[asa] Rejoinder 4D from Timaeus – to Ted Davis: Martian Sculptures and Owen Gingerich

Here is Timaeus' reply to a post in which I had quoted a passage from Owen Gingerich's book, "God's Universe."

I agree with some of this, Timaeus, for example your analysis of Owen's position, emphasizing here the use of the word "apparent" in the description, as follows:

<I think Gingerich is saying something different in the passage you have quoted. I think he is saying:
A. Science says that the origin of all the species can be explained by Darwinian processes, i.e., by natural selection plus mutations which are the apparent results of chance, and, in natural science, this is completely true.
B. However, natural science does not know (perhaps, cannot know?) that the mutations are truly, as opposed to only apparently, the results of chance. They may have a non-chance cause.>

We also agree, Timaeus, that Darwin would have rejected Owen's view that perhaps God has determined the nature of certain variations. So what? As I stated in my review of this book for First Things (http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=5486), this is not too dissimilar to Asa Gray's belief that God had guided variations along certain beneficial lines. Darwin told Gray that such a view made NS superfluous, so I'm sure that Darwin would say the same to Owen Gingerich if he were shown the book. Again--so what? As I say repeatedly in conversations with ID advocates, why is anyone ever under an obligation to accept the metaphysics that was flourishing inside the head of the founder of a theory when it was introduced? Are we obligated to accept Einstein's nihilistic positivism, simply b/c we may accept special relativity? Are we obligated to accept Newton's Arianism, even though it was closely linked with his understanding of God, nature, and gravitation? Are!
  we obligated to accept Faraday's theology, even though it influenced him to look for connections between forces in nature that he subsequently found?

Neither Owen nor me has to interpret "Darwinian" evolution in a "Darwinian" manner, any more than you are obligated to interpret QM as Heisenberg did, in terms of ultimate irreducible uncertainty and freedom in nature. (I gather, Timaeus, that you are more attracted to Bohm's view of this, even though most physicists think the Copenhagen interpretation is fine.) In other words, to use your own categories, we aren't "theistic Darwinists" even though we are happy with Darwin's view that the causes of variations are unknown. ("Our ignorance of the laws of variation," Darwin wrote, "is profound." Mendel and DNA haven't yet fully reversed our ignorance.)

As I say, so what? Natural law itself has always been open to multiple interpretations at the level of metaphysics and theology. On that, see the essay that Robin Collins (at the time a fellow of TDI) and I wrote on "Scientific Naturalism," for Gary Ferngren's collection on science & religion. That's what is happening here, Timaeus: we're giving an alternative interpretation that does not challenge the basic accuracy of the science itself, and this seems to bother you greatly.

Indeed, this seems crucial for you: you want not merely a different philosophical interpretation (as important as that may be), but a different science. Furthermore, you immediately and (IMO) unfortunately jump into the culture wars, with implicit appeals to me and Owen to shed our blood alongside yours *on this particular hill*, as if there were no other hills on which one might well bear witness to the truth of Christian theism. Indeed, you seem entirely to ignore the fact (pointed out in my comments) that Gingerich proclaims this boldly. He says the same things on secular campuses (including at Harvard) that he says in churches or on Christian college campuses. If he doesn't say so in scientific meetings, perhaps that's b/c scientific meetings aren't the proper venue for promoting any given religious (or irreligious) interpretation of science. Dawkins can't do that any more than Gingerich can. You say there is no deliberate dishonesty in our view, but that it is nev!
 ertheless "a dodge" on our part. What exactly are we dodging, Timaeus? What exactly did you not understand about my comments on Owen's courageous efforts to tell audiences everywhere that a scientist *can* believe in design? Methinks that you are allowing the politics of this issue--which tends to encourage individuals on either side of it to ignore inconvenient truths staring them in the face--to distort the picture here.

