May 28, 2006
Intelligent Thought
A new book containing essays from 16 leading scientists, each in turn demolishing the Intelligent Design construct, has just now arrived on the bookshelves. Despite the scientific community's wise reluctance to be goaded into debate (see the Kansas kangaroo hearings), this book seems well conceived. While actual 'scientific' debate should be saved for the courtroom, the Discovery Institute's successes at shoving some sort of debate into to the public consciousness should be acknowledged in some way.
There is a shallow intuitive appeal to ID that even bright people succumb to, and this is partly due to the silence of science in the public arena. Science is paid short shrift by a cultural echo chamber whose deepest social concern at a given moment is the American Idol winner, so if science is skeptical of its chances of scoring in the public arena, it's for good cause. Science is boring and complicated--and highly resistant to the syllogistic treatment that makes for good TV. In that forum, science is doomed to lose most every debate, since ID is precisely the sort of appealing syllogism that works within the time constraints of TV. Even if science "wins" these debates in the eyes of the public, they lose for having to even withstand a comparison to an upstart that short circuited the peer review process and took its case straight to the public. The moderators to these debates are willfully obtuse and easily led to the false dichotomy... why not heed "the other side" indeed?
But a book of essays on ID might just be the perfect vehicle for the science side of the "debate." Anyone who is being primarily coached on the issue through a television is beyond hope, but book readers can be reached. The essay format probably helps its marketability. I hope it finds its niche and I look forward to reading.
Some samples from the essayists:
It should not, after all, be surprising if people who believe that all truth comes from an ancient text disagree with Darwin, whose ideas are in no ancient text. Rather than bemoaning the fact that fundamentalists disagree with Darwin, let’s ask a much more interesting and disturbing question: Why do so many non-fundamentalist theologians and religious leaders have no trouble incorporating Darwin into their worldview? —Lee Smolin
“Evolutionary biology certainly hasn’t explained everything that perplexes biologists, but intelligent design hasn’t yet tried to explain anything at all.” —Daniel C. Dennett, Philosopher
“Natural selection is not some desperate last resort of a theory. It is an idea whose plausibility and power hits you between the eyes with a stunning force, once you understand it in all its elegant simplicity.” —Richard Dawkins, Evolutionary Biologist
“An evolutionary understanding of the human condition, far from being incompatible with a moral sense, can explain why we have one.” —Steven Pinker, Psychologist
Not only is ID markedly inferior to Darwinism at explaining and understanding nature but in many ways it does not even fulfill the requirements of a scientific theory. —Jerry A. Coyne, evolutionary biologist
The geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky famously declared, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” One might add that nothing in biology makes sense in the light of intelligent design. —Jerry A. Coyne, evolutionary biologist
Evolutionary biology certainly hasn’t explained everything that perplexes biologists, but intelligent design hasn’t yet tried to explain anything at all. —Daniel C. Dennett, philosopher and cognitive scientist
A denial of evolution–however motivated–is a denial of evidence, a retreat from reason to ignorance. —Tim D. White, paleontologist
Natural selection is not some desperate last resort of a theory. It is an idea whose plausibility and power hits you between the eyes with a stunning force, once you understand it in all its elegant simplicity. —Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist
The supernatural explanation fails to explain because it ducks the responsibility to explain itself.—Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist
Nothing indicates that people who believe that life arose by chance also believe that morality is haphazard. —Scott Atran, anthropologist and psychologist
An evolutionary understanding of the human condition, far from being incompatible with a moral sense, can explain why we have one. —Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist
To state that a given organ is so improbable that it requires design is just ill founded. The argument uses standard probability, which does not apply to the evolution of the biosphere. —Stuart A. Kauffman, theoretical biologist
We don’t have an intelligent designer (ID), we have a bungling consistent evolver (BCE). Or maybe an adaptive changer (AC). In fact, what we have in the most economical interpretation is, of course, evolution. —Lisa Randall, physicist
What counts as a controversy must be delineated with care, as we want students to distinguish between scientific challenges and sociopolitical ones. —Marc D. Hauser, evolutionary psychologist
Incredulity doesn’t count as an alternative position or critique. —Marc D. Hauser, evolutionary psychologist
Rather than removing meaning from life, an evolutionary perspective can and should fill us with a sense of wonder at the rich sequence of natural systems that gave us birth and continues to sustain us. —Scott D. Sampson, paleontologist
posted by scott pilutik at May 28, 2006 10:51 AM