I agree with everything you say, except that the part about science being a "social practice" could use a touch-up.
It's true that the way particular scientists live and work and investigate constitutes a social practice.  And I like your formulation that the Creationists rejected it, while the ID'ers ape it.
What I don't like is the implication that science might be a *mere* social practice.  That would make it far too contingent and conventional.  Driving on the right hand side of the road is a "social practice" in our country; driving on the left is the "social practice" in the UK.
IF science were a "social practice" in that sense, Creationists would be within their rights to say "fine; we don't like that social practice and we prefer another".
But here's the thing:  what lies at the heart of science is not merely a social practice.  What underlies, shapes, and justifies that social practice is *the way reality is structured*.  The "social practice" of science has the structure it has, because it has consistently delivered the goods in revealing more and more about how the world really is.  The shape of the globe, the pressure of the atmosphere, the behavior of the atom--all of these were both discovered by science, and also influenced the way that science is done.
There is no other "social practice" that is anywhere near as successful at delivering knowledge, prediction, and control of the world.  Not studying the I Ching.  Not perusing liver entrails.  Not memorizing Genesis.  Those might be on equal footings with science to the extent that they too are "social practices".  But that just shows that science is more than a "social practice"; it's the social practice that best tracks the structure of the world.

It really doesn't seem right to associate the IDers with Kuhn.  How could all of the other beliefs IDers hold, all of the religious beliefs that they're trying to sneak into the system, possibly withstand a Kuhnian or postmodern assault?

Sheesh. Talk about missing the point.

Yes, Origin of Species codified revolutionary science at the time.  Yes, evolutionary theory is now normal science. Everybody believes it, the way everybody believed in Newton's law of gravity in 1898.  And he way everybody believed in the ether, as well.  Oh, and determinism. Can't leave that out.

Kuhn makes a couple of claims. One of them is that revolutionary science takes a while to settle in, because there are institutional and social pressures slowing down change.  Science is, by its nature conservative.  Scientists, for example, never bought the cold fusion thing, but they did normal science on the idea nonetheless, eliminating it as a source of revolution.

It's hard to think of something revolutionary that will overthrow natural selection, just as it is hard to think of something that will overthrow the round earth theory. There's a point where evidence accumulates to the point that we're not talking theory anymore, we're talking fact.  We don't happen to be at that point in a number of scientific areas, but we certainly are there wrt evolution.  In an associated realm, the origin of the first replicator is an interesting open question. 

But that's not what Noam (I don't, pardon me, know 'im, but we all seem to on first name, or abbreviated handle basis here) is talking about.  He's talking about some side observations that come from the acceptance or rejection of revolutions.  (Feyerabend makes these observations in a funnier, more pointed way in Against Method)  That is, societal norms play a role in how slowly or quickly an innovation is accepted.  Despite Einstein's contributions to the idea that the universe is probalistic and not deterministic, he never really believed it it--an underlying you-can't-really-call-it religious thing he had going rejected probabilistic models as incomplete.

Now THIS is the kind of thing post-modern folk like to talk about. Science isn't really about real reality. It's all relative to what we believe to be true in our culture and our social milieu.  What gets accepted, even among scientists, depends on what is socially acceptable.

What Noam is saying the IDers are trying to do is introduce social acceptability explicitly into the framework for evaluating the validity of scientific results.  That is, instead of our accepting or rejecting scientific (or historical or literary) ideas because of a hidden socio-cultural framework that only post-modernists can perceive, they we should just say out loud what we all know to be true--that there has to be a designer.

That is, we just freakin' know that if we find a watch, somebody made it. If we see blood stop flowing in a wound, of its own accord, and we find there are seven different clotting agents involved we just know that this didn't come about because God was throwing dice.  It had to be the result of conscious design. 

Scientists, the IDers say, deny this underlying knowledge exists. They  want to make it part of our understanding of the world--that how the world works is actually in relation to experiences and our social framework. We have to accept that there are true ideas other than those worked out in a a lab.

Now this is all a buncha hooey.  Kuhn doesn't say we embrace false theories because of social pressures.  Kuhn says that it isn't enough to be a better theory. You also have to win the institutional and political battles to get on top.  But he doesn't say that scientific truth is relative.

