Abstract
This chapter offers a critique of intelligent design arguments against evolution and a philosophical discussion of the nature of science, drawing several lessons for the teaching of evolution and for science education in general. I discuss why Behe’s irreducible complexity argument fails, and why his portrayal of organismal systems as machines is detrimental to biology education and any understanding of how organismal evolution is possible. The idea that the evolution of complex organismal features is too unlikely to have occurred by random mutation and selection (as recently promoted by Dembski) is very widespread, but it is easy to show students why such small probability arguments are fallacious. While intelligent design proponents have claimed that the exclusion of supernatural causes mandated by scientific methods is dogmatically presupposed by science, scientists have an empirical justification for using such methods. This justification is instructive for my discussion of how to demarcate science from pseudoscience. I argue that there is no universal account of the nature of science, but that the criteria used to judge an intellectual approach vary across historical periods and have to be specific to the scientific domain. Moreover, intellectual approaches have to be construed as practices based on institutional factors and values, and to be evaluated in terms of the activities of their practitioners. Science educators should not just teach scientific facts, but present science as a practice and make students reflect on the nature of science, as this gives them a better appreciation of the ways in which intelligent design falls short of actual science.
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Notes
- 1.
While traditional classroom instruction thoroughly covers different aspects of microevolution, using non-human animals as examples, it is essential to present more examples about macroevolutionary transformations, including the evolution of humans. This stems from the fact that young children can more easily conceive of microevolutionary changes than of macroevolutionary changes (Samarapungavan 2011) and a person can use multiple epistemologies, leaving room for the possibility that while using a scientific epistemology for microevolution, students may use a non-scientific epistemology when thinking about human origins (Evans et al. 2011).
- 2.
ID proponents have only leveled arguments against evolutionary theory, and there is no intelligent design theory that makes predictions and explains phenomena. For this reason, ‘ID proponent’ has to henceforth refer to someone endorsing the ‘intelligent design’ label, and more concretely someone who is part of the intelligent design movement (Sect. 5).
- 3.
One difference is that while Paley argued against a natural origin of organisms by mere chance, Behe argues (and has to argue) against an evolutionary origin by natural selection.
- 4.
For a historical discussion of the concept of evolvability and its relation to the concept of developmental constraint see Brigandt (in press-b), and for a connection to the phenomenon of homology see Brigandt (2007).
- 5.
Dawkins’s (1989) presentation also construes organisms as largely passive machines (controlled by genes), while portraying genes as active agents that have desires (selfish aims) and carry out actions (building organisms). However, while it may make the material more attractive, the anthropomorphizing of nature in classrooms can have negative effects on students’ epistemological development (Evans et al. 2011).
- 6.
Section 2.2 pointed out that exploratory behavior and other aspects of developmental processes permit several coordinated and instantaneous phenotypic changes to result from a simple genetic change.
- 7.
For instance, Dembski does not infer design simply from an event being extremely improbable, but from it being improbable and specified (exhibiting a pattern), although he has not offered a consistent account of specificity.
- 8.
The discussion on evolvability in Sect. 2.2 mentioned further relevant aspects of the evolutionary process.
- 9.
A similar conflation of two distinct conditional probabilities can occur not only in small probability arguments against evolution, but also in more direct ‘arguments’ for intelligent design. Inferring that an irreducibly complex or machine-like object is likely to have been designed on the grounds that (human) designers frequently produce irreducibly complex and machine-like objects is a fallacy. For while the premise is that P(machine-like object|designed) is high, the conclusion states that P(designed|machine-like object) is high.
- 10.
If one does not want to toss a coin 500 times, using two decks of cards likewise yields an outcome whose probability is smaller than the universal probability bound.
- 11.
In addition to persons being poor at reasoning with probability and detecting patterns where there are none, Elsberry and Shallit (2011) point to cognitive science studies according to which humans have agency attribution systems, which may be biased toward overdetection of agency.
- 12.
If ID is made more concrete so that predictions result, there is still the question of whether it fits the known evidence to a higher degree than evolutionary theory. Young Earth creationism of course makes concrete, testable claims (e.g., about the age of the Earth and the occurrence of a worldwide flood), which have been shown to be false.
- 13.
