I wrote a short article on the recent change to the
National Academy of Sciences statement
on evolution for a Sunday School class.
Here is what I wrote. Did I get it right? Corrections/additions
to it welcomed. Where is the Simpson quotation from?
I understand there have been some efforts to get the change rescinded.
Any news on this?
Burgy
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One key issue in the debates over origins issues is the
demarcation between science, which presumes methodological naturalism,
and philosophy, which does not. About three years ago a number of people
involved with the ASA LISTSERV began to try to get the National Academy of
Sciences to modify
its claim, cited often in educational literature, that "evolution is
an unsupervised, impersonal process." The process and victory are described
in the September 1999 PERSPECTIVES journal; you are welcome to
borrow my copy if interested.
The claim appeared initially (to my knowledge) in the 1996 STATEMENT ON
TEACHING EVOLUTION published by the National Association of Biology
Teachers. The key phrase in that statement is:
"The diversity of life on earth is the outcome of evolution: an
unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal
descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection,
chance, historical contingencies and changing environments."
What took place was a continually pointing out of the logical fallacy in
the claim that evolution is unsupervised and impersonal. Since the evidence
for evolution is drawn from natural (material) evidence, using the
principle of methodological naturalism, that evidence cannot logically be
used to conclude anything about supervision from outside the natural world.
The words "unsupervised" and "impersonal" were removed in 1998. It is
interesting to note that the person who was the key player in finally
removing the two words (who was against so doing at the beginning) is an
agnostic, Eugenie Scott.
The original of the offending phrase is usually traced back to a statement
by George Gaylord Simpson:
"The meaning of evolution is that man is the result of a purposeless and
materialistic process that did not have him in mind." Dawkins, Futuyma and
others have echoed this from time to time.
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