Re: Kansas Closing arguments

From where I sit as an outsider to professional science but an insider to
the larger story of science in cultural contexts, and an insider to the
study of science as a form of reasoning and as a human activity, here is my
main concern about what is happening in Kansas and in other states.

The politics of this obscures the search for truth. This cuts both ways,
IMO, that is, neither "side" is willing to acknowledge actually valid points
made by the "other guys." Let me offer just two specific examples.

(1) Ever since Darwin (to borrow Gould's words for a purpose he would have
deplored), there has been genuine controversy within science itself on how
to interpret the fossil record. It is not difficult even right now in 2005
to find texts/papers by distinguished scientists in which they simply admit
to various serious problems with understanding what has taken place among
higher taxa. In other words, to use the old saw of the creationists,
"macroevolution" is not understood very well relative to "mircoevolution,"
yet b/c of controversies like the one in Kansas many scientists don't want
to say this, rather (it appears to me) that many engage in "closing ranks,"
which sociologist Tom Gieryn has demonstrated happens in controversies of
this kind. B/c it would obviously *seem to* support ID to admit this too
loudly, open and unbiased coversation is very hard to come by. However, it
need not support ID, that is, ID is not necessarily the only or best
inference. But ID is a possible inference, and as long as it is, many
scientists won't touch it.

(2) The ID tent is very big in a theological way, such that some strong
adherents are YECs who buy the biological piece of ID (namely, "irreducible
complexity" in cells) but do not really buy the geological piece (the
"Cambrian explosion" fully anchored in the standard timescale) or the
cosmological piece (fine tuning in a very old universe that came to be
through the big bang), and some major public supporters (such as the chair
of the school board in Dover, PA) are also YECs. The pragmatic political
union of a wide variety of people who are angry about the presence of
unchallenged evolution in school curricula leads many to equate ID with YEC.
 Although this charge is partly unfair (two of the three ideas mentioned in
this paragraph are anathema to YECs), it is not entirely unfair b/c of the
obvious political associations here. This makes the ID leaders appear
disingenuous when they deny that they are "creationists."

Hoping for better times and more truth-telling,

ted
Received on Tue, 17 May 2005 14:50:28 -0400