Open Letter to George Will (Long Overdue)
| August 25, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
[In July, George Will, a columnist I enjoy and find insightful on so many topics, weighed in on ID -- go here. I've been meaning to respond to his remarks on ID for some time now.]
Dear Mr. Will:
In the July 4th, 2005 issue of Newsweek, you offered the following criticism of intelligent design (ID):
>Today’s proponents of “intelligent design” theory are
>doing nothing novel when they say the complexity of
>nature is more plausibly explained by postulating a
>designing mindâ€â€a.k.a. Godâ€â€than by natural adapta-
>tion and selection…. The problem with intelligent-
>design theory is not that it is false but that it is not
>falsifiable: Not being susceptible to contradicting
>evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is
>not a scientific but a creedal tenetâ€â€a matter of faith,
>unsuited to a public school’s science curriculum.As for intelligent design bringing nothing new to the discussion of complexity in nature, this claim is difficult to sustain. Darwin, in his Origin of Species, wrote, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” ID, in arguing for design on the basis of complexity, takes up Darwin’s gauntlet. But it does so by looking to novel results from molecular biology and novel methods for assessing the complexity and design characteristics of such systems.
My own book with Cambridge University Press (1998) titled The Design Inference is a case in point. Ask yourself why Cambridge would publish this book if indeed there was nothing new in it. Or consider, why would scholars such as William Wimsatt or Jon Jarrett, neither of whom are ID advocates, offer the following duskjacket endorsements (endorsements for which they have endured considerable heat from Darwinists):
>Dembski has written a sparklingly original book.
>Not since David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning
>Natural Religion has someone taken such a close
>look at the design argument, but it is done now in
>a much broader post-Darwinian context. Now we
>proceed with modern characterizations of proba-
>bility and complexity, and the results bear funda-
>mentally on notions of randomness and on
>strategies for dealing with the explanation of radically
>improbable events. We almost forget that design
>arguments are implicit in criminal arguments
>”beyond a reasonable doubt,” plagiarism, phylogenetic
>inference, cryptography, and a host of other modern
>contexts. Dembski’s analysis of randomness is the most
>sophisticated to be found in the literature, and his
>discussions are an important contribution to the theory
>of explanation, and a timely discussion of a neglected
>and unanticipatedly important topic.
>–William Wimsatt, University of Chicago>In my view, Dembski has given us a brilliant study of
>the precise connections linking chance, probability,
>and design. A lucidly written work of striking insight
>and originality, The Design Inference provides significant
>progress concerning notoriously difficult questions. I
>expect this to be one of those rare books that genuinely
>transforms its subject.
>–Jon P. Jarrett, University of Illinois at ChicagoYour deeper concern is that intelligent design is not science because it is not testable. If ID were not testable, you would have a point. But the fact is that ID is eminently testable, a fact that is easy to see.
To test ID, it is enough to show how systems that ID claims lie beyond the reach of Darwinian and other evolutionary mechanisms are in fact attainable via such mechanisms. For instance, ID proponents have offered arguments for why non-teleological evolutionary mechanisms should be unable to produce systems like the bacterial flagellum (see chapter 5 of my book No Free Lunch [Rowman & Littlefield, 2002] and Michael Behe’s essay in my co-edited collection titled Debating Design [Cambridge, 2004]). Moreover, critics of ID have tacitly assumed this burden of proof — see Ken Miller’s book Finding Darwin’s God (Harper, 1999) or Ian Musgrave’s failed attempt to provide a plausible evolutionary story for the bacterial flagellum in Why Intelligent Design Fails (Rutgers, 2004).
Intelligent design and evolutionary theory are either both testable or both untestable. Parity of reasoning requires that the testability of one entails the testability of the other. Evolutionary theory claims that certain material mechanisms are able to propel the evolutionary process, gradually transforming organisms with one set of characteristics into another (for instance, transforming bacteria without a flagellum into bacteria with one). Intelligent design, by contrast, claims that intelligence needs to supplement material mechanisms if they are to bring about organisms with certain complex features. Accordingly, testing the adequacy or inadequacy of evolutionary mechanisms constitutes a joint test of both evolutionary theory and intelligent design.
Unhappy with thus allowing ID on the playing field of science, evolutionary theorist now typically try the following gambit: Intelligent design, they say, constitutes an argument from ignorance or god-of-the-gaps, in which gaps in the evolutionary story are plugged by invoking intelligence. But if intelligent design by definition constitutes such a god-of-the-gaps, then evolutionary theory in turn becomes untestable, for in that case no failures in evolutionary explanation or positive evidence for ID could ever overturn evolutionary theory.
