The War Against Intelligent Design: Defending Science or the Science Establishment?
Ira Brodsky
January 23, 2006
Someday people will look back at recent opposition to Intelligent Design and see it as bordering on hysterical. Proponents of Evolution demand a complete monopoly over what is taught about the origins of life. They ignore the fact that scientific progress often springs from the interplay between accepted, contrarian and just plain wrong hypotheses.
Philosophers have debated the origins of the universe for more than two millennia. Was the universe created or did it always exist? Today most cosmologists favor the hypothesis that our universe was created--not because they have a religious agenda but because the Big Bang theory does a better job of explaining observable phenomena. Woe unto him, however, who dares to suggest that life’s underlying molecular machinery might also have been created.
Like it or not, unpopular and sometimes strange hypotheses have played a major role in the progress of science. Granted, most fantastical hypotheses are wrong and, more importantly, do nothing to improve our understanding of how the world works. But there are many examples of hypotheses that contributed immensely to the progress of science despite being wrong. One of the greatest theoreticians in history, the Scotsman James Clerk Maxwell, based his revolutionary Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field on the existence of “ether” permeating all of space. The ether turned out to be mythical, but the theory Maxwell built upon this false foundation correctly predicted the propagation of electromagnetic waves through space—a phenomenon demonstrated years later by Heinrich Hertz and then put to practical use by Guglielmo Marconi.
In the Preface and Dedication to Pope Paul III of his masterpiece, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, Copernicus defended the freedom to test hypotheses that at first glance seemed absurd. To most people, everyday experience provided overwhelming proof that the sun rotates around the stationary earth. Copernicus showed that assuming the earth rotates around the sun did a much better job of explaining the movements of the heavenly bodies. He wondered why some wanted to deny him the right to test his hypothesis, but were comfortable with a Ptolemean system propped up by mathematical gimmicks.
The rebuttal to all of this is that Intelligent Design was contrived to rescucitate biblical creationism, a religious belief demolished by Charles Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection. That is a straw man argument. Intelligent Design has no more to do with the Bible than the Big Bang theory. Some advocates of Intelligent Design don’t even deny Evolution; rather, they argue that Evolution is directed or was initiated by an intelligent designer.
Furthermore, the Intelligent Design hypothesis predates Darwin’s theory of Evolution. William Paley and Charles Bell wrote at great length about Intelligent Design in the early 1800s—decades before Darwin’s The Origin of Species was published. Paley presented several striking examples of forethought in living systems. For example, infants’ teeth remain submerged in their gums so as not to interfere with sucking; later, the first set of teeth is replaced as the jaw grows. Given today’s vastly superior knowledge of genetics, it is all the more reasonable to ask how such processes can be explained by Natural Selection. Genetic research has uncovered many examples of mutations that cause great harm or have no discernible effect, but few if any examples of organism-enhancing mutations.
Should Intelligent Design be taught in schools? Our education establishment prides itself on teaching students how to think critically, but bristles at the thought of Intelligent Design being presented as anything other than a laughable and totally discredited argument. Educators should welcome the opportunity for young people to compare and contrast Intelligent Design and Evolution, both in terms of scientific merit and social agenda.
I don’t know whether the Intelligent Design hypothesis has legs. But of two things I am certain. First, even Neo-Darwinian Evolution is an incomplete and in many ways unsatisfactory theory, so it seems premature to shout down alternative ideas that could ultimately serve to refine Evolution. Second, scientists should be encouraged to conceive and test hypotheses no matter how unpopular or counter-intuitive. The proper way to deal with a false hypothesis is to disprove it—not form a lynch mob.
Philosophers have debated the origins of the universe for more than two millennia. Was the universe created or did it always exist? Today most cosmologists favor the hypothesis that our universe was created--not because they have a religious agenda but because the Big Bang theory does a better job of explaining observable phenomena. Woe unto him, however, who dares to suggest that life’s underlying molecular machinery might also have been created.
Like it or not, unpopular and sometimes strange hypotheses have played a major role in the progress of science. Granted, most fantastical hypotheses are wrong and, more importantly, do nothing to improve our understanding of how the world works. But there are many examples of hypotheses that contributed immensely to the progress of science despite being wrong. One of the greatest theoreticians in history, the Scotsman James Clerk Maxwell, based his revolutionary Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field on the existence of “ether” permeating all of space. The ether turned out to be mythical, but the theory Maxwell built upon this false foundation correctly predicted the propagation of electromagnetic waves through space—a phenomenon demonstrated years later by Heinrich Hertz and then put to practical use by Guglielmo Marconi.
In the Preface and Dedication to Pope Paul III of his masterpiece, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, Copernicus defended the freedom to test hypotheses that at first glance seemed absurd. To most people, everyday experience provided overwhelming proof that the sun rotates around the stationary earth. Copernicus showed that assuming the earth rotates around the sun did a much better job of explaining the movements of the heavenly bodies. He wondered why some wanted to deny him the right to test his hypothesis, but were comfortable with a Ptolemean system propped up by mathematical gimmicks.
The rebuttal to all of this is that Intelligent Design was contrived to rescucitate biblical creationism, a religious belief demolished by Charles Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection. That is a straw man argument. Intelligent Design has no more to do with the Bible than the Big Bang theory. Some advocates of Intelligent Design don’t even deny Evolution; rather, they argue that Evolution is directed or was initiated by an intelligent designer.
Furthermore, the Intelligent Design hypothesis predates Darwin’s theory of Evolution. William Paley and Charles Bell wrote at great length about Intelligent Design in the early 1800s—decades before Darwin’s The Origin of Species was published. Paley presented several striking examples of forethought in living systems. For example, infants’ teeth remain submerged in their gums so as not to interfere with sucking; later, the first set of teeth is replaced as the jaw grows. Given today’s vastly superior knowledge of genetics, it is all the more reasonable to ask how such processes can be explained by Natural Selection. Genetic research has uncovered many examples of mutations that cause great harm or have no discernible effect, but few if any examples of organism-enhancing mutations.
Should Intelligent Design be taught in schools? Our education establishment prides itself on teaching students how to think critically, but bristles at the thought of Intelligent Design being presented as anything other than a laughable and totally discredited argument. Educators should welcome the opportunity for young people to compare and contrast Intelligent Design and Evolution, both in terms of scientific merit and social agenda.
I don’t know whether the Intelligent Design hypothesis has legs. But of two things I am certain. First, even Neo-Darwinian Evolution is an incomplete and in many ways unsatisfactory theory, so it seems premature to shout down alternative ideas that could ultimately serve to refine Evolution. Second, scientists should be encouraged to conceive and test hypotheses no matter how unpopular or counter-intuitive. The proper way to deal with a false hypothesis is to disprove it—not form a lynch mob.
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