Complicating this is that "scientific truth" is tricky. Some questions are simply no longer open, like heliocentrism. Some questions are so open that the scientists sound like members of religious sects, like the origin of the universe and the various flavors of the anthropic principle.  Some are still having the details worked out, like whether there is a graviton or not, and if there isn't why is there this particle zoo, and if there is, why is it so hard to find?

So, to cut to the chase, Noam's point is simply that it is very ironic that the very people who reject post-modernism where it actually makes some sense, like whether morality is relative to culture instead of absolute, or that literary quality, or even the meaning of words, can be culturally dependent, or even individual reader dependent are the ones who want to introduce it where it doesn't make much sense.

To some degree, Kuhn is a red herring here. The post-modernists use him to say "even science is post-modern."  Well, to the degree anything is, science is the least of the post-modern disciplines. And it's pretty funny that the wingnuts choose that discipline to haul out the post-modern carbines. 

<i>All I would add is that a new theory, such as Relativity, does not make the previous theory, such as Newton's, wrong. It merely extends the understanding of the physical world.</i>

This is precisely wrong.  Einstein's theory of gravitation (geneal relatively) expressly says that Newton is entirely and completely wrong. There is no action at a distance. Bodies do not attract one another.  Space and time are not distinct, and there are no preferred spatial locations or preferred velocities.

It's true that when NASA calculates a launch, it uses Newtonian calculations. And they work fine. But the theory underlying those calculations is simply wrong.

In a comment I made a few minutes ago, I said that there questions that are still open. This is one of them. Einstein's theory of gravity does not work and play well with the other forces (strong, weak and electromagnetic).  Its lovely tale of geodesics and dimples in spacetime may be supplanted. But we will never return to believing that the Sun reaches out with invisible fingers and pulls the earth toward it. 

A few things to point out-

First of all, Darwin's theory was developed from a pretty complete body of data of European animal and plant husbandry and coming up with an adequate explanation for a lot of familiar, pan-European barnyard breeding and plant cultivar phenomena.  Confirming the scope to extend to nondomesticated and exotic species via sufficient data was the point of the HMS Beagle expedition.  In essence, the core of evolutionary theory started out as a narrow hypothesis whose truth was never really in doubt, is beyond refutation, and whose extension to most living species was pretty straightforward.  The extension of it to all species, all space and all time and all organisms that have ever lived, is the trouble, not the foundation(s).

Secondly, ID is transparently an ideological halfway house.  It's an admission that physical science and the scientific method can no longer be rejected by the Creationists.  They pretend it's an ideological halfway house for their opponents..the truth is, of course, that it's one for their own adherents/children.

The point of ID is itself curiously and ironically evolutionary- clearly it's going to have to move, argumentwise and as rhetorical emphasis, to ever more semantic and elusive/dubious claims as biological research dismantles all the 'irreducible' complexity.

In sum, ID is necessarily going to undergo the theological shift that is the hallmark of Modernity.  The God of Nature theory, aka strict theism, is going to hollow out and there will be a migration of the agenticity of God into the human Imagination, i.e. nontheism.

The way to deal with IDers and Creationists is to publicly Not Believe them.  In the end this an argument about consensus of imagination and rigor of argument; Science has little or nothing to say about imagination (nor should it) and there's simply no bargaining about rigor with people who don't know what it really is.  That is why Dawkins and Gould refused to "debate" the Creationism activists- and rightly so.

Thank you JayAkcroyd. I'd add that the relevant issue if one wants to invoke Kuhn to discuss Darwin is not Darwin and Huxley vs. Wilberforce but why actual readers of scientific publications in the mid to late 19th century turned to Darwin over Lamarck (whose theory of evolution had a much greater following than predecessors of Darwin earlier in the 19th century).

Intelligent design is lousy science.

If you say that the complexity of life implies an intelligent designer, I reply that your desinger seems to be very complex and must have a designer. And that designer must have one, so must the next designer. and so on and so forth.

Next thing you know, you can't get a parking spot at the mall cause of all the intelligent designers who are their shopping. 

This a bit off topic, but I'll say it anyway: the intelligent design "debate" is a red herring.  It's another example of the corporate GOP using the earnest convictions of the religious right as a trojan horse for corporate policies. 

