Steve:
>But these are not contrary to my claim that the scientific collective is
>conservative. These examples Mike cites are fully consistent with the
>current paradigms and do not require a completely new way of thinking about
>the evolutionary paradigm. In the evolution debate, anything that is taken
>as contrary to the central dogma (e.g., ID) is viewed with suspicion while
>those things that comport with the central dogma (e.g., models of
>abiogenesis) are more readily embraced. Note that this response of the
>collective is not necessarily based on the strength of the evidentiary
>support for an idea, but it does require that the idea be consistent with
>prevailing dogma.
Understood. And I agree. My mistake was in thinking you were talking
about an evidential conservatism, as you initially used jumping genes,
reverse transcriptase, and phrenology as examples (where none of these
are inconsistent with the evolutionary paradigm). Clearly the conservatism
is a function of metaphysical assumptions. The game rules of science have
been set up so that only non-teleological mechanisms are given serious
consideration. This was nicely captured in biologist Scott Todd's recent
letter to Nature:
" Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis
is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic."
If these game rules are violated, you can't play. There is nothing inherently
wrong with this. It simply means that if one is interested in whether
a ancient biological feature owes its origin to a teleological or
non-teleological
mechanism, science is incapable to addressing this concern.
>This is the crux of Kuhn's point regarding the way that
>science changes paradigms, only very reluctantly. It is simply the way
>that things are. You may refer to this behavior as the "game rules" but
>without such rules, we would have intellectual chaos.
Biochemist Richard Dickerson is the one who proposed that science
relies on game rules. I just happen to agree. Keep in mind, however,
another point that Kuhn makes is that paradigms don't change
because evidence causes the community to change its mind. Paradigms
change when the old guard dies off to be replaced by a new generation
and way of thinking. And what might be encouraging to some IDers is
that most of those on the forefront are young.
>On a different line of thought; I agree with Richard's complaints that ID
>is not a research driven ideology.
Not yet.
>But I would point out the problem a bit
>differently. ID says nothing about the mechanism by which life arose and
>diversified. It only addresses whether this process was intentional or
>not.
Actually, I can think of at least three ways in which ID allows us to
address other aspects of a process aside from being "intentional." And
each of these ways has the potential to generate substantive research.
>On the other hand, science wants to know the mechanism by which this
>happened. Thus, ID asks metaphysical questions while science asks physical
>questions.
Yes, but the physical questions asked by science depend on the metaphysics
of a non-teleological outlook. One could also ask physical questions that
stem from a teleological perspective.
>The problem arises when we confuse our metaphysics with
>physics. Thus, scientists at Baylor complaining about ID really should not
>do so on scientific grounds. Then if they are faced with complaining about
>the Polyani center on other grounds, one needs to ask them if they would
>also exclude schools of theology from academia. Conversely, IDrs should
>avoid critiquing evolutionary science because this too mixes their
>metaphysical program with the physical program of natural science.
But there is a problem. When asked about what type of data could exist
that would cause an ID skeptic to suspect ID, two basic answers are given:
find independent evidence of the designer or show that evolution is
impossible.
Clearly, the latter one would entail a critique of evolutionary science while
the former is simply misguided. So what type of data would cause you to
suspect that intelligent design is behind the origin of some ancient
biological
feature?
Mike
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