John,
In a message dated 10/20/98 you wrote:
<<IMHO, the last remark by George is right on target. And Bob is right
that room needs to be made for the person holding a position that
evolution (common descent) (whatever) is still "in the dock" on
grounds scientific. >>
Thanks for this brief analysis, John. Let me piggy back on it and extend it
further.
Kuhn (_The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_) describes the difference
between theistic-evolutionists and me. The former are engaged in "normal
science" as Kuhn describes it. He wrote, "Normal science consists
of...extending the knowledge of those facts that the paradigm displays as
particularly revealing, by increasing the extent of the match between those
facts and the paradigm's predictions, and by further articulation of the
paradigm itself."
"Few people who are not actually practitioners of a mature science realize how
much mop-up work of this sort a paradigm leaves to be done or quite ho
fascinating such work can prove in the execution. . . . Mopping-up operations
are what engage most scientists throughout their careers. They constitute
what I am here calling normal science. . . .that enterprise seems to me an
attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that
the paradigm supplies" (p. 24). Isn't this what theistic-evolutionists are
doing?
I, and others like me, are interested in something else that is integral to
the scientific enterprise. Kuhn describes what that is. "Yet one standard
product of the scientific enterprise is missing (from normal science, DH).
Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when
successful, finds none." (p. 52). He continues, "Discovery commences with
the awareness of anomaly, i.e., with the recognition that nature has somehow
violated the paradigm-induced expectations that govern normal science" (pp.
52-53).
I am trying to discover novelties of fact and theory, that is, anomalies to
the Darwinian paradigm, because I believe the paradigm is incomplete and over-
extended. My approach is a legitimate part of the scientific enterprise, and
I find it more meaningful than engaging in normal evolutionary science.
Hope this is helpful.
Bob