I cited earlier Darwin’s well-known statement, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” Immediately after this statement Darwin added, “But I can find out no such case.” Darwin so much as admits here that his theory is immune to disconfirmation. Indeed, how could any contravening evidence ever be found if the burden of proof on the evolution critic is to rule out all conceivable evolutionary pathways — pathways that are left completely unspecified.
In consequence, Darwin’s own criterion for defeating his theory is impossible to meet and effectively shields his theory from disconfirmation. Unless ID is admitted onto the scientific playing field, mechanistic theories of evolution win the day in the absence of evidence, making them a priori, untestable principles rather than inferences from scientific evidence.
Bottom line: For a claim to ascertainably true it must be possible for it to be ascertainably false. The fate of ID and evolutionary theory, whether as science or non-science, are thus inextricably bound. No surprise therefore that Darwin’s Origin of Species requires ID as a foil throughout.
Sincerely,
Bill Dembski
39 Responses to Open Letter to George Will (Long Overdue)
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
What’s wrong with it is that metaphysical disputes have no place in the science classroom. I’m all for teaching arguments from Paley, Hume, and others in schools, but not in biology classrooms.
(See here for some interesting information about philosophy in primary and secondary education http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/children/ )
The materialist assumption can be both metaphysical and methodological. Metaphysical materialism absolutely belongs in the philosophy classroom, not the science classroom. But methodological materialism is the cornerstone of empirical science.
“But no middle and high school biology class has time to give all these theories a complete read read through for every problem area. For students to fairly evaluate claims like ‘evolution can’t explain this’ they would need to know all the best attempts in evolution to explain it. But to do that they’d need all the training that experts in the field have.”
The problem with not mentioning things like the Cambrian Explosion is that it gives students the picture that Darwinism is about as flawless as a theory can get (e.g. gravity). Oh wait… maybe that’s what they want them to think… All you have to do is mention an argument made of ID theorists about why the Cambrian Explosion is problematic for Darwinian evolution and a scenario proposed by Darwinists to explain that. I’m sure students will be more interested in hearing about a debate that they can look into themselves instead of being force-fed one side of the story.
Darwinist educators seem interested in protecting the classroom from dissent. However the recent coverage of ID in the media, although not always accurate, has revealed that there is significant dissent. Efforts to desperately prop up the crumbling Darwinian monopoly will inevitably fail as ID continues to gain coverage and support, now that the general population has been exposed to it.
“What’s wrong with it is that metaphysical disputes have no place in the science classroom. I’m all for teaching arguments from Paley, Hume, and others in schools, but not in biology classrooms.”
Yes, the biology classroom must remain completely materialist, inadvertently portraying the myth that religion and science are in conflict.
Yes, let’s ignore the difference between materialism as a metaphysic and materialism as though that wasn’t part of the quote you’re responding to. The assumption of empirical science is that the only things we can come to know about that way are the material, natural facts of the universe. Whether there are additional things to know, and whether they can be known in other ways a a completely separate matter.
Refusing to do metaphysics in the science classroom no more shows that religion and science are in the conflict than refusing to to teach Shakespeare in science class shows that religion and Shakespeare.
If this is all about debate and teaching conflicting views in the science classroom, why aren’t ID advocates speaking in favor of teaching the conflicts between relativity and quantum theory in physics? If you’re worried about students getting force fed false theories, why don’t you object to the teaching of Newtonian mechanics?
There are conflicts throughout science, and students should not be taught that there are not. But to asks students to become a party to such controversies before they’ve gotten a basic grasp of the field is to tell them they can run before learning to crawl.
“I am familiar with Dembski’s EF. The problem, as I see it, is calculating probabilities for unknown (but logically possible) possibilities. In order for the EF to eliminate all chance and necessary processes, all such processes would have to be known.”
This sets the bar extravagantly high, and ignores the fact that we use this kind of eliminative reasoning all the time. Where would the legal or insurance professions be if they had to make their cases against a backdrop of radical doubt rather than reasonable doubt? Futhermore, this idea — an infinity of possibilities — is itself too loose and undefined to be useful as a critique of ID. You’re elevating the the criteria to David Hume proportions, and doing away with all inductive reasoning whatsoever. If you want apply the same epistemic criteria to *all* reasoning, go ahead and live with the solipsism. Dembski’s filter is just a way of putting some rigor to a mode of reasoning that everyone uses intuitively. To place these kinds of demands on it looks like special pleading.
