Re: [asa] Chronicle of Higher education on ID

Thanks, Ted. Certainly we often raise questions of purpose in the evolutionary process while approaching the subject as primarily theological. At least the discussion here tend toward that direction. In biology, some, like Francisco Ayala, have suggest that design in biological systems arises internally from the process rather than imposed externally, a view I am personally comfortable with, and can fit into a theological scheme of divine action in creation. Also, I am reminded of biologist J. B. S. Haldane's remark about teleology, that biologists treat teleology the way they might treat a mistress: they don't want to give her up, but they also don't want to be seen with her in public.

I agree with Turner that ID ought to be a subject of discussion and debate in the academy. It is imperative, however, that terms like "Darwinism" and others that especially ID proponents use be precisely defined. I think it is difficult to debate someone who constantly shifts the ground under his feet, as some proponents do.

Bob
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Ted Davis
  To: asa@lists.calvin.edu
  Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007 6:43 PM
  Subject: [asa] Chronicle of Higher education on ID

  This week, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an editorial on ID, a provocative piece arguing for greater tolerance toward this particular type of academic dissent. I like much of this and thought some here would find it interesting.

  Ted

  Full text is at http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i20/20b02001.htm

  POINT OF VIEW
  Why Can't We Discuss Intelligent Design?
  By J. SCOTT TURNER
  I'd never had a heckler before. Usually, when I'm asked to give a
  talk, I discuss my research on termites and the remarkable structures
  they build. Usually, I'm glad just to have an audience. x But what
  I'd learned from termites had got me thinking about broader issues,
  among them the question of design in biology: Why are living things
  built so well for the functions they perform? So I wrote a book
  called The Tinkerer 's Accomplice, which was my topic that day.
  The trouble started almost as soon as I stepped up to the podium:
  intrusive "questions" and demands for "clarifications," really
  intended not to illuminate but to disrupt and distract. In
  exasperation, I finally had to ask the heckler to give me a chance to
  make my argument and my audience a chance to hear it, after which he
  could ask all the questions he wished.
  He was not interested in that approach, of course, and left as soon
  as question time began. I found out later that he'd complained at his
  next faculty meeting that the departmental speaker's program should
  never be used as a forum for advancing - what precisely? That was
  never quite clear, either to me or to my embarrassed host.
  I think what stirred up the heckler had something to do with the word
  "design." Unless clearly linked to the process of natural selection,
  "design" can be a bit of a red flag for modern biologist s. The reason
  is not hard to fathom. Most people, when they contemplate the living
  world, get an overwhelming sense that it is a designed place, replete
  with marvelous and ingenious contrivances: the beak of a hummingbird
  curved like the nectaries it feeds from, bones shaped to the loads
  they must bear, feathers that could teach new tricks to an
  aeronautical engineer, the nearly unfathomable complexity of a brain
  that can see - all built as if someone had designed them.
  And that, in a nutshell, is the problem. Say "design," and you imply
  that a designer has been at work, with all the attributes implied by
  that word: forward-looking, purposeful, intelligent, and intentional.
  For many centuries, most people drew precisely that conclusion from
  the designs they thought they saw everywhere in nature.
  Charles Darwin was supposed to have put paid to that idea, of course,
  and ever since his day biologists have considered it gauch e to speak
  of design, or even to hint at purposefulness in nature. Doing so in
  polite company usually earns you what I call The Pause, the awkward
  silence that typically follows a faux pas.
  If just one freighted word like "design" can evoke The Pause,
  combining two - as in the phrase "intelligent design" - seems to make
  otherwise sane people slip their moorings. If you enjoy irony, as I
  do, the spectacle can provide hours of entertainment. I wonder, for
  example, what demon had gripped a past president of Cornell
  University when he singled out intelligent design as a unique threat
  to academic and civil discourse. Aren't universities supposed to be a
  place for dangerous ideas?
