Because Brad Monton was here first.
Here, in A Summary of Scientific Method SpringerBriefs in Philosophy, 2011, Peter Kosso tackles “Is intelligent design science” – a topic that used to be confined union hall megaphones and humanist picket signs (except always expressed as a negative assertion):
Is the theory of intelligent design scientific or not? Well, we can’t even begin to answer this question, at least not in a reasonable and profitable way, without a clear understanding of what it is to be scientific. There must be something shared by all the sciences that makes them scientific, and it would be this something that is missing from the unscientific or the pseudoscientific. That something is not what they study. Geology, biology, and physics study pretty different things, whereas biology and intelligent design study pretty much the same thing. What is common to the sciences is the basic structure of how they study, and the standards they use to judge acceptable results. This is the scientific method.
So, we will presume that there is a shared method for all the sciences, and that it is the method that makes them scientific. Furthermore, we will presume that the criteria for being scientific are objective criteria. That is, it is not a matter of personal judgment as to what the scientific method is or what qualifies as scientific. There are impersonal, objective standards for what it is to be scientific, and there is an objectively accurate description of the scientific method. This, too, must be assumed by the debates about difficult social issues like intelligent design or global warming, or else there would be no point in trying to establish one thing to be, or not to be, scientific.
Where’s the picket sign? Oh wait, no, this guy thinks for a living.
The way things are going, ID’s critics might actually need to know something besides talking points.
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