At 08:51 AM 04/21/2000 +0100, Richard Wein wrote:
>From: MikeBGene@aol.com <MikeBGene@aol.com>
>
> >We humans tend to have great trouble giving a serious and open-minded
> >hearing to ideas that are both contrary and quite foreign to the way we
> >believe. But keep in mind that there are several scientific assumptions/
> >claims that may seem so different from astrology only because we have
> >become conditioned to see them differently. For example, consider the
> >following claims:
> >
> >-Life arose from non-life by purely non-teleological mechanisms
> >
> >-Life once existed in a form far more simpler and less sophisticated
> >than the bacterial state.
> >
> >-At one time, life did not require DNA or proteins
> >
> >-Random mutations and natural selection were the primary mechanisms
> >for the evolutionary origin of every biological feature seen on this
>planet.
> >
> >-X (X being any biological feature that arose a very long time ago) was
>formed
> >by random mutations and natural selection.
>
> >While all of these claims are widely held in the scientific community, all
> >of them also have very little/no evidential basis. That is, contrary to
> >Steve's
> >claim about the conservative nature of science, there are many claims
>embraced
> >not reluctantly, but as a function of the game rules of science.
But these are not contrary to my claim that the scientific collective is
conservative. These examples Mike cites are fully consistent with the
current paradigms and do not require a completely new way of thinking about
the evolutionary paradigm. In the evolution debate, anything that is taken
as contrary to the central dogma (e.g., ID) is viewed with suspicion while
those things that comport with the central dogma (e.g., models of
abiogenesis) are more readily embraced. Note that this response of the
collective is not necessarily based on the strength of the evidentiary
support for an idea, but it does require that the idea be consistent with
prevailing dogma. This is the crux of Kuhn's point regarding the way that
science changes paradigms, only very reluctantly. It is simply the way
that things are. You may refer to this behavior as the "game rules" but
without such rules, we would have intellectual chaos.
On a different line of thought; I agree with Richard's complaints that ID
is not a research driven ideology. But I would point out the problem a bit
differently. ID says nothing about the mechanism by which life arose and
diversified. It only addresses whether this process was intentional or
not. On the other hand, science wants to know the mechanism by which this
happened. Thus, ID asks metaphysical questions while science asks physical
questions. The problem arises when we confuse our metaphysics with
physics. Thus, scientists at Baylor complaining about ID really should not
do so on scientific grounds. Then if they are faced with complaining about
the Polyani center on other grounds, one needs to ask them if they would
also exclude schools of theology from academia. Conversely, IDrs should
avoid critiquing evolutionary science because this too mixes their
metaphysical program with the physical program of natural science.
So I support the existence of the Polyani Center at Baylor and would
support such a center at the UW.
Steven S. Clark, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Human Oncology and
Member, UW Comprehensive Cancer Center
University of Wisconsin School of Medicine
600 Highland Ave, K4/432
Madison, WI 53792
Office: (608) 263-9137
FAX: (608) 263-4226
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