From: Howard J. Van Till (hvantill@chartermi.net)
Date: Fri Mar 14 2003 - 09:44:50 EST
Burgy,
Moving on to your second "precept":
> 2. It is not permissible to NOT have a theory. The gap must always be
> filled.
Again, I will quibble about words like "permissible" and "must." No
scientist needs permission (from some ruling body) to formulate a theory or
to refrain from formulating a theory. And no scientist is under any
obligation (to some ruling body) to fill some explanatory gap. But human
curiosity, especially as it is exercised by a scientist pondering a
collection of observational data, is very likely to be expressed in the
formulation of a scientific theory to give an account of that data. Why did
system X behave as it did? How did system X come to be formed or assembled?
Furthermore, as I noted in regard to your precept #1, if that theory is to
be considered part of contemporary natural science, it will have to be be
consistent with methodological naturalism (MN).
ID advocates are free to advocate a theory that explicitly rejects MN, but
they should, I believe, label it with something other than the word
"science" alone. The label "ID science" would be one candid and honest way
to distinguish an ID theory from a normal scientific theory.
Howard Van Till
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Fri Mar 14 2003 - 14:37:10 EST