"But the fact remains: once that clear case of intelligent design has been
shown, then all subsequent investigations may not be carried out assuming
that all systems have evolved gradualistically. So the underlying assumptions
for each investigation change from a set that includes 'All biological
systems have evolved gradualistically' to a set that replaces that assumption
with 'A given biological system may have evolved gradualistically or it may
have been intelligently designed.' That's a paradigm change."
I wish it were as simple as that, Russ. If you read Hugh Ross's _The
Fingerprint of God_ you will find example after example of how cosmologists
and astrophysicists fought the idea that the universe had a beginning, with
the implication, acknowledged by Einstein, of "the presence of a superior
reasoning power". This contentious effort went on for years. The same kind
of prolonged, vitriolic struggle can be expected in biology in a paradigm
shift from gradualistic Darwinian mechanisms to systemic intelligent design.
A scientific revolution, or change of paradigms, is an all-or-none affair.
Kuhn says, "The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the
decision to accept another' (p. 77). Later, in a chapter entitled
"Revolutions as Changes of World View" he wrote, "Nevertheless, paradigm
changes do cause scientist to see the world of their research-engagement
differently" (p. 11). In the same chapter he said, "Scientists then often
speak of the 'scales falling from their eyes' or of the 'lightning flash'
that 'inundates' a previously obscure puzzle, enabling its components to be
seen in a new way that for the first time permits its solution" (p. 122).
The change of world views in biology will be from strictly naturalistic
(even meta-naturalistic) to a yet-to-be clearly articulated,
interactive-creation or realistic-theistic one. So it is unlikely that
"gradualism" and "intelligent design" will co-exist in the new paradigm,
except to allow gradualism to put come-lately adaptive finishing touches on
intelligently designed, irreducibly designed systems.
In Christ,
Bob