Re: [asa] Global Warming, Ethics, and the Precautionary Principle

>>> PvM <pvm.pandas@gmail.com> 01/26/07 9:26 AM >>>writes:

One of my more proud moments in arguing the vacuity behind the
Privileged Planet book by Gonzalez et al.
It gives me great pleasure that Janice is familiarizing herself with
my writings. Some spurious correlation, some envisioned 'purpose' and
analogies and I too can make specious intelligent design claims.

Ted dissents:
I have to admit, I like "The Privileged Planet" in book version (I am less
enthusiastic about the DVD, which does its best to mask the old
earth/universe that Gonzalez and Richards so explicitly accept in their
book) a great deal. I don't agree with their take on environmental issues
and I think that they can be a little over the top at times when pushing
their design perspective, the book is chock full of excellent science and
very accurate history of science. Indeed, their debunking of the badly
misnamed "Copernican principle" (which Harlow Shapley invented and
Copernicus would have disowned) is simply splendid. Their understanding
generally of the history of science and religion is far superior to that of
(say) Carl Sagan or Richard Dawkins or Isaac Asimov or Steven Hawking, whose
books are all much more popular and influential for the wrong reasons.

Gonzalez himself was the victim of a genuine witch hunt at Iowa State, in
which an atheist professor of religion (a former pentecostal, I think, with
a Harvard PhD) organized an effort to have the facutly officially disown the
book's conclusions--as if the Oxford faculty would officially disown Dawkins
or Atkins, or the Cornell faculty disown Sagan. Now *that* is a nice
example of the politics of science, in the worst way, IMO. I wrote a letter
to the Iowa State president on behalf of our fellow ASA member, Guillermo
Gonzlalez, and offered to show up in Ames to appear opposite his tormentors,
if it would be productive.

Gonzalez and Richards do make "design" claims, of course, and they are
entitled to IMO in such a book. Scientists do this all of the time--they
write books for the general public, offering religious interpretations of
scientific evidence. Whether they are persuasive or not depends a lot on
the audience. But IMO they make a very persuasive case for the undue
influence of an extra-scientific assumption called the "Copernican
principle" on modern science, esp on efforts to look for little green men
(and women). Following the ealier book "Rare Earth" (and I think Gonzalez
may have a connection with the author of that one), they point out just how
unlikely it is to have suitable physical environments for complex living
things, such that we should not really be surprised if we are the only
inhabitable planet in the Milky Way. We can't "know" whether this is on
target or not, obviously--unless the little green guys show up on our
doorsteps--but it strikes me as a very reasonable argument, in a field where
reasonable arguments are sometimes hard to find.

That's my two cents, at least.

Ted

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Received on Fri Jan 26 10:51:09 2007