Take this passage (below):

<But from a metaphysical point of view, this is (and I use this word without any implication of deliberate dishonesty) a dodge on TE’s point, because it allows TE to be vague about the nature and cause of the random mutations. The TE person can go to a scientific conference and give the impression to neo-Darwinists (not by saying anything, but simply by remaining silent) that the random mutations are not-fully-understood natural events, and can the next day go to a meeting of “Christians for science” and say openly that the random mutations are God’s way of steering evolution in the direction that his divine will has established from the beginning. Christian ID theorists, on the other hand, are not allowed any room for silence or ambiguity on this point.>

If the ID theorists are not allowed any room here, Timaeus, it is b/c they apparently see this issue differently: they do *not* agree with my view (above) that no one is under any obligation to accept (either implicitly or explicitly) a particular metaphysics in conjunction with a particular scientific theory. ID theorists define "Darwinism" to include Darwin's personal metaphysics as a necessary accoutrement to the theory itself. Charles Hodge did likewise in his 1874 book, "What is Darwinism?", and Phil Johnson is nothing more than Hodge redux. Gray on the other hand realized that one need not do that. Gray did not prove to be correct, in his belief that someday we would discover a law of variations (which would make evolution by NS subject to front loaded design), but the metaphysical question concerning the ultimate cause of variations is still an open one. I've been pushing you on questions of QM on purpose, Timeaus, b/c they are relevant here. I can't tell you ho!
 w all variations are produced, and the role of quantum events in producing them; but I can tell you that an important cause of variations is radiation, and radiation results from quantum events. It is not a "dodge" of any sort, to think that quantum uncertainty has something to do with a lot of the variations that are the raw material upon which NS relies. It's simply the truth.

(The previous paragraph answers your final question for me, as follows: "What does TE stand to lose if “random” mutations can be brought under lawlike generalizations, just like other phenomena of nature?" My answer: Nothing is lost. Gray would have been right, and he was the first TE in America.)

Now, how one interprets QM is another open question, another one of those "questions without answers" to borrow the title of a chapter from Owen's book. One might see in QM room for divine and human freedom, at least in relation to Laplace's divine calculator in a fully mechanistic world (this seems to be Polkinghorne's view). Or, one might see God determining all future events, but from a hidden role behind the cloud of quantum uncertainty (I think Russell's view if of this sort). Or something else. But, leaving evolution completely aside for the time being, Timaeus, I just fail to see how it's dodgy or wimpy to accept QM as a valid scientific theory while not accepting a specific metaphysical framework in which to understand it. Even classic texts on QM sometimes have chapters about this, precisely b/c it's under-determined by the science but also very interesting and potentially important.

So, to sum up my side of this point: The view Owen takes is not dodgy, and it's just unfair and untrue to imply (as I think you are doing) that it's conveniently designed to avoid taking heat from the biologists. Owen takes plenty of heat for saying what he says about "design" and God. His interpretation of RM + NS reflects simply his understanding of QM and the contingent macroscopic events that may be related to quantum events in ways that can't (at least presently) be spelled out by anyone for the individual cases. I doubt that you can do better, Timaeus.

From where I sit, Timaeus, you seem to be pretty upset that ID theorists are under the gun, while most TEs are not. But this is what many ID theories seem to want; that is, they want to challenge the *science* of Darwinian evolution *as well as* the metaphysics of Darwin. I say, well, OK, if you want to challenge the science (for metaphysical reasons, I strongly suspect), you can do that, and you can expect some serious challenges to your own science in return. Owen and I would rather do things the old fashioned way: when scientists make unwarranted extrapolations of good science into questionable metaphysics (such as Dawkins or Atkins or Wilson), we'll call their metaphysical bluff and play from our hands. This, too, brings challenges back to us, but they are of a different sort.

Here then is my advice to you, Timaeus, as an historian of Christianity and science and a longtime observer of this issue as it has played out in America: don't overplay your own hand on this one. If you think the scientific cards held by Dawkins and company aren't strong enough, and yours are better, it's fair to play them--and fair to expect people to up the ante on you. At the same time, if your TE friend thinks that her best cards are metaphysical and theological, then don't expect her to follow your lead. Nothing dodgy or wimpy about that: this is a serious game, and you play the best hands that you have.

I haven't answered your Martian question yet, at least not directly. But this post is already long enough.

Ted

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TIMAEUS speaks:

Ted:

Some very good questions here. I will take on two of them, the point about legitimate disagreement over design detection, and the point about Owen Gingerich-type explanations.

1. You wrote:
“IMO, failure openly to acknowledge this as a legitimate difference of opinion about the nature of the inference is one of the factors driving someone like O’Leary to claim that TE’s are just wimps who won’t take on the “Darwinist” establishment.”