GOP-backers like Exxon-Mobil and RJ Reynolds want to undermine the scientific method because it stands in the way of their profits.  Nothing complicated there: science cannot be bought off...and if the scientific method is followed, global warming will be real and cigarettes will cause cancer in 100 out of 100 studies.  Thus, the GOP must attack science itself.

The intelligent design debate is a GOP classic.  Like judges, scientists are generally respected and liked by Americans.  But evolution is the chink in science's armor - fewer than 50% of Americans believe only evolution should be taught in classrooms.  Through that small hole, the GOP can drive a truck.  They can't challenge science head on - but they can rely on evolution to politicize it.  As liberals and democrats rally to evolution's defense, they inadvertantly politicize science itself.  Once that happens, the GOP knows the gloves can come off.

The goal is to politicize scientists the same way they have politicized judges and jouralists.  All they need to do is muddy the waters of public opinion; create a little of the public cyncism we see with judges and journalists and tag it to scientists.  Once people are unsure how they feel about studies they see on the news, the GOP money advantage comes into play.  The same goes for the GOP's political superiority...once scientists become legitimate political targets, they can be personally attacked and discredited.

It's not complicated.  Look at what Republicans did to jouralists.  For years, the "liberal media" smear wasn't taken seriously.  Then one morning journalists woke up and realized that most Americans think they're biased.  Judges are next on the agenda.  Then scientists. 

pjs -- The early 90s was an appaling time to be reading about Kuhn!  (But then again, so was the 70s and 80s, though they were appalling in different ways. . . . )

 You've got the basic idea of underdetermination right.  Kuhn didn't come up with the term, but his view is certainly associated with the idea. 

In it's Kuhnian variant, the idea that scientific theories are underdetermined by the data for them comes from the observation that, throughout the history of science, big theoretical shifts always seem to happen before anyone could plausibly claim that evidence for the new theory is decisive.  An old example of Kuhn's is the Copernican Revolution.  The old geocentric model of the universe fit the existing astronomical data better than Copernicus' heliocentric model.  And in fact, contrary to popular mythologizing, the data fit the old geocentric model well into Galileo's time.  By the time scientists had tinkered sufficinetly with the new theory, and had the instruments to take better observations, most scientists already believed the new theory anyway.  (Of course, the church didn't, but that's a different story.)

 So how would a historian of science go about explaining the shift from an old theory to a new one, if not by appeal to evidence convicing scientists?  Some non-empirical considerations had to have convinced scientists like Copernicus.  Like, say, considerations of theoretical simplicity.  But when you're talking about theoretocal simplicity, you're in a much more vague, subjective area than when you're talking about the data on astronomical charts,  In very real ways, scientists can disagree over what counts as simpler.  Values come in to play, etc.   And you're off to the sociological races.

Matt's right that this should absolutely not make people think a Kuhnian picture of science liscenses anything-goes relativism.  But it does point towards a view that sees an important role for social institutions (journals, conferences, research institutes, peer review, etc) in explaining why science is so good at producing  real and lasting knowledge.

Having read Kuhn back in the dark ages, the 1970s, doesn't he argue that facts, something the Royal Society of the 17th Century was so anxious to report, do not speak for themselves.  For facts to make sense there needs to be an explanatory theory that gives life to those facts.  The paradigm behind the theory is socially constructed.  Since all of the heros of the scientific revolution, Newton, Boyle and Descartes were seeking God's work in nature there is nothing incompatible between science and religion if religion is not taken to be a literal reading of one view of religion.

The trouble with ID as science is how do you disprove it?  What fact or set of facts would falsify it?  Given that ID is really a neatly altered version of Creationism demonstrate the problem with ID.  They need ID to be true no matter what the facts or rather the failure of ID to explain the known facts.  I presume that even if scientists sometime also sound like then need Evolution to be true they could tell you what it is that would demonstrate to them that it is a false theory and a new one is needed.

Of course, your statement is itself not testable and therefore not worth discussing, according to your own understanding. That's the performative contradiction of positivism- as well as various forms of relativism and extreme scepticism. don't dismiss the value of philosophy so quickly.

 Point taken - and yet my satellite radio and my computer, based on centuries of this unprovable methodology, stubbornly continue working.

 Let me know when we have any significant results from philosophy.

 "And still it moves..."

