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Mr. Darwin Can’t Get a Break
It can’t be easy to be Charles Darwin right now. (I mean, for reasons beyond the obvious.) A meticulous researcher and a serious and deeply respectful man, Mr. Darwin spent years carefully documenting and refining his seminal* theory of evolution through natural selection, delaying its presentation until similar discoveries by fellow British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace prompted him to go public and secure his claim as the father of evolutionary theory.
(And what is it with our British cousins, that they should produce simultaneously two men of such insight?)
Imagine for a moment if Galileo, whose encounter with the Catholic Church has been described in this fine piece by our own @Roderic, was today the target of pseudo-scientific sniping for Galileo’s enthusiastic support of the heliocentric model, and that a cottage industry of questionable academic rigor persisted in attempting to tear that theory down. Ponder a world in which the work of Isaac Newton (another big name in British science) was deemed risible by a gaggle of modern critics, despite his having discovered much of classical physics and — oh, yes — co-invented the calculus because plain old math wasn’t quite up to his needs.
Think about that, because that’s what Mr. Darwin has to put up with every single day.
Okay, there’s nothing wrong with questioning science. In fact, to do science is to question science: that’s what science is all about. But while doing science always entails questioning science, the act of questioning science is not always doing science (if that makes sense: it’s one of those p implies q does not imply that not-p implies not-q situations).
A couple of days ago the British newspaper The Telegraph ran a story about a criticism of Darwin mounted by the woke folks at Sheffield University in the UK. That story is paywalled at The Telegraph, but Breitbart is covering it here. The gist of the story is that the school deems evolutionary biology the stuff of white supremacy. The Telegraph quotes the school as writing “It is clear that science cannot be objective and apolitical…. [T]he curriculum we teach must acknowledge how colonialism has shaped the field of evolutionary biology and how evolutionary biologists think today,” and as calling for the “whiteness and Eurocentrism of our science” to be deconstructed.
It’s bad enough that Darwin’s work is attacked via pseudo-science from the right, as I mentioned recently in this piece (paywalled behind Ricochet) about the work of Stephen Meyer. Now the great naturalist is in the left’s crosshairs as well.
What caught my eye about the Breitbart piece (which was linked indirectly by Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit) was, first, that it is about Darwin, a man I admire and with whom I share a birthday, but also that it mentioned Sheffield University. That august institution came up here recently in this piece I wrote about a quack woke geophysics lecturer at Sheffield calling for an end to the structural racism of the geoscience field. Or something.
* I have read that “seminal” is no longer considered appropriate, when discussing contributions in science. I can’t imagine why not.
Published in Science & Technology
Okay, so give me an example of how they are answering a how question. That is, give me one of the answers they propose to how the intelligent designer did something.
I did.
“It was designed” is an answer to those three how questions.
And that, again, is you insisting that they answer different questions.
We disagree on what questions they are trying to answer, why, and what the result of their questions and answers are.
Okay, so let’s recap.
I said that the intelligent design folk were not answering the how questions in which science is interested. They were answering the who question, but not the how question.
You replied that I didn’t understand what kind of questions they were asking, and that they were answering the questions they were asking.
I asked you what kinds of questions they were asking, and you said:
I asked you to give me an example of a how question they’re answering, of how something came into being.
You replied: “It was designed” is an answer to those three how questions.
But “design” means to conceive of something, to think up how it should be. It doesn’t instantiate a tangible thing, merely determines what that thing, if instantiated, would be.
I could as easily say it came into being by natural processes and leave it at that. When you ask me “but how,” I could answer “by natural processes.” Because that’s what you’re doing, answering “how” with “by an intelligent designer.”
Is that where you want to leave it? Because it’s a dead end, in that you’ve just posited an actor that is completely speculative in nature, and about the methods and abilities of which we can deduce nothing with even a hint of objectivity or rigor.
Because it stopped being science when it turned into religion. Which was my point all along.
But that answer does not result in science. It is an answer from faith, not from inquiry.
Really? HR said they weren’t even trying to answer any question.
Give me an objection that understands what questions they’re actually asking, and see what I do.
Take the objection “Intelligent design is not a falsifiable proposition, and therefore not a scientific theory!” Now that’s an interesting objection! I can’t promise what I’ll say if I ever have time to sort it all out, but I can say that I don’t presently know of any rebuttal to that objection which I am sure I could endorse.
We’re obviously speaking two different languages here, Augie. If yours is philosophy, I’ll take a plate of hash.
Ok. Given that it’s not falsifiable and siding with Popper on falsifiability being a necessary condition for a theory being scientific, a solid objection.
Demonstrably false. It’s answer answer given as the conclusion of arguments.
It’s an answer of faith, sure. But it’s an answer from inquiry.
Mine is English. And I don’t troll.
Theory? Pookie, it ain’t even a scientific hypothesis. The problem science often has in the common parlance is that people don’t know what words like “hypothesis” and “theory” mean to scientists. I have heard scientific theories dismissed with, “Well, that’s just a theory. It’s not real.” But theory means something with a whole lot of proof in scientific parlance. Likewise, a “scientific hypothesis” has to meet certain criteria, including criteria regarding: definition, testability, falsifiability, etc.
I don’t know how the word is used in philosophy. Can I philosophically hypothesize that God loves the smell of farts, since he created animals to pass gas? I mean, I can’t scientifically define God, nor do I have any ability to test this hypothesis or falsify it. It won’t pass muster as a scientific hypothesis. Will it as a philosophical hypothesis?
Normally, we use words the same way the dictionary does.
No. But if you’d like to find dictionary definitions of “philosophical” and “hypothesis,” I can reconsider my answer.
