Mano Singham, "Philosophy Is Essential to the Intelligent Design Debate" (+ 7 letters) (2002)

"Physics Today" June 2002

Philosophy Is Essential to the Intelligent Design Debate

Mano Singham

Predictably, the attempts by advocates of intelligent design (ID) to persuade Ohio's state school board to overrule the state's science advisory board and insert ID ideas into the Ohio science standards have sparked a controversy. Inevitably, the usual combatants in the science­religion wars have rushed to their respective barricades. ¹

ID advocates argue that scientists are somehow conspiring to suppress ID ideas. They accuse scientists of practicing censorship by arbitrarily excluding ID ideas from journals and science textbooks, thus not giving the ideas a fair chance to gain adherents. To overcome this perceived injustice, ID advocates have appealed directly to political power structures such as school boards and legislative bodies to mandate what should be included in science.

Although such bodies may have the authority to tilt science curricula toward religion, history has not looked kindly on such efforts. The attempts in Louisiana and Arkansas in the 1980s to mandate the teaching of creation science, and the more recent attempt in Kansas to eliminate the teaching of evolution, were debacles for their proponents. They invited dismal comparisons with the Roman Catholic Church's attempt in 1616 to ban Copernican theory or the Soviet Central Committee's attempt in 1949 to dismiss Mendeleevian genetics as pseudoscience. One wonders why this dubious strategy is still being pursued.

What is interesting about this battle is that both pro-ID and anti-ID sides casually toss around terms like the "verifiability," "testability," and "falsifiability" of theories, as if the meanings of the words were self-evident. Both sides display little awareness that historians and philosophers of science created and have exhaustively studied the terms in the quest to understand the nature of science. These scholars find that all such concepts fail to satisfactorily explain how science progresses. ^2­6 The problem of how to unambiguously distinguish science from nonscience is an extremely difficult one. ⁶ It even has a venerable name, "the demarcation problem." This rich scholarly tradition should play an important role in this discussion, and there is no excuse for ignoring it.

For example, ID advocates claim that "empirical science" consists of those disciplines in which the merits of competing theories can be evaluated by running controlled experiments to "test" them. However, ID advocates also claim that "origins science" (like evolution of life or the cosmos) cannot be investigated empirically because the experiment cannot be run again with controlled initial conditions. Hence they propose, as an alternative methodology for evaluating origins science, that all competing hypotheses be applied to see which one gives the best explanation. They further assert that the only sound hypotheses for the evolution of life are natural selection or ID, and that since natural selection fails in certain situations (referred to as "irreducibly complex" systems ⁷), then, by the rules of "falsifiability," ^3,4 ID must be the correct theory.

This argument has four flaws. First, although the tools of analysis may be different for so-called origins science and empirical science (consisting mainly of observations for origins science and experiments for empirical science), the ways in which competing theories are evaluated are the same for the two cases. Second, it is never the case that only two explanations exist for any scientific phenomenon. Scientists are creative people. They can generate plausible alternative explanations with little effort. Third, ID theory does not satisfy the criteria to be considered part of science. Fourth, "falsifiability" is not the rule by which scientific theories are evaluated.

Although research in the history and philosophy of science convincingly demonstrates that there are no simple and unambiguous methodological rules for deciding which of two (or more) competing theories are better, ^2,4,5 theories must meet two criteria if they are to be seriously considered at all. The first criterion is that any scientific theory must be naturalistic. No serious scientific theory in modern times has invoked explanations that appeal to inscrutability or the miraculous. As the paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson put it,

The progress of knowledge rigidly requires that no nonphysical postulate ever be admitted in connection with the study of physical phenomena. We do not know what is and what is not explicable in physical terms, and the researcher who is seeking explanations must seek physical explanations only. ⁸

The second criterion is that the theory must be predictive. No scientific theory is ever just an explication of the currently inexplicable. It must also postulate some mechanism that can be used to predict new phenomena that could not have been conceived under older theories. If a new theory is used to explain result a in situation A, then that same mechanism must be able to predict result b in situation B, predict c in situation C, and so on. This feature of producing new and interesting areas of exploration attracts adherents to a new theory, enabling it to become a serious competitor to the existing dominant theory. ⁴ It is a theory's predictive aspect that leads to new and important discoveries. These two criteria comprise necessary (but insufficient) conditions for a theory to be considered a part of science. ID fails to satisfy either criterion, and that alone is reason enough for its exclusion.

