Assumptions
Our puzzle for this semester: what conclusions do you come to if you look at the data available now without extra presuppositions?
The basic presupposition of science is simple: a rational, ordered universe. We have to accept, at least tentatively and for the sake of the argument, that the world is intelligible and that empirical evidence corresponds to reality. But most of the time we bring in a great many other assumptions, gathered up over the years from various places. Some may be valid, but if we can’t be sure they are true, they can clutter up our thinking and drastically increase our likelihood of reaching erroneous conclusions.
Without these extra assumptions, how do you differentiate between intelligent design and evolution? Evolution explains divergence, but it leaves a huge, gaping hole at what may be the central problem in historical biology– the origin of new (complex specified) information. Still, if the purpose is to determine what will happen in the future, is it better than ID, which most likely is limited to a one-time event? Then again, what future predictions can evolutionary theory as it stands now really make? Its track record shows it better at rationalizing the past then making sense of the what is to come.
These are difficult questions to answer, and it tempts us to go back to our old ideas of what a good theory ought to look like, what should have happened. But if our worldview only admits of one answer to the question of origins, it is hardly fair to say that answer is "best-supported". Maybe intelligent design will be falsified… but not by those who rule it out a priori. If we really want to decide honestly between the alternatives, we’ll have to work only with those presuppositions that are shared among both hypotheses.
Right now, many assume that intelligent design can never be scientific in any way. Of course, if one makes that assumption, then one can never find any scientific evidence for design.
To counter this assumption, it is useful to revisit the foundations of modern science. Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Mendel, and virtually all of the other “founders” of modern science recognized that nature was designed. The assumption that the universe is ordered and rational is also arguably a byproduct of this belief that the universe was designed. Thus, science and ID are compatible. Scientists should not rule out design unless they have a good reason to rule it out.
Comment by Art — March 9, 2006 @ 12:52 am
Yes, deciding in advance evolution is the only possible explanation for a given phenomena means you can never determine whether or not it is in fact a valid explanation.
Sometime I’d like to look further at this idea of a rational, ordered universe. From what I’ve read of the history of science, it seems to me the ultimate successful prediction of design theory. Most physical scientists extend the basic assumtion further, and would say that if a theory is not beautiful and simple, you can be almost certain it is wrong. Matthias Bernd put it nicely:
Given a naturalistic worldview this seems to me an unjustified assumption, but at the same time it has been so productive in physics and chemistry it would be foolish now to abandon it.
Comment by freawaru — March 9, 2006 @ 1:52 am
“Recognizing” that nature is designed is not the same as actually showing that it is (or isn’t). Consider the following three cases:
1) You can point to an object in the world around you – an automobile, a cell phones, a pencil, etc. – and say “that object is clearly designed” and have no one contradict you.
2) You can just as easily point to another object – a boulder, a puddle, a cloud, etc. – and say “that object is clearly not designed,” and once again not be contradicted by virually anyone.
3) However, you can point to a class objects – a tree, a human, a fungus, etc. – and assert “that object is clearly designed” and be contradicted by virtually any evolutionary biologist.
In the first case, no one would dispute that human artifacts are designed because we can identify the designer (or infer that the designer exists because of our direct experience with objects designed by humans).
In the second case, the objects in question require no designer for their existence, although to some people (such as creationists) they are just as “designed” as members of the first class of objects.
However, in the third case, we cannot identify the designer, and can only argue that such objects are “designed” by analogy with members of the first class. Indeed, most “intelligent design theorists” would argue that such identification is scientifically impossible on principle.
Therefore, the entire argument for “design” in nature is formulated on the basis of analogy, not induction nor deduction. And, for reasons that I don’t have time to go into here, all arguments by analogy are flawed. That is, there is no a priori way to decide if the analogy upon which such an argument is based is, in fact, true.
Instead, one is left merely asserting that the analogy that you perceive *is* true, but no amount of assertion can make it so.
So where does that leave us?
Comment by Allen Macneill — March 9, 2006 @ 7:51 pm