In the case of the use of the telescope for astronomical observations, even though this method was controversial upon its introduction, some reasons for its increased acceptance were that repeated observations gave consistent orbits and that telescope-based predictions on the future positions of planetary bodies were borne out. Moreover, it was demonstrated that the telescope reliably represented distant objects on Earth, whose properties could be verified by naked eye observation. Using lamps, Galileo showed that, unlike telescopic observations, naked eye observations overestimated the size of distant bright lights against a dark background, so that he was in a position to explain the inconsistency of the apparent size of the planets and stars viewed by naked eye vs. telescope. Thus, a previously accepted scientific method (naked eye observation) can be used to show the reliability and even superiority of a new method (telescopic observation), yielding an empirical justification for a change in method.
- 14.
Another drawback is that the notion of falsifiability stems from Karl Popper’s (1959) falsificationism. This general doctrine of confirmation assumes that while it is possible to conclusively disconfirm (falsify) a theory, there is no incremental confirmation of theories by evidence. Falsificationism maintains that it is not rationally possible to inductively increase one’s degree of belief in a theory as evidence accumulates. In fact, one cannot have any degree of confidence in its truth—one may only believe that a particular theory has shown to be false. However, even if a theory is incompatible with some observations, scientists may very well continue using the theory if it is supported by other lines of evidence and if there is no better alternative available, as opposed to rejecting it as ‘falsified’. More importantly, the only way to rationally justify one’s actions is with reference to factual beliefs for which one has some support, so there has to be some degree of positive belief in theoretical claims. Since scientists do have rational support for their (limited) endorsement of a theory (e.g., mechanics) and since scientists and policy makers use this theory for further action (e.g., building space rockets), philosophers of science have generally rejected falsificationism (Godfrey-Smith 2003).
- 15.
Here is an analogy: While biological attempts to define ‘life’ exist, such definitions are fraught with difficulties (see Cleland and Zerella, this volume). This is not a problem, as biology offers many insights into the features of living organisms independently of a definition of life. The biology of viruses offers empirical understanding even if it is not settled whether or not a virus is a living entity. Biologists pursue various aims and address concrete questions about particular organism groups, but defining life is not an aim of biology. In the same vein, philosophy can address various normative issues about scientific approaches without aiming at a definition of ‘science’.
- 16.
Footnote 15 argued that just like developing a definition of life is not a genuine aim of biology, so philosophy of science need not aim at a definition of science. The biology–philosophy analogy can be extended further. Similar to biology making progress by understanding various life processes, philosophers should not ask what science is, but analyze how science works and judge the credentials of intellectual traditions based on their epistemic and social practices.
- 17.
Arguing that the question is not whether theories are scientific, but whether epistemic practices are so, Chinn and Buckland (2011) compare the practices of evolutionary biologists, young Earth creationists, intelligent design proponents, and the nineteenth century scientist-creationists of Darwin’s era. The latter’s practice turns out to be more scientific than the practice of contemporary intelligent design proponents.
- 18.
See http://www.arn.org/odesign/odesign.htm (1996–2000) and http://www.iscid.org/pcid.php (2002–2005). The latter was abandoned just after Kitzmiller v. Dover ruled the teaching of intelligent design to be unconstitutional. In late 2009, largely the same group of editors set up a new journal http://bio-complexity.org, though in the last 3 years only 11 articles or reviews (all but one research article co-authored by the editors) have appeared.
- 19.
From an internal Discovery Institute memo leaked to the public: “Governing Goals: To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies. To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God. […] Twenty Year Goals: […] To see design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life.” (http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.pdf)
- 20.
- 21.
Compare the statements made in the ‘documentary’ Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed with http://www.expelledexposed.com
- 22.
I have argued in Sect. 4.2 that whereas a framing of philosophy of science in terms of a demarcation of science from pseudoscience erroneously suggests that approaches can be evaluated on a one-dimensional scale from scientific to unscientific, theoretical approaches differ in many respects. Considerations about ethical, social, and political consequences are yet other philosophical considerations that can be brought to bear in the assessment of epistemic traditions.
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Acknowledgments
I am indebted to Kostas Kampourakis, Alessandro Minelli, and an anonymous referee for comments on earlier versions of this essay. I thank Emma Kennedy for her thorough copyediting of the manuscript. This work was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Standard Research Grant 410-2008-0400).
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Brigandt, I. (2013). Intelligent Design and the Nature of Science: Philosophical and Pedagogical Points. In: Kampourakis, K. (eds) The Philosophy of Biology. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6537-5_11
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