ID advocates respond that these are philosophical rules, as if that were a disqualification. But just because a rule is philosophical does not mean that it lacks value. In fact, these particular rules have been key to the tremendous advance of science. While scientists may accept that some problems are unsolved--or cannot be solved until new technology or data become available--they never accept that a scientific problem is inherently insoluble. This belief that only their own ingenuity or effort stands between them and success is what makes them persevere for years and leads to great breakthroughs. But when ID is invoked as an explanation for something, its advocates are essentially stating that the problem is inherently insoluble and the solution is inscrutable. Research in that area would presumably come to a halt.

It is absurd for some scientists to defend Darwinian natural selection by saying that there is no feature of life that cannot be explained by it. No scientific theory has ever explained all the phenomena that fall within its domain. ^2,4,5 Unexplained problems will always arise that resist solution for a long time. In fact, a good theory is one that keeps generating new problems that scientists can work on and that lead to new discoveries and insights. ID advocates will never run out of cases in which Darwinian natural selection has not yet provided an explanation. But the presence of such anomalies has never been sufficient, by itself, to prompt the scientific community to abandon a dominant theory. ^2,4,5

For example, the motion of the perigee of the moon was a well-known unsolved problem for over 60 years after the introduction of Newtonian physics. ² It constituted a serious problem that resisted solution for a longer time than the problems in evolution indicated by ID advocates. Yet no supernatural explanation was invoked. Eventually, the problem was solved, and the result was seen as a triumph for Newtonian theory. Similarly, the stability of the planetary orbits was an unsolved problem for more than 200 years. ⁵

These two examples successfully illustrate why simple methodological rules like falsifiability do not explain science's progress. If such a rule were rigorously enforced, then Newtonian physics (and indeed every scientific theory ever proposed) would have been falsified and rejected at birth and we would not have had any science at all. Clearly, scientists make judgments about which theories to keep and which to reject for reasons that are far more complex and subtle than suggested by simple rules like falsifiability.

Scientists consider the merits of competing theories only when science enters a period of crisis--that is, when a dominant theory, despite repeated attempts by its most seasoned practitioners, fails to explain something that should be explainable using existing knowledge, technology, and techniques. ² The biological science community apparently does not perceive that natural selection is in such a state of crisis. But even if natural selection were in crisis, biologists would not accept ID as a worthy rival. Instead, they would look for alternative naturalistic and predictive theories. If the history of science is any guide, biologists will find and agree on an acceptable theory. That is the way science has evolved.

The last philosophical question about ID involves the role of "truth." ID advocates argue that it is wrong to keep ID ideas out of science by appealing to naturalistic and predictive rules because the goal of science is to seek "the truth." How, they ask, will we know if ID is the true explanation for a phenomenon if it is not allowed to compete?

But there is no reason to think that "truth" plays a major role in this discussion. ² Science constantly produces new theories and discoveries that are powerful, useful, and enlightening. But does that imply we are approaching "the truth"? Alas, no--although many scientists would like to think so. ^2,9

Given the continuing success of science, this limitation is not an easy idea to grasp, especially for scientists. To better understand it, compare the progress of science with that of biological evolution itself. Organisms evolve; new ones emerge from the old, which results in the impressive array of living systems around us that are, for the most part, wonderfully adapted to their present environments. Does this mean that the process of evolution was directed toward a goal? That the present living forms were preordained in the primeval soup? Of course not. The life forms that exist now just happen to be the ones that arose from a vast number of initial possibilities.

Likewise, scientific theories evolve according to how well they answer, at any given time in history, the immediate questions of interest to scientists. As a result, the present impressive array of theories has developed to satisfactorily answer the questions that interest us now. But that does not mean that science is goal-directed and thus progressing toward the "truth." The present theories were not predetermined to be discovered, any more than the first amphibians that crawled out of the oceans many years ago had the concept of humans encoded for future emergence. Science works--and works exceedingly well--because of its naturalistic approach, predictive nature, and methods of operation. To be valid, science does not have to be true. ⁹

