop that knowledge because we wasted our lives worshipping at the altar “political correctness”??
These are the kinds of minds we are dealing with, folks. And yeah, Steve Fuller definitely has that kind of mind, the kind of mind that never gets too far away from the idea that Steve Fuller Is Really Too Cool. He just won’t admit it because he’s too busy making bucks off the “controversy.”
Whooops, that’s “common ancestor”, not “constant” ancestor.
My suggestion that one consider the remarks of Fuller to have truth value was a thought experiment to redirect the discussion to WHAT the content of science education at the secondary level should consist. Personally I find no evidence in ID that is credible. In addition, my suggestion that HOW science is done be saved for college level was not an attempt to exclude the scientific method from secondary schools. And I am not not fearful that bibical references will poison science. Consider that the first identifiable controlled trial was described in the first chapter of the Book of Daniel (OT)! I find this historically interesting and not a reason to call in the PC police.
I have no problem with Fuller’s suggestion that supernatural notions or framing scientific problems from a design perspective – a heuristic god-like figure – may have pedagogical value and therefore should be given its due. The claim, however, that because historical figures like Newton, Babbage, Mendel, et al utilized a design perspective and therefore we ought to consider such perspectives because they’ve worked so well in the past is not very compelling. I’m assuming something like this was meant when Fuller said:
“…it’s part of long-standing tradition in the history of science (including Newton, Babbage, Mendel) for whom the presupposition of God as the intelligence designer behind the universe (in whose image and likeness humans were created) has led to important science.”
Fuller is, at least in this instance, arguing from tradition and while such modes of thought may do well in some disciplines, they do not do all that well in the biological sciences – that’s why you won’t often, if at all, find Darwin as required reading in biology courses.
Now this says nothing about the suggestion that using a design perspective as a template of sorts may have significant value for making important scientific discoveries in our contemporary context, i.e., given what we know today and the significant developments made since Newton, Babbage, Mendel and Darwin. I don’t really know, and in-and-of-itself it’s not an unreasonable proposition. But, is that enough? Is there any evidence that a design perspective, lets say over the past 75 years or so, has in fact produced important scientific discoveries? That is, the sort of perspective that one could attribute to Newton, Babbage or Mendel. It’s an honest question by the way.
My guess is that science has evolved to a considerable degree over the past 75 years or so without significant help from such a design perspective. If that’s the case, who knows, perhaps science could have discovered much more, but such counterfactuals are just that.
So, let’s just assume that a design perspective has heuristic value and holds the potential for making discoveries that would not otherwise have been found. Is this what the present ID movement is really about and does it matter within the context of this debate “what they are all about?” Is the high school classroom the best place to conduct these sort of epistemological experiments? Should we first test the idea/notion/perspective and see if it has any scientific merit before we require such modes of thought in high school science classrooms? Again, these are honest questions.
Standards are certainly tricky things when the conduct of inquiry is being considered, but for better or worse it probably should be the scientific community who decides what, if any, standards are applicable here. Yes, that may be a little too territorial but I’m not aware of any discipline that allows people outside of their ranks to be the gatekeepers so to speak for cutting edge ideas, and that includes sociology (a discipline I share with Fuller). In other words, we do seem to believe in peer review and at least something approximating that is what allowed for Newton, Mendel and Darwin’s discoveries to be recognized as significant scientific ideas. So, in a sense, I’m also making an argument from tradition. But this one (peer review) seems to still be working today.
tzipp would like to see discussion WHAT should be the content of secondary science education. Well, I’d sure like to see less rote learning of “established” answers, and more teaching about how to raise questions in a way that permits experience and experiment to contribute to answers. Science, after all, is for inquiring minds.
That’s why I have emphasized (in several fora), that there is a legitimate question to be raised about the generative capacity of natural selection. I don’t think the IDers have (yet) found a way to formulate this question in the idiom of experience and experiment, and the answer they propose, very prematurely, lacks even a whiff of evidential support. But it is important that we not allow our distaste for IDism (whether intellectual, political, religious, or whatever else grounds our biases) to dismiss questions about the limits of natural selective processes. That would not be good scientific practice.
Buridan
“So, let’s just assume that a design perspective has heuristic value and holds the potential for making discoveries that would not otherwise have been found. Is this what the present ID movement is really about”
No, it’s not. That’s been demonstrated and any arguments to the contrary ignore the research of, e.g., Barbara Forrest. DOcumented liars like Jonathan Wells pretend to do experiments that were “inspired” by “design theory” but a close look reveals that claim to be just another case of self-promotion and blowing of hot air.
“Is the high school classroom the best place to conduct these sort of epistemological experiments?”
Yeah, right.
“Should we first test the idea/notion/perspective and see if it has any scientific merit before we require such modes of thought in high school science classrooms?”
First, the “mode of thought” is probably the lowest form of intellectual thought on the planet, i.e., “How can I please the invisible deity and honor him so he doesn’t smite me?” Second, we don’t need to “test the question” because the only people who can understand how it could possible be fruitful to do so are religious fanatics, for obvious reasons.
“Again, these are honest questions.”
And the questions have all been answered honestly.
Bob
“it is important that we not allow our distaste for IDism (whether intellectual, political, religious, or whatever else grounds our biases) to dismiss questions about the limits of natural selective processes.”
Thanks Bob, again, for your endless recitation of your script.
Guess what? As has been pointed out to already, scientists aren’t dismissing “questions” about the “limits” of natural selective processes. They are exploring those limits. Every day. All the time. And they have been doing so for years.
Get it, Bob? I doubt it but I thought I’d give you the chance to say, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“That’s why I have emphasized (in several fora), that there is a legitimate question to be raised about the generative capacity of natural selection. “
I already gave you one answer to your strange and inarticulate question, Bob, and you ignored it. But it was a perfectly good answer.
“I don’t think the IDers have (yet) found a way to formulate this question in the idiom of experience and experiment”
Either have you, Bob. And yet you seem certain that the question can be asked in an anwerable way. And you seem determined to think that “ID theory” is somehow related to this question when it’s clearly not. ID is a religious answer to a religious question. That is one of the many reasons why ID is pure crap from the standpoint of scientists.
The bottom line is that the question that you can’t articulate but which you find so interesting is really silly and boring.
It’s like asking, “What are the limits of erosion”?
The question immediately begs clarification on so many levels that one is forced to ask what is it exactly that the inquirer REALLY wants to know?