  Also amusing is the spectacle of independent-minded scientists'
  running to college administrators or the courts for help in defining
  what is science and what is permissible discourse in their
  classrooms. And I find it hard to suppress a chuckle at the sheer
  brass of books like Richard Dawkins's recent The God Delusion
  (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), which seem untroubled by traditional
  boundaries between religion and science as long as the intrusion is
  going their way.
  Faced with all that hue and cry, I almost want to say: "Friends,
  intelligent design is just an idea." You might believe (as I do) that
  it is a wrongheaded idea, but it's hard to see how that alone should
  disqualify it from academic discourse. Academe is full of wrongheaded
  ideas, and always has been - not because academe itself is
  wrongheaded, but because to discuss such ideas is its very function.
  Even bad ideas can contain kernels of truth, and it is academe's role
  to find them. That can be done only in the sunlight and fresh air of
  normal academic discourse. Expelling an idea is the surest way to
  allow falsehood to survive.
  A critic of intelligent design could reasonably reply: "That's all
  true , but there are limits to how much tolerance should be extended
  to wrongheadedness. Once falsehood is exposed as such, it needs to be
  shown the door." It's worth remembering, though, that we have been
  here before. Intelligent design is just the latest eruption of a
  longstanding strain of anti-Darwinist thought, which includes the
  Scopes "monkey" trial of the 1920s, the "creation science"
  controversies of the 1970s, and many other skirmishes, large and small.
  The strain's very persistence invites the obvious question: If Darwin
  settled the issue once and for all, why does it keep coming back?
  Perhaps the fault lies with Darwin's supporters. Rather than debate
  the strain on its merits, we scramble to the courts or the political
  ramparts to expel it from our classrooms and our students' minds.
  That is a pity because at the core of intelligent design is a
  question worth pondering: Is evolution shaped in any way by
  purposefuln ess or intentionality? Darwinism is clear in its answer -
  no way, no how - and that is not mere obstinacy, as some might
  charge. The banishment of purpose from evolution is Darwinism's sine
  qua non, which Darwin himself fought hard to establish, and which his
  descendants have defended stoutly ever since.
  Most of the challenges to Darwinism over the years, including
  intelligent design, have arisen over what most people see as a self-
  evident link between design and purpose in the living world. A
  Darwinist would say that the purpose is only apparent, that what we
  believe to be design is actually the accumulated product of an
  unintentional process of "tinkering," using materials at hand to
  cobble together solutions to immediate problems - keeping those that
  work, discarding those that do not, but proceeding with no view of
  the future, only with the legacy of the past.
  But what if evolution really is purposeful in some way? I n fact
  Darwin dethroned only one type of purposefulness, the Platonic
  idealism that had previously underscored the concept of the species.
  There's more to purpose than Plato, however, and it remains an open
  question how other forms of purposefulness might inform our thinking
  about evolution. What might purposeful evolution look like? Is design
  its signature? Can it be reconciled with Darwinism? If so, how? If
  not, why not?
  It's hard to see a threat in asking such questions. Indeed, it's hard
  to see how asking them could do anything but enrich our understanding
  about evolution and how we teach it.
  Here is where I have to give the proponents of intelligent design
  their (limited) due. Their intellectual pedigree might be suspect,
  their thinking might be wrong, but at least they are asking an
  interesting question: What is the meaning of design of the living world?
  In our readiness to proscribe intelligent design, we Darwin ists are
  telling the world not only that we are unwilling to ask such
  questions ourselves, but that we don't want others to ask them
  either. No wonder the war on Darwin won't go away.
  J. Scott Turner is an associate professor of biology at the State
  University of New York's College of Environmental Science and
  Forestry. His latest book, The Tinkerer's Accomplice: How Design
  Emerges From Life Itself, was published by Harvard University Press
  this month.

  http://chronicle.com
  Section: The Chronicle Review
  Volume 53, Issue 20, Page B20

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Received on Mon Jan 29 21:33:08 2007