© 2002 American Institute of Physics

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"Physics Today" September 2002

http://www.aip.org/pt/vol-55/iss-9/p10.html

Seven More Views on Intelligent Design

Mano Singham makes several valid points about the role of philosophy in demolishing the intelligent design position (Physics Today, June 2002, page 48). However, his final and most provocative point concerning the irrelevance of truth to science is not well-taken. In a human-based philosophy devoid of deity, "truth" simply means conformance of human mental contents, specifically concepts and propositions, to reality. Truth that requires omniscience and infinite accuracy with no contextual delimiters is a pseudoconcept that has no referent in the real world. By using "truth" only in that way, the author implicitly grants the creationists' premise that such a pseudoconcept has meaning. Singham's final point is only provocative or meaningful if the reader falls into the trap of thinking that that usage of "truth" does have meaning.

Humans constantly are discovering truths about the world, some of them comprehensive enough to constitute a scientific theory. A truth is contextual: It refers to a specific domain, a specific level of measurement accuracy, and the like. Newtonian physics was true when created and is true today. It was constructed and tested within a context of objects having a certain range of speeds and of measurements having a certain degree of accuracy; within that domain, it continues to be a true theory. Special relativity is true within a more extended context, and has led to new and broader conceptual understanding. However, special relativity in no way invalidates Newtonian physics within the latter's contextual domain.

"Science" has two meanings. It is a valid methodology that can generate both false and true theories; that some theories are found to be false and are ultimately rejected is a vindication, not a criticism, of the method. Science also refers to an accumulating body of contextually true statements and theories about aspects of the world; the "truth" and the "validity" of these theories are synonymous. The value of science as a methodology lies strictly in the fact that it is an extremely successful means of arriving at, and expanding, true theories about the world.

Both essays on intelligent design make good points. But I take exception to Mano Singham's reduction of the scientific quest to the mere process of answering "the immediate questions of interest to scientists," as opposed to seeking some truth. That reduction is as misguided as it is dangerous; it devalues science by placing it at the same level as social criticism and is essentially a repetition of the muddle-headed postmodernist arguments.

Granted, to a certain extent, the point is obviously true for some of the minor scientific theories that are in debate at any one time. But it completely fails to account for the major theories and advances. Were Johannes Kepler and Galileo simply engaged in some kind of inconsequential quest to answer the fashionable questions of their time? Did they discover some truth about planetary motions, or did they simply answer those questions to please the sensibilities of their contemporaries? Was Charles Darwin similarly engaged in a quest for some truth or for some fashionable theory? And where would Singham place the present search for extraterrestrial life? Is that also merely a question of present interest to scientists, or is it a quest after some momentous truth that can change us forever? Pronouncements such as "to be valid, science does not have to be true" merely serve to demonstrate how far common sense can be confused by words.

Revolutions in science are ultimately revolutions in how we see ourselves as humans, so the progress of science is, to a large extent, the progress of humanity. That is the core fact that creationists and postmodernists find so difficult to accept. Although they start from different premises, both groups have a need to reduce science to an enterprise that has only some relative value within its own limited circle of practitioners. When they have accomplished that, they can promulgate their own views--free of evidentiary support--as if those views were equivalent to what science has to offer.

So, although Singham's essay appears to be supportive of science, I submit that science would be better off without such support.

Mano Singham's Opinion article "Philosophy Is Essential to the Intelligent Design Debate" emphasizes both the importance of "the demarcation problem"--that is, the unambiguous distinction of science from nonscience--and the nature of "origins science."

Science deals with the physical aspect of reality; its subject matter is data that, in principle, can be collected solely by physical devices. If physical devices cannot measure something, then that something is not the subject matter of science. Of course, the whole of reality encompasses more than the physical.

Physics is the prototype of experimental science, which yields laws of nature based on data collected from repeatable experiments. In contrast, origins science is more akin to forensic science, because it deals with unique, nonrepeatable events. Nonetheless, for origins science to qualify as science, extant evidentiary data must also be collectible by physical devices.

Human consciousness and reasoning summarize all physical data into laws and create the mathematical theories that lead to predictions. However, the human element that creates the theories is totally absent from the laws and theories themselves. Accordingly, human consciousness and rationality are outside the bounds of science since they cannot be detected by purely physical devices and can only be "detected" by the self in humans.

