Science, Intelligent Design Metaphysics, and Methodology

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Science, Intelligent Design Metaphysics, and
Methodology
John Wickham Earth Environmental Science
University of Texas at Arlington
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Summary

• Attacks on evolution are about metaphysics and
  religion, not science.
• Scientists are partly responsible for the
  controversy because many have conflated
  methodology with metaphysics especially with
  respect to evolution.
• Science needs to emphasize its methodology and
  remain neutral in the metaphysical debate.
• Intelligent Design hypothesis is flawed.

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Design Advocate?

• Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an
  inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real
  thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really
  bring us closer to the secret of the 'Old One.'
  I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not
  playing at dice.
• A. Einstein, 1929

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Design Theorist?

• I am an empiricist. On religion, I lean toward
  deism but consider its proof largely a problem in
  astrophysics. The existence of a cosmological God
  who created the universe is possible, and may
  eventually be settled, perhaps by forms of
  material evidence not yet imagined
• E.O. Wilson, 1998, p. 263

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Evolution as metaphysics
Teleological assertions by scientists have been
repeated since the time of Darwin. G. Simpson
(1951) is typical

• It is adaptation that gives an appearance of
  purpose-fullness in evolution. It turns out to
  be basically materialistic with no sign of
  purpose as a working variable in life history.

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Evolution as Metaphysics

• Cardinal Schönborn
• Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might
  be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense
  an unguided, unplanned process of random
  variation and natural selection is not. Any
  system of thought that seeks to explain away the
  overwhelming evidence for design in biology is
  ideology, not science.
• (NY Times July 7, 2005)

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Evolution as metaphysics

• The very persons who insist upon keeping
  science and religion separate are eager to use
  their science as a basis for pronouncements about
  religion. The literature of Darwinism is full of
  anti-theistic conclusions, such as that the
  universe was not designed and has no purpose, and
  that humans are the product of blind natural
  processes that care nothing about us. (P.
  Johnson, 1993, p. 8).

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Evolution as metaphysics

• These attacks by the religious right claim that
  evolution is based on metaphysics, that there is
  no real distinction between metaphysics and
  methodology, and that scientists teach
  metaphysics as part of evolution.
• They have already won the public relations fight,
  and 2/3 of the American public agrees that
  intelligent design should be taught along with
  evolution.

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Evolution as metaphysics

• Science as a method does not have to, and should
  not make metaphysical claims.
• Science excludes appeal to supernatural entities
  as a point of method, and thus it is improper to
  draw the atheistic conclusion that God is
  unreal from evolution or any other scientific
  conclusion. Such questions are not scientific and
  must be left to the theologian and the
  philosopher.
• Pennock (1999)

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What is Intelligent Design?

• Intelligent design is a hypothesis which claims
  that some biological features are complex,
  improbable and specified, and they therefore must
  be designed,
• Intelligent Design claims it is based on
  probability theory, hypothesis testing, and
  information theory, but little use is actually
  made of these theories.

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Intelligent Design

• Intelligent Design could be considered science by
  Karl Poppers definition
• It proposes a model and method which can be
  analyzed for consistency.
• It makes general claims which can be falsified.
• Thornton, S., 2005

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Intelligent Design Hypothesis

• ID is based on specification and irreducible
  complexity
• Specification is related to statistical
  hypothesis testing defining a population, a
  sample and a rejection region to determine
  whether the sample is part of the population at
  some confidence level. (Dembski, 1998, p. 97)

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Intelligent Design Hypothesis

• The population consists of the characteristics of
  natural systems, and the sample is the
  characteristics of the proposed designed system.
  The characteristics of the proposed designed
  feature are called its specification and
  complexity.
• If the sample is in the rejection region, then it
  is not part of natural systems and it has been
  therefore designed.

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Intelligent Design

• The Explanatory Filter (Dembski, 2004)
  summarizes these concepts.
• Contingent means the feature is the result of a
  stochastic process (not deterministic)
• Complex means it is improbable
• Specified means that we know in advance what the
  improbable feature must be like.

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Intelligent Design Specification

• ID proponents try to get around having to specify
  the characteristics of a designers product by
  claiming that irreducible complexity is
  specified and that nature could not generate it
  (i.e. its a miracle) it is therefore designed.

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Intelligent Design Irreducible Complexity

• Irreducible refers to a system consisting of
  parts which have no function by themselves. If
  any of those parts are missing, the system cannot
  operate.
• Complex means that it is improbable.
• The claim is made that irreducible complexity is
  specified in the statistical sense, is outside
  the probability distribution of natural systems,
  and therefore it must be intelligently designed.

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Intelligent Design Problems

• There are at least three somewhat related
  problems with the model
• Biologists claim that irreducible complexity is
  only apparent. Evolution can produce structures
  that have no apparent function or are used for
  some other function and then later incorporated
  into a new system.

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Intelligent Design Problems

• The second and third problems are similar
• The feature to be tested for design must come
  from a population whose characteristics are known
  (complex and specified). We cannot specify the
  design characteristics of a non-human
  intelligence, let alone a supernatural one,
  without first making empirical connections
  between objects and the designer.

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Intelligent Design Problems

• Any scientific causal agent needs to be defined
  and independently verified in some way, and the
  intelligent designer is not. For example did it
  have mass and evolve naturally (the UFO
  perpetrators perhaps?), or is it a force or
  energy field perhaps dark energy or entropy.
• If the intelligent designer and its products
  cannot be defined (specified) the hypothesis is
  useless. There is no reason to believe that
  irreducible complexity is specified in that sense.

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Intelligent Design Problems

• This point is actually made by Dembski (2004)
  when he criticizes bubble universes and the many
  world interpretation of quantum mechanics
• What is important is that none of them bubble
  universes possesses independent evidence for the
  existence of the entity or process proposed.
  The demand for independent evidence is a
  necessary constraint on theory construction in
  science, so that theory construction does not
  degenerate into total free play of the mind.
  The design Revolution, 2004, p. 119
• What is important is that none of them
  Intelligent Designers possesses independent
  evidence for the existence of the entity or
  process proposed.

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Conclusions

• The methods of science can determine neither the
  presence nor absence of the supernatural, design,
  purpose or meaning in nature.
• Scientists should remain neutral and agnostic in
  the metaphysical debates unless they make it
  clear they are speaking as philosophers.
• Intelligent design theory is fatally flawed
  There is no known way to discover design without
  empirically connecting objects with a designer
  that can be defined and identified in some way.
• Science has lost the PR battle. The NAS should
  put together a curricula that can be used in
  public schools showing that ID is bad science.

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References

• Thornton, Stephen, "Karl Popper", The Stanford
  Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2005), Edward
  N. Zalta (ed.), URL http//plato.stanford.edu/ar
  chives/sum2005/entries/popper/.
• Dawkins, R.., 1986, The Blind Watchmaker Why the
  Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without
  Design, Norton, 322p.
• Dembski, W.A., 1998, Redesigning Science, in
  Dembski, W.A. ed. Mere Creation, p. 93-122,
  InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Ill.
• Dembski, W.A., 2004, The Design Revolution,
  InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Ill.
• Johnson, P., 1993, Darwin on Trial InterVarsity
  Press, Downers Grove, Ill.
• Pennock, R.T., 1999, Tower of Babel the evidence
  against the new creationism Bradford/MIT Press,
  Cambridge MA
• Simpson, G. G., 1951 The Meaning of Evolution
  Yale Uni. Press, New Haven
• Wilson, E.O., 1998, Consilience Alfred S. Knopf,
  New York