Let me humbly offer myself as a bit of evidence against intelligent design. Looking back over my recent posts, I’m absolutely astonished at the number of spelling errors, typos, and missing words.
Clearly, if my typing-as-I-think abilities are the result of design, the designer needs to be fired.
“Looking back over my recent posts, I’m absolutely astonished at the number of spelling errors, typos, and missing words.”
And yet somehow we all recognized the patterns of language that you intended, and didn’t mistake you for a bug in some Cisco router hiccupping random ascii bytes out into the blogosphere…
And we didn’t have to eliminate all logically possible chance and natural processes to do it.
“Yes, let’s ignore the difference between materialism as a metaphysic and materialism as though that wasn’t part of the quote you’re responding to. The assumption of empirical science is that the only things we can come to know about that way are the material, natural facts of the universe. Whether there are additional things to know, and whether they can be known in other ways a a completely separate matter.”
I agree that we can only observe material aspects of the universe through science, however design detection belongs in that realm. We cannot find information about what the designer is like, only whether or not something is designed. You can do it in archaeology, just apply the same criteria to biology, it’s quite straightforward in my opinion.
“If this is all about debate and teaching conflicting views in the science classroom, why aren’t ID advocates speaking in favor of teaching the conflicts between relativity and quantum theory in physics? If you’re worried about students getting force fed false theories, why don’t you object to the teaching of Newtonian mechanics?”
That’s because students are taught all three in physics classes, and where scientists think they apply in the field of physics. At least they’re given an introduction whereas Darwinian evolution is claimed (quite strongly) as the only possible theory any decent scientist would subscribe to.
“There are conflicts throughout science, and students should not be taught that there are not. But to asks students to become a party to such controversies before they’ve gotten a basic grasp of the field is to tell them they can run before learning to crawl.”
Last time I checked, I was taught that there is no controversy over evolution, lots of Darwinists have stressed that. On the other hand there’s Darwinists like you say there is a controversy however you try to downplay its significance. We’re not talking about little internal disputes here, we’re talking about a completely new theory that threatens to delegate Darwinian mechanisms to a much more modest position, something more than a few people aren’t interested in seeing happening.
“Let me humbly offer myself as a bit of evidence against intelligent design. Looking back over my recent posts, I’m absolutely astonished at the number of spelling errors, typos, and missing words.
Clearly, if my typing-as-I-think abilities are the result of design, the designer needs to be fired.”
I’m sorry but you’re the one injecting philosophical arguments into this debate. ID does not claim the designer is perfect (or creates perfect creations); it cannot because we cannot identify the designer, only the design.
“And yet somehow we all recognized the patterns of language that you intended, and didn’t mistake you for a bug in some Cisco router hiccupping random ascii bytes out into the blogosphere… And we didn’t have to eliminate all logically possible chance and natural processes to do it.”
Good point dave. Derek, what if I found the words you typed inscribed on a rock in the middle of the desert? Would I conclude that some natural process managed to carve those words (regardless of typos) or would I, as any sensible person would, conclude that an intelligence carved those words? Hmm… tough choice.
“The materialist assumption can be both metaphysical and methodological. Metaphysical materialism absolutely belongs in the philosophy classroom, not the science classroom. But methodological materialism is the cornerstone of empirical science.”
This distinction between “methodological” and “philosophical” naturalism gets flimsier every time I hear it advanced. As I understand it, “methodological” naturalism is an ad hoc boundary set up only as a guide to force scientists into naturalistic explanations. But this boundary is, after all, ad hoc, and really has no strong reason to protest if a theory like ID can justify its conclusions on strong philosophical grounds. Ad hoc boundaries cannot trump solid philosophy, simply because, as Stephen Gould Castanza might yell: “Magesteria are colliding!!”
Unless, of course, the “methodological” naturalism is really a cover for a de facto *philosophical* naturalism. It’s like these science puritans who never read Popper in their lives, who come out of the woodwork screaming “not falsifible!!!” at ID, while string theory and infinite universe theories get a free ride, peer reviewed, etc. It’s just another example of the Darwinian establishment’s “selective positivism.”
“Methological” naturalism is well and good as long as it knows its place, and understands what it is: a provisional boundary set up for the sake of convenience. But when push comes to shove it cannot be invoked as a guard against solidly argued philosophy, unless it can defend itself on philosophical grounds, at which point it is no longer ad hoc, provisional or “methodological.” As Dennett says:
“But there is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.” — Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, p. 21