Unraveling the mysteries of nature requires conscious, intelligent beings. But no humanly conceived theory of nature, however complete, can ever encompass all that exists or the creation process that brought everything into being. This ontological problem is best answered by supposing the existence of a Creator, which must be conscious and intelligent to an infinitely higher degree. I believe this idea is the underlying rationale for advocates of intelligent design to infer an Intelligent Designer.

Human reasoning cannot avoid the fundamental question of origins, which is outside the purview of science. John Wheeler (Physics Today, May 2002, page 28) said it best: "Philosophy is too important to leave to the philosophers, and I had better get busy on the most important question: How come existence?"

Singham replies: Scientific knowledge is the most powerful and reliable source of knowledge that we have. Naturally, we ask why that is so. The response that it provides us with true information about the world is strongly entrenched in the scientific community as an obvious truth. Predictably, then, challenging this assertion generates objections similar to those raised by Ralph Linsker and Pantazis Mouroulis.

Is there anything intrinsic in the subject matter or methods of science that justifies the belief that science is progressing toward the truth? Historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science have investigated this question; they have looked at how science is practiced and how scientific communities form, operate, arrive at consensus views, and make judgments about theories. What emerges is that the case for "truth" is hard to sustain (see references 2-6 and 9 in my original article). This is not some recent postmodern idea, as Mouroulis implies. The earliest substantive critique originated in 1906 with Pierre Duhem; ¹ his thesis has since withstood spirited challenges. ²

The idea that advances in scientific knowledge are not inexorably leading to the truth may strike many as weakening the case for science against its critics in ID. I believe that the converse is true and that the admittedly limited view of scientific knowledge that I have advocated--as being useful, predictive, and naturalistic, but not necessarily true--completely undermines the case for the inclusion of ID in the scientific framework. But I don't espouse this view in order to oppose ID; it is a mistake to define science just to use that definition as a weapon in ideological wars. I arrived at my views regarding the nature of science long before ID came onto the scene, because I found the research of historians and philosophers of science to be very persuasive.

Those who hold the more expansive view that science is revealing the truth about nature must be prepared to defend their position with more robust examples and arguments than those usually offered. Linsker wants to restore the concept of truth by limiting the domain of applicability of theories and cites the relationship between Einsteinian and Newtonian dynamics. The weaknesses of that oft-quoted argument were highlighted a long time ago. ³

The personal motivations of individual scientists are also not at issue. I have no doubt that most scientists, not just the ones Mouroulis names, see themselves as seeking some fundamental truth about the universe. But believing does not make it so. The search for truth may be a mirage, an illusion. A mirage can serve a very useful purpose by encouraging people to move forward and make real progress; the search for truth may play this role in science and may have led to some of its spectacular successes. (Incidentally, I applaud Mouroulis for decrying views that are "free of evidentiary support." But where is the evidentiary support for his own assertions?)

Moorad Alexanian puts forth another popular view: that a reality exists, apart from the physical one, "which cannot be detected purely by physical devices," and states as examples that "human consciousness and rationality are outside the bounds of science." This view may or may not be true, but what is the evidence for it? How would we know what is and is not part of physical reality? Neuroscientists and other brain researchers explore the very questions that, according to Alexanian, lie beyond physical reality. Are they operating outside science?

We cannot arbitrarily prescribe what science is. We can only infer its characteristics by examining how, in actual practice, its knowledge is created. The work of historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science, although not necessary for the practice of science, become important when dealing with claims such as ID.

As I scanned through the June 2002 issue of Physics Today, the Opinion articles on intelligent design caught my eye. I had read a couple of books on the subject and had thought the material interesting. Because the title said "two views," I guessed that there would be two opposing views like I typically see in newspaper editorials. Instead, when I read the articles, I found that both oppose the idea of intelligent design.

Here is my complaint: It's great to have opinion articles on a subject, especially if there is controversy or unresolved issues, but give both sides airtime. I typically disagree with one side or the other when two opposing opinions are expressed. But let's have both. As a scientist and engineer, I was expecting this. Usually, plenty of people on either side of an issue are willing to write a short article defending their side. Did you try to get one from both sides?

[We did not. Physics Today's goal is to inform our readers about science and its place in the world, not about alternatives to science. The Editors]

I was disappointed to see that your Opinion articles on intelligent design were, in fact, two negative views of the controversial theory. I expected a more balanced approach from your magazine. If, as Adrian Melott asserts, "adherents are engineers, doctors--and even physicists," then it would have been appropriate to have a counterpoint from a scientist or doctor presenting a positive view for ID.

