http://www.naturalism.org/science.htm#whysceince
True Science: Does it Presume Naturalism?
This replies to the claim by John Calvert of the Intelligent Design Network
that science as it's currently taught in public school isn't true, objective
science because it rules out intelligent design (ID) as a viable hypothesis.
True science, driven by the human desire to know, predict and control, must
rule out ID, since to accept it would leave unclosable gaps in our
understanding of the world.
In the increasingly heated debate over teaching intelligent design (ID) in
public school science classes, a central bone of contention is the nature of
science itself. Those pushing ID say that those who rule out the design
hypothesis as non-scientific are just wrong about the nature of true
science. Writing in the Wichita Eagle, John Calvert, managing director of
the Intelligent Design Network, describes the difference between true,
objective science, and false, biased science:
One kind of science is completely objective in its goal ('objective
science'). It is purely theoretical and always open to criticism and the
need to change its explanations when new evidence arises. It seeks to let
the evidence dictate its explanations, not any bias.
This is the way most science is practiced, and this is the way it is
explained to the public and to children in public schools. The real
distinction between objective science and all religion is that objective
science is theoretical, while religion is dogmatic.
The other kind of science is biased in its goal ('biased science'). Its
ultimate goal is to infer only natural or material causes for the origin,
existence and operation of all natural events and phenomena.
Biased science is not objective at its core. The technical name for its
bias is scientific materialism or methodological naturalism. This bias is
the fundamental tenet of nontheistic religions such as secular humanism,
atheism, agnosticism and scientism. It conflicts with theistic religion,
because it denies its fundamental tenet that life derives from an
intelligent cause for a purpose.
True science, we might all agree, has as its goal objectivity, not bias. So
Calvert, in claiming objectivity for the sort of science that countenances
intelligent design, claims the mantle of the true scientist. On the other
hand, he says mainstream scientists who find intelligent design to be
non-science aren't really doing science. Instead, they're doing scientific
materialism or methodological naturalism, illicitly restricting the scope of
scientific explanation to rule out the idea that life could be caused by a
purposive intelligence.
Note that this is an empirical claim that Calvert makes. Do mainstream
scientists have as their goal "to infer only natural and material causes.
for all natural events and phenomena"? No, what scientists actually do is
seek the best explanation for phenomena according to widely accepted
explanatory criteria, none of which invoke the natural/supernatural
distinction. These criteria, among which are ontological conservatism,
mechanistic transparency, observational support, experimental replicability,
predictive success, connection between classes of phenomena, and theoretical
productivity, have yielded the most reliable and unifying sorts of knowledge
we possess. Science as a method has itself evolved under the selective
pressure of the demand for dependable and comprehensive understanding, and
these criteria are the winnowed out result. But it does not, and never has,
specified in advance of its explanations what's natural and what's
supernatural.[1]
Instead, what's happened is that scientific explanations and theories, using
ontologically and philosophically neutral methods, have gradually defined
what's natural, as opposed to what's supernatural. Those entities and
regularities that secure a place in scientific descriptions of the world
(e.g., molecules, neurons, species, the law of gravity) are part of what we
call nature, and those that haven't yet (e.g., unicorns, clairvoyance,
morphogenetic fields, astral bodies) are perforce excluded. So it's not
that science prejudges what's natural as it proceeds, although in building
upon existing scientific knowledge it necessarily invokes natural phenomena.
Rather, it constructs our conception of nature by virtue of its explanatory
success, expanding the domain of our reliable understanding of the world.
And science can consider any candidate hypothesis tendered for evaluation,
natural or supernatural, as long as it has at least some content amenable to
potential observation or experiment (if it doesn't, then it can't be
evaluated). As skeptic Michael Shermer put it on a PBS TV special on The
Question of God, "the existence of god is an empirical question." If you
can sufficiently specify your god, we can scientifically test for it. If
you can't, then do you really know what you believe in?
Now, Calvert might take issue with this empirical claim about what science
is and what scientists do, and point to various declarations by scientists
that they are indeed materialists or "methodological naturalists." [2] But
if they are such, it's only in the benign sense mentioned above, that
scientists will first look for explanatory resources within existing
science, which is perforce about nature as we currently understand it.
This, to repeat, is not to decide in advance what counts as natural
according to some philosophical or ideological criterion, but to proceed on
the basis of the relatively secure knowledge already in hand about what we
call the natural world.
So, if this account of science is true, Calvert et al. can no longer claim
that science is biased toward naturalism in the way they suggest, and their
case collapses for an "objective" science that would entertain hypotheses
empty of testable or observable content. Given that the canon of scientific
explanation is philosophically neutral, and that the intelligent design
conjecture is indeed empty, ID could only be taught as an object lesson in
how not to do science.
The last tactic available to those wanting ID to count as science is to
amend the explanatory criteria that our desire for reliable, unifying
knowledge has produced. Imagine that they manage to require, by voter
initiative, court decision, or legislation, that science taught in public
schools must include among its tenets that phenomena can be produced by
unspecified agents or intelligences. Instead of having to understand and
apply the theory of natural selection in explaining the body plans of
organisms, students could simply cite a designing intelligence about which
nothing is known.
As soon as this possibility is broached, its absurdity as scientific
explanation is apparent. The design hypothesis tells us precisely nothing
about the processes or mechanisms of creation, and only these can actually
explain how the phenomenon in question came to be as it is. Such an
explanatory tenet could never have been selected as part of science since it
produces no reliable knowledge, in fact no knowledge whatsoever. So
mandating it as part of science would be futile; it would simply be ignored
by practicing scientists in favor of explanations involving specifiable
processes and mechanisms. And learning it as an explanatory maxim would put
students at serious disadvantage in competition for science jobs, and
jeopardize their understanding of how the world works. So revising the
definition of science by fiat must inevitably fail.
There is, finally, no principled reason or practical basis upon which
intelligent design could be introduced into the public school science
curriculum. True science, driven by the human desire to know, predict and
control, won't countenance any elision in our understanding. Science isn't
philosophically biased, nor can intelligent design count as science. Case
closed.
TWC, 3/05
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[1] See http://www.naturalism.org/science.htm for more on this.
[2] For instance, here's an excerpt from an interview with Barbara Forrest,
co- author with Paul Gross of Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of
Intelligent Design: "Science, however, is a naturalistic enterprise.
Scientists cannot appeal to supernatural explanations because there is
neither a methodology for testing them nor an epistemology for knowing the
supernatural. Science has a naturalistic methodology, known less
controversially as 'scientific method.' That simply means that scientists
seek natural explanations for natural phenomena. Science also has an
epistemology, namely, the use of human sensory faculties to collect
empirical data about the world and the use of our rational faculties to draw
conclusions and construct explanations of this data. This is the only
successful way to do science, and the pragmatic success of this naturalistic
methodology is the only reason scientists use it. There is neither a
conspiracy by scientists to prohibit "alternative explanations" nor an
arbitrary commitment to naturalism, as ID proponents charge. Scientists use
this naturalistic methodology because it works. Period."
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