Re: [asa] Science's Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism

I read much of Hunter's book prior to publication, and my sense is that it
also generally ignores the ways in which early modern natural philosophers,
not to mention medieval natural philosophers, were very reluctant to appeal
to God's absolute power in natural philosophy. In other words, they
restricted themselves methodologically to God's ordained power--ie, to
natural causes for events. At the same time, however, they did believe that
final causes (ie, design) had a place in natural philosophy. It was in the
19th century that final causation was mostly given up, not the 17th. We
must not fly unto God's absolute power (ie, miracles) in natural philosophy,
Boyle said--and Boyle was perhaps the most important design theorist of his
age. The nearly universal assumption in early modern science was that we
can study God's works, God's means of working in the world, by studying
nature itself--by studying the natural, we can infer the supernatural. But
we cannot make the supernatural itself part of science.

IMO, Boyle and many other early modern natural philosophers would have
agreed with MN as an operative rule for doing science. But, at the same
time, they would not arbitrarily have ruled out "design" as a vital
principle for understanding nature--indeed, Boyle and many others insisted
upon including design in the toolbox of science. This is not a
contradiction. It only becomes a contradiction, if one is convinced that
"design" requires us to give up the search for secondary causes. That was
Bacon's concern about final causes: he believed that nature carries the
marks of omnipotence, so that natural theology is useful to refute "atheism"
(his word); but he also cautioned against allowing the pursuit of final
causes to cut short the search for secondary causes. That is, he refused to
let "design" become a "science stopper." Likewise Boyle. Thus, it was for
them *both* intelligent design *and* mechanistic causes. Both IDs and the
NCSE, IMO, are guilty of overlooking this.

Ted

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Received on Mon Jul 16 14:15:09 2007