Furthermore, I thought the negative views, particularly those of Melott, to be more personal opinion than scientific refutation. Even the title of Melott's article--"Intelligent Design Is Creationism in a Cheap Tuxedo"--is, frankly, a cheap shot, and Melott distorted the views of people espousing ID. I have read Michael Behe's book Darwin's Black Box (Free Press, 1996) and Michael Denton's book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Adler & Adler, 1986). Both authors make some strong, some weak, and some erroneous arguments. However, nowhere in either book did I find any indication that "geology and physics are within [ID's] blast zone." Denton, for example, clearly recognizes geologic time and the antiquity of fossils. For Melott to suggest that geology and geologic time are targets of ID indicates either that he has not read these books or that he is intentionally misrepresenting ID.

Melott replies: I agree with James Adamski that the title of my piece is a cheap shot. A cheap shot is exactly appropriate with respect to ID. I agree that I wrote an opinion piece, not a scientific refutation: See the references. It is also true that Michael Behe, Michael Denton, and others are careful to restrict their attacks to evolution. This is part of the "Big Tent" strategy to unify old-Earth, young-Earth, and other kinds of creationists while splitting the scientific community. Phillip Johnson, another IDist, is careful in his presentations not to offend young-Earthers: He maintains that the issue of Earth's age isn't important. What is most revealing, letters to the editor seen here and in Ohio have shown considerable blending of ID rhetoric with issues that impact geology and cosmology.

In his book No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence (Row-man & Littlefield, 2002), William Dembski has invented a "conservation of information" law. This is unsupported new physics that is not treated as a hypothesis. He reports that the theory of inflation is explanatory but does not possess "independent evidence for its existence." The past several years have seen well-publicized experimental data confirming the extreme flatness of cosmological space and a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of density perturbations, both key predictions of inflation. There are also data that suggest the universe may be entering a new inflationary expansion. Dembski is either ignorant or has selectively deleted parts of existing physics. The preceding are but two examples of the "blast zone," drawn from ID's leading "design theorist."

Adamski and Claud Lacy both fall prey to the fairness fallacy; Lacy even mentions newspapers as a positive counterexample. One of the reasons the formulation of public policy encounters such terrible problems is that newspapers present "both sides" on matters of evidence as if they were matters of opinion, even when the evidence is strongly one-sided. This practice gives the public the impression of a serious scientific controversy. A fair representation of the views of working biological researchers should contain 2 or 3 ID advocates for about 10 000 presentations opposing it. Thus, having two essays opposed to ID creationism, with none supporting it, as seen in the June issue of Physics Today, is entirely appropriate.

After I read the Opinions by Adrian Melott and Mano Singham, it occurred to me that ID is not only bad science but it's bad religion too. Such a "god of the gaps" as postulated by ID only becomes smaller with time as science moves on and solves mysteries that were formerly "explained" as miracles. Unfortunately, the proponents of ID blur the distinction between logos and mythos, ¹ between asking how we came to be and why we came to be. Arguably, humans need both logos and mythos to make sense of the world; both questions deserve our profound attention.

The Opinion pieces by Adrian Melott and Mano Singham make clear the scientific and philosophical problems with the intelligent design movement and with attempts to insert ID into public-school science curricula. Moreover, the ideas of ID proponents are also in conflict with the views of many theologians who are engaged in dialogue between science and religion.

The notion that science should invoke supernatural causes to explain currently puzzling phenomena such as the origin of life is popular but theologically naïve. Discussions of divine action by participants in today's science-theology dialogue ¹ are generally in accord with the dictum of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran theologian hanged by the Nazis in 1945: "We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know." ² God is active in the world through the natural processes that science studies. This is not an entirely modern idea. In Genesis 1, God is pictured as commanding the earth and the waters to bring forth living things. Many teachers of the early church understood that to mean that God had given the materials of the world the ability produce life when God willed it. ³

The contents of science curricula must, of course, be argued for on scientific grounds. But those engaged in public debates about science education would do well to realize that ID proponents are out of touch with mainstream work at the science-theology interface.

© 2003 American Institute of Physics