From: John Burgeson (burgythree@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Apr 07 2003 - 20:48:41 EDT
I had written, as precept #2:
>2. It is not permissible to NOT have a theory. The gap must always be
>filled.
Howard replied: "Again, I will quibble about words like "permissible" and
"must." No
scientist needs permission (from some ruling body) to formulate a theory or
to refrain from formulating a theory. And no scientist is under any
obligation (to some ruling body) to fill some explanatory gap."
Quibble noted. I agree, of course. Trying to make the precept short makes it
seem as if that was what I was espousing. I was not.
" But human curiosity, especially as it is exercised by a scientist
pondering a
collection of observational data, is very likely to be expressed in the
formulation of a scientific theory to give an account of that data. Why did
system X behave as it did? How did system X come to be formed or assembled?"
Precisely. This was the intent of my shorter statement.
"Furthermore, as I noted in regard to your precept #1, if that theory is to
be considered part of contemporary natural science, it will have to be be
consistent with methodological naturalism (MN)."
Again, we agree.
"ID advocates are free to advocate a theory that explicitly rejects MN, but
they should, I believe, label it with something other than the word
"science" alone. The label "ID science" would be one candid and honest way
to distinguish an ID theory from a normal scientific theory."
My observation is that they don't HAVE to reject MN to advocate the ID
premise. The intelligent agent need not be supernatural (unless one
considers human beings to be, in some sense, supernatural).
Burgy
www.burgy.50megs.com
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