Yes. It’s answering how questions. Just not the ones you want it to answer.
You can want that till the cows come home, and I don’t know that I’ll have any objection, although I also don’t understand why they should have to answer your particular how question. That is not a criterion for a scientific theory in Popper or anyone else I’ve ever heard of.
In the case of a question about where some design came from, answering that it was designed is quite sufficient.
This is, once again, you insisting that a theory must–must, must must!–answer your particular how question. You may insist. Just please don’t say that the theory does not answer the questions it is actually asking and answering.
You want an explanation? “G-d did it” is perfectly sufficient.
Or do you insist on a physical explanation? Then you’re begging an important question, assuming G-d did not create directly. But then maybe G-d used physical means; why not?
Or do you only mean that it’s not a scientific theory as such if it appeals to G-d? Then just say as much, don’t misconstrue or ignore the actual theory, and leave it at that.
Maybe not scientific rigor. Religion and philosophy can have rigor too. But I don’t think I even care where it’s left. I just wish you would stick to informed objections. Make an accurate objection, and see what I say.
And that’s fine. Just make that point and justify it without saying false things about intelligent design.
That right there is another example of speaking two different languages. Do you know what the words for “of” and “from” are in different languages?
German: von for both.
French: de for both.
English is one of the few languages I know that distinguishes “from” and “of.” The way you are using this, every answer is from inquiry, because someone asked a question. If someone asks why is the sky blue, and I reply, “because God painted it that color,” you would say that’s from inquiry. I would say that’s from a southerly anatomical part of my being. The question was from inquiry. The answer was not.
Yes.
Rubbish. They’re both from inquiry. The answer is from inquiry and not from faith if the answer is based on arguments. Of course, one may always object that the answer is not scientific, or make some objection to the quality of the arguments.
I’ve got an expert on philosophy right here. Lexicographers are demographers. They answer the question: how are people using a word? Most no longer answer the question: how should the word be used. Why would I turn to a lexicographer about philosophy when I have a philosopher?
So, in conclusion:
Proponents of intelligent design use the language of science, and appear to use the standards and techniques of science, as a springboard to a pseudo-scientific and untestable assertion that is by its nature incompatible with science. They offer no evidence of any mechanism of creation, merely their conviction that no material mechanism could exist, and so assert that something metaphysical must be involved.
It is the very definition of an argument from ignorance, an untestable conclusion leapt to because they haven’t found actual evidence for any other conclusion and they no longer wish to participate in the pursuit of knowledge through the scientific method.
The chief problem with it, in my opinion, is that it degrades both faith and science — but most especially the latter, as the domain of science has actual standards of method, objectivity, and self-discipline, standards which proponents of intelligent design quietly abandon in their efforts to convince the scientifically ignorant.
It’s not the questions it answers, but the method of answering them that matters to be science. The ID types are answering the questions through a method that is not science. That’s the point of all of this, Augie.
Beats me. Maybe you have some weird idea that we don’t normally use words according to the dictionary.
Meaning what exactly?
Meaning ID is not falsifiable, and therefore not science?
They say so, and leave it at that. Watch me not object.
Or meaning something else? Then say what you mean.
Here is the crux of the different language. No, we don’t want an explanation. We want a scientific explanation. We want science to be science. Part of that is that science follows the scientific method. That implies that hypotheses be falsifiable, testable, etc. Coming up with an untestable hypothesis is not science. It may be religion, metaphysics, philosophy, etc., but it isn’t science. And we object to those who attempt to call those other things science, just as I personally object to those who mistake science for a religion. Science ain’t religion. Religion ain’t science.
If you’re making the “It’s not falsifiable, and therefore not science!” objection, then I offer no defense of intelligent design.
(There are at least two possible avenues for pondering an answer, but I have not taken either of them–at least not recently enough that I can recall!)
If you’re objecting that science is not allowed to ask about how features that normally involve design came to be present in the physical universe, then you are simply mistaken.
If you’re objecting on the grounds that true science must always specify a physical mechanism, then you have a criterion for science I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of before. It’s certainly not part of Popper’s falsifiability criterion.
What? Arguments from ignorance and arguments with untestable conclusions are not the same thing.
But if you want to take up the argument from ignorance topic again, the place to resume the discussion would be # 53.
Faith has those standards as well. But it reasonable to object that this theory does not have the standard of falsifiability.
Again, our definitions are very much at variance.
Fine and dandy. That’s a fine objection. (With no difference of language at all.)
Indeed.
Did you know that dictionaries often have multiple definitions for the same word? Did you know that sometimes those definitions contradict each other?
I have been saying what I meant all along.
In this case, not clearly.
Sure. And philosophers who speak English normally speak English like everyone else, using the words according to one (but not always all) dictionary meanings. We have a technical definition for “valid” that we spell out for the students in logic class. We don’t have a technical definition for “theory” or “hypothesis.”
When we say something is from somewhere, sometimes we mean where it came from originally, and sometimes we mean where it came from latest and sometimes we mean what it is representing. I was born at Silver Cross Hospital. One could say I am from Silver Cross Hospital. If I became an FBI agent, one could say I am from the government. If I were out knocking on doors to spread the word of God, one could say I am from my church. All three of these could be true.
By your definition, all answers come from inquiry, since they ultimately came from somebody’s asking a question. Everything in science comes from asking questions, making observations, asking more questions, etc. But not all answers come through the scientific method properly executed.
Everything I have said was quite clear to me and to the two Henries. Maybe the clarity problem has been centered elsewhere?
Not really. If you say “ID is not falsifiable, and therefore not science,” you’ve said something clearly. If you don’t say it, you haven’t said it clearly.