I agree that the difference of opinion (i.e., whether design is detectable by science, or requires an extra-scientific, metaphysical or religious judgment) is legitimate. I agree that it is legitimate for TEs to hesitate on this point, and for them to raise possible objections to ID people. I agree that it’s not 100% clear that design inferences are “scientific”. This is exactly why I created my Martian sculpture example, in order to probe more deeply into the question: how do design inferences work? Are they scientific? If so, why so? If not, why not? I know you’ve already seen the Martian sculpture example, and I invite you to respond to it; in fact, I invite everyone here to respond to it.

Here it is, reproduced from UD:
“You would agree that the stone sculpture on Mt. Rushmore is designed, no? You would agree with this even if you didn’t know the history of its construction, wouldn’t you?
“Now, shift the scene to Mars. We travel to Mars, and on one of the mountains there, we find what looks like a sculpture similar to that on Mt. Rushmore, but showing whole bodies instead of heads. The figures in the sculpture are not exactly human – they have webbed hands, and little antennae on top of the heads, but they have obvious eyes, nostrils, mouths, and four limbs, with an upright posture. Their outlines are clear and precise, not vague.
“Would you agree that the design inference here is a practical certainty? I.e., would you agree that wind, sun and water did not accidentally carve out these figures over three billion years? Would you agree that we can “know” that this is a stone sculpture carved by intelligent beings? And that we can know this even if we know nothing about those intelligent beings (who may not be the beings pictured in the sculpture, but beings of another race altogether)? And that we can know this even if we can find no other trace of the existence of any previous civilization on Mars, and therefore have no other proof that anything ever lived there?
“Now, presuming that you agree, is this “knowledge” of design scientific knowledge? If not, of what kind of knowledge is it?
“Now take something like the avian lung, or the human circulatory system, either of which is orders of magnitude more complex than a simple carving of four aliens on a mountain of Mars. Can we know (without the aid of revelation or a system of philosophy) that this is the product of design? If not, why not? And if so, is our knowledge scientific knowledge, or some other kind of knowledge?
“And if the inference is scientific in the case of alien carvings, but not in the biological cases, what makes the inference scientific in the one case, but unscientific in the other? Why do you suggest that we are importing religion or metaphysics or philosophy in the case of the biological examples, but not equally in the Martian carving example? Why aren’t both inferences simply examples of deductive reason based on facts established by science, and therefore scientific inferences?”

****************************************

2. Now, to deal with your main question, you write:
“Since Owen believes (as I do) that science just can’t answer the question of whether or not mutations are truly accidental, then apparently there is no conflict and no appeal to two truths.”

My answer is as follows. To hold two truths would be to say this:
A. Science says that the origin of all the species can be explained by Darwinian processes, i.e., by natural selection plus the results of chance, and, in natural science, this is completely true.
B. Theology says that the origin of all species can be explained by the will of an omnipotent, omniscient, foreknowing, providential God, and in theology, this is completely true.
And the logical, or if you will metaphysical problem, is this:
C. Since, on this point, both science and theology are true, the origin of species occurred through a process which simultaneously was completely dependent upon chance, on one hand, and completely excluded (or at least rigorously subordinated) chance, on the other.

I think Gingerich is saying something different in the passage you have quoted. I think he is saying:
A. Science says that the origin of all the species can be explained by Darwinian processes, i.e., by natural selection plus mutations which are the apparent results of chance, and, in natural science, this is completely true.
B. However, natural science does not know (perhaps, cannot know?) that the mutations are truly, as opposed to only apparently, the results of chance. They may have a non-chance cause.
Therefore:
C. A Christian is free to speculate that the apparent “chance” element in evolution is not really chance, but reflects the involvement of God in the evolutionary process, which is exactly what we would expect if the world and all living things in it were created by an omnipotent, omniscient, foreknowing, providential God.

Is Gingerich’s position an illogical, metaphysically dubious two-truth theory? I don’t think so. I think it can be logically maintained. However, note the cost. Remember how bad a beating ID has taken at the hands of both neo-Darwinists and theistic evolutionists over “methodological naturalism”. ID has been denounced, belittled, ridiculed, mocked, and declared “unscientific” time and time again, on the grounds that it (allegedly) rejects methodological naturalism and fills up “gaps” in scientific explanation with “miracles”. Its explanations allegedly mix up God with natural causes. Yet, if we accept Gingerich’s account here as a tentative explanation, clearly God is being mixed up with natural causes. Certainly, you may say, God’s role is indetectable, and so the science is not formally affected, as long as the TE and the neo-Darwinists agree not to ask where the “random” mutations come from. But from a logical point of view, the TE who!
  accepts Gingerich’s suggestion here (and I don’t know if this is Gingerich’s actual position, or just a tentative suggestion) is in effect mixing up miracles with natural causes. The implication of Gingerich’s suggestion is that evolution either (a) would not have occurred at all, or (b) would have taken a different path, if God had not been directing the mutations. This is, from a metaphysical point of view, a non-naturalistic explanation of evolution, and Darwin himself would have utterly rejected it, for reasons we’ve already discussed, i.e., he wanted biology to follow the model of the other successful natural sciences, which never invoke the action of God, not even an indetectable action of God, to explain chemical bonding or the orbits of the planets.

