05/05/05: the problem w/evolution supporters

Posted by: Ickyru

and believe me, I'm not a proponent of intelligent design, is that they refuse to see a few things. Firstly, there is fundamentalism on both sides, both the vehement proponents of evolution and the trojan-horse creationists who promote intelligent design. My suggestion is to read a very influential book in the philosophy of science called "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn.

Kuhn argues that (and his argument is Wittgensteinian) there is no such thing as a "brute fact" in the world - that we interpret the world via language and cannot conceive of the world without language. Scientists construct a paradigm of research, with certain boundaries (defined by language and what experiments are acceptable). A clear example of this is the insertion of plate tectonics into geology; beforehand geology did research based on the assumption that the continents did not move, people were funded to do that kind of work, published in journals and built theories based on that. Those who suggested otherwise were on the very fringes of the paradigm or were ignored altogether. However, the paradigm eventually encountered difficulty explaining things in the early '50s, and underwent a "revolution" whereby terms changed meaning, new theories (paradigms of language) were developed, and science shifted course. This is similar to Aristotle's conception of motion & Newton's - both are perfectly legitimate for estimating motion of objects, but they conceive of why objects move differently.

Science - evolutionary biology - is simply a paradigm of thought and research. Within the paradigm there are competing schools of thought, from gradualism to punctuated equilibrium. It is quite possible that there will be a "revolution" in scientific thought within the next few decades and how we conceive of human evolution will change. The problem with science is that there is nothing inherent in it that makes it more likely to discover truths than anything else, but we treat it as such. In school we are forced to learn particular interpretations of science (and the world) without discussion. This is as wrong as teaching that intelligent design is the only possible way the world could have formed.

What we really need - and this is the way to defeat the theists who cloak creationism in intelligent design - is actual discussion about science and the world. For instance, intelligent design poses a problem for monotheists - even if we grant it might be plausible, what if there were a hundred gods who created the universe? A million? What if other scientists did it in a lab? Where did the intelligent designer come from? Opening these things up to debate would pose problems for the ID arguers, and it would force discussion on other topics as well. Yet the evolution proponents are arguing from their own fundamentalist position and, even if they win, will dominate as much as the Christians want to do.

Suggested reading:
Thomas Kuhn, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" Paul Feyerabend, "Science in a Free Society" "Against Method"

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