Intelligent design (ID) often gets rejected out of hand as just not science. However, I think that is a bit harsh. I think we should accept that ID is at least a scientific idea.
After all, science is more than just proven theories (like natural selection, the standard model of particle physics, etc.). Science also includes facts (e.g., fossils, DNA patterns, atomic and molecular spectra, etc.) and speculative (yet to be proved) ideas (eg., string ‘theory’). We have got to encourage speculation and novel ideas in science. There must be room to dream. After all, how else we will get hypotheses for testing?
Of course most ideas in science are actually wrong – and we know that because they are proven wrong by testing. There’s no shortage of examples but here is one. In the early 1960s a colleague proposed the idea that the dark areas on the moon (the ’seas’) were actually composed of organic material – a sort of ashphalt. He had his reasons for this. However, within a few years we knew that was not the case. So another idea bit the dust. He accept the fact that his idea was not good – but it didn’t stop him going on to propose other ideas.
That’s how science works.
Judging scientific ideas
Lee Smolin (in his book The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next)
” . . . assessment can not be based on unrealised hypotheses or unproved conjectures, or on the hopes of the theory’s adherents. This is science, and the truth of a theory can be assessed based only on results that have been published in the scientific literature; thus we must be careful to distinguish between conjecture, evidence, and proof.”
And that is the problem with ID. It is only a conjecture – a speculative idea. There is no evidence. Nothing of substance has been published in the scientific literature. And it’s not as if the idea is new – it’s been around at least since William Paley’s “argument from design” in 1802. ID ‘research’ is limited to trying to find ‘gaps’ in evolutionary science and ‘quote mining‘ the literature is search of justification for their own unproven idea. They even have a name for this – reinterpretation research.
They do no work at all on an ID theory – they don’t even have a hypothesis to test!
Yet the proponents of ID attempt to claim their idea a solid science – solid enough to be taught to children in science classes! Alongside scientific theories which have oodles of evidential support and produce testable predictions! This would be like my colleague from the early sixties demanding that his theory of asphalt lunar seas should have been taught as science.
ID proponents go so far as demanding that the whole nature of science be changed so that ideas without evidential support can be accepted as respectable theory. This is the real logic of their attack on science for being naturalistic or materialist. As Ken Miller says, this is really a proposal to create “an intellectual welfare for an idea that can’t make it on its own.“
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11 responses so far ↓
Edward Sylvia // July 15, 2008 at 6:55 am
Hello serious thinkers,
Science cannot deny that the universe is intelligently designed. What stands in the way is the lack of an intelligent first causal principle. Quantum theory describes fundamental reality as consisting in irreducible chance. So intelligence plays no part in such an interpretation of the microworld.
Thankfully, there are a couple of flies in the ointment of our understanding of quantum theory. No one knows if the Schrodinger equation or complex vectors in Hilbert space describe what is really going on in the microworld (although it does provide an effective mathematical tool to describe a superposition of states). The Schrodinger equation also does not tell us how probabilities make a discontinuous (discrete) jump into a specific outcome (collapse of the wavepacket).
Another fly in the ointment is our inability to unify Einstein’s general relativity theory with quantum theory.
Intelligent design would gain scientific respect if the potentials or “tendencies to exist” in the quantum vacuum somehow actually COOPERATED to bring about a preferred direction and specific outcome. This would also mean that nature’s incessant drive towards complexity and self-organization had its principle of determination in the microworld of intelligently actualizing possibilities.
These are some of the issues that I will be addressing in my next book project, “Proving God.” I believe, like Roger Penrose, that complex curvatures (non-linear principles of superposition) are the key to a correct theory of quantum gravity and understanding how gravitational systems generate structure throughout the universe.
I ultimately plan to show that this universal organizing principle has its origins in the nonmaterial and unifying dynamics of spiritual love.
Spiritually yours,
TheGodGuy
Olorin // July 15, 2008 at 9:21 am
GoodGuy spins castles in the air based upon possible unknown of quantum theory. A century ago, cranks did the same thing with electromagnetism.
“Intelligent design would gain scientific respect if the potentials or “tendencies to exist” in the quantum vacuum somehow actually COOPERATED to bring about a preferred direction and specific outcome.”
Do you have any evidence at all for this hypothesis? Anything besides a mere wish on your part that it might possibly be true? One way you can tell the difference between a religious motivation for a hypothesis and a scientific motivation is that the scientific proponent gets up off his keister and actually proposes some research to test whether it might be supported by any evidence, or consistent with other facts. The others merely engage in woo.
Ken // July 15, 2008 at 10:32 am
Edward Sylvia, I would say that ‘proving god’ is a mugs game – and certainly not required.
After all – we know that gods exist – in the minds and cultures of (some) humans. That’s something we can investigate and come to grips with.
But attempting to ‘prove’ gods as objectively existing entities is surely just an exercise in cherry-picking evidence to justify a preconceived belief.
It seems that the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics provides a very useful mystical ‘explanation’ for all sorts of weird ideas.
gasdocpol // July 15, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Why can’t it be that Evolution was the way God created the human species?
airtightnoodle // July 15, 2008 at 1:32 pm
No fear, Gasdocpol! Many people believe just that.
dahni // July 15, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Well put, however your cartoon seems to suggest just the opposite of what you wrote.
Ken // July 15, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Yes, Gasdocpol, many (if not most) theists accept that. Obviously there are others who can’t accept that because it requires a god assumption.
However, the problem arises not from belief in a god, or a god which underlies everything (the ultimate cause). The problem is the claim that “God did it” as an explanation.
Surely the theist scientists can’t accept that – she has to ask – “Yes, but how did God do it?” In that sense they are doing exactly the same thing as the non-theist scientist that they work with.
leftoverkumquats // July 15, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Enjoyed this post.
I agree that ID is too often rejected without even a sliver of consideration, however this is partly due to the harsh ID only belief. At least science leaves itself open (most of the time) to being disproved.
Heraclides // July 21, 2008 at 4:22 pm
leftoverkumquats: Quite literally, if there is no evidence, there is nothing to consider. Might be the reason its usually dismissed out of hand by many: no evidence, nothing for them to consider. Just food for thought.
leftoverkumquats // July 21, 2008 at 9:07 pm
Heraclides: And yet millions of people turn to religion with no evidence that the God they devote their lives to exists. Why are these millions so willing not only to consider but to commit to religion?
Heraclides // July 21, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Pointless comparison, or rather not even comparable.
The first post (9, mine) refers to something being compared with existing science. Evidence required.
The second (10, yours) refers to religion. Only “faith” required. (What you want to call faith: personally I call it gulliblity
Sometimes it seems a case of “needyness” winning over commonsense.)
Point is, these two aren’t comparable: your “point” in post 10 is moot.
(You might also want to note that religion doesn’t require you to compare the religion’s view on things with existing knowledge, as science does. If anything, religions can ask people to “forget” contradictory evidence.)