Now I think that what Gingerich and you are saying is that, from an operational or pragmatic point of view, such a TE position would not contradict any result or method of science, since both the TE and atheist neo-Darwinian could agree not to investigate the ultimate causes of “random mutation” any further, but simply accept “random mutation” as a given, and then follow out its effects via “natural selection”. Granted. But from a metaphysical point of view, this is (and I use this word without any implication of deliberate dishonesty) a dodge on TE’s point, because it allows TE to be vague about the nature and cause of the random mutations. The TE person can go to a scientific conference and give the impression to neo-Darwinists (not by saying anything, but simply by remaining silent) that the random mutations are not-fully-understood natural events, and can the next day go to a meeting of “Christians for science” and say openly that the random mutation!
 s are God’s way of steering evolution in the direction that his divine will has established from the beginning. Christian ID theorists, on the other hand, are not allowed any room for silence or ambiguity on this point. Because they have come to the conclusion that design is a real and not merely an apparent feature of living things, they are forced into a certain metaphysically consistent position. Whether they go to a neo-Darwinist scientific conference, or to a meeting of Christian scientists, they must say either (a) that the mutations cannot have been random, and therefore must have been guided by God; or (b) that the mutations cannot have been random, and therefore were front-loaded by God. Either way, Darwin and the neo-Darwinists are wrong on one or more central points. TEs, on the other hand, are never forced, by their position, to say that Darwinism is wrong on any point; they can always appear to assent to both chance and divine guidance, simply by avoidin!
 g the metaphysical question of the relation between the two.

There’s another point that is odd about Gingerich’s position. He says that science cannot settle whether the mutations are truly random. Why not? And even if it can’t now, why couldn’t it in the future? Why is it in principle impossible to come up with a purely physical explanation for every mutation that has ever occurred, if not in historical detail for each mutation, at least in terms of a theoretical model of mutation which can explain mutation, in a general way, in entirely naturalistic terms? If neo-Darwinism is satisfied with the mere fact that there are random mutations, and shows no curiosity about where they come from, it falls short of the inquiring, curious spirit of modern science. Modern science doesn’t like loose ends like that. It wants to know why things happen. It’s not in the spirit of modern science to say: “Oh, well, I guess there are some things we will never know, like the cause of mutations, so we won’t investigate those area!
 s to see if there are regular natural causes operating there.” Any modern evolutionary theorist who is not intellectually lazy would be curious about what causes the mutations. And just as there are people like Dawkins who spend most of their life investigating natural selection, you would expect to find some neo-Darwinists who spend their entire lives investigating the frequency, character and causes of mutations.

Can we imagine a scientist saying that vision is explained by light hitting the eye, and spending a lifetime exploring the physiology of the eye, yet declaring that there is no point understanding “light” in and of itself, on the grounds that the nature and causes of light are insoluble within the province of science? If that had been the attitude, we’d have no discussion of light as wave, light as photon, etc. A huge chunk of modern physics would not exist. Yet that, on your account, is what Gingerich and some other TEs are saying about “random mutations”. They just give up trying to explain them. If that attitude had prevailed in Darwin’s day, there would have been no Darwinian theory of evolution. Darwin would have just said that there is no point investigating the causes of apparent design in nature; design is just there in nature, and science cannot get farther than that. Something is clearly lacking in Gingerich’s account here, at least as you’ve!
  presented it. Why the squeamishness about investigating the ultimate cause of mutations? What does TE stand to lose if “random” mutations can be brought under lawlike generalizations, just like other phenomena of nature?

I have more to say on your quotation from Gingerich, but I’ll stop here, because I think this is enough to digest.

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Received on Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:58:51 -0400