Ptolemy's method of fitting the data with epicycles (basically "wheels within wheels") can fit any data.  While this wasn't conclusively proved until Fourier, it was long suspected.  Ptolemy came up with a Rube Goldberg machine, which was a useful calculation tool (for predicting eclipses and the positions of planets), but it had no explanatory power.

Copernicus' original model didn't fit the data as well as Ptolemy's, but it was vastly simpler.  And working scientists' other principle, that they value even more than falsifiability, is Occam's Razor.

You could add epicycles to Copernicus's model as well, but you need fewer of them and they take a regular form.  I suspect that Kepler was fooling around with epicycles when he hit on the right answer, that planetary orbits are ellipses.

Ever since the Copernican Revolution, scientists have been worried about overfitting the data, so a key test is whether a theory can fit data that was not known, or at least not used, when the theory was formulated.   Ptolemy's system would completely fail such a test.

Secondly, ID is transparently an ideological halfway house.  It's an admission that physical science and the scientific method can no longer be rejected by the Creationists.

Exactly! Reading the recent NYT articles on ID gave me what I think is an important insight: the "irreducible complexity" folks such as Behe and Dembski all talk about design and components. Now you can read this and  let yourself get caught up in wheels within wheels, which is the rhetorical intent; alternatively, you can look for falsifiable hypotheses and refute them, and "mathematical ID" is especially vulnerable since it purports to be falsifiable.

But I have a better idea. Why not gloat? Surely there's time for a little victory dance. I mean, did I hear it right or did the vitalists just offer unconditional surrender to the materialists on the front page of the NYT? They agree that the transformation from a single cell containing DNA to a complex organism requires nothing but the physics and chemisty inherent in the system. This is an amazing admission. I mean, there is no scientific proof for it. It was a contentious point until quite recently, and has been the subject of debate for millennia (see Lucretius and others).

We're only beginning to unravel the physical processes of biology, and it's quite counterintuitive. We know that DNA encodes protein, and that a leopard has spots, but that's a far cry from understanding what changes to component proteins give spots instead of stripes. And that might be one of the simpler questions of morphogenesis. We can tweak fruit flies genes to get legs instead of antennas, but don't have film footage of what happened in between. So there are tons of gaps here. Once it was shocking and nihilistic to reject vitalism and propose that living things are in effect elaborate machines. But the "elaborate machine" theory has tons of gaps. Isn't God in those gaps?

Scientists are not primarily in the business of refuting religious belief, but scientists who happen to be proselytizing atheists (there are some but not so many as creationists think) may find a handy arsenal in science. What I say is this. If religious zealots want to pick a fight by looking for God in the gaps, why should we let them choose the gappiest bits of science. Interpreting the fossil record is like doing detective work only without the body. Why don't they pick some gaps in molecular biology? There are plenty of gaps there. Could it be they're chicken? Could it be that they are less likely to dismiss as "blind faith" those hypotheses that might actually be confirmed in the lab and published in next month's Nature?

Maybe we really need a counteroffensive at this point. Instead of focusing on underdetermined science, let's focus on the falsifiable underpinnings of religious belief that have since been proven false. Because there are tons of them. Bring the rumble to our turf. I mean, it's not really in my nature to rub people's noses in it, but the fact is that the material worldview has basically won every dispute thus far.

Sundog,
Philosophy is, in part, an ongoing, 2500 year old conversation about what we can be said to know- the limits of what we can know. At it's best it can help temper some of the one-sidedness that we usually bring with us in our understanding of the world.

Even science can be one-sided in its attempts to limit the sphere of what can be known or said to be true to empirical-testable statements.

I think the days of grand metaphysical speculation are probably over. But post metaphysical philosophy can still help us examine our use of words and concepts and point out contradictions.

I think Matt's post here is a good example of the contributions a philosopher can make to ongoing controversies like this ID thing.

Our frustration with ID shouldn't make us so defensive that we retreat into a positivism that excludes much meaningful and needed dialogue that cannot be put into an empiricist straightjacket.

That's the way science works. It starts with a theory, possibly incomplete.

Not that I disagree with this general overview of scientific practice, in very broad terms, but it's equally reasonable to say that science starts with data, and attempts to fit explanations to it. This view goes back to Francis Bacon and still has adherents today. (I don't know how or whether this is relevant to Kuhn's views; it's been too long since I read him.)

The theory is right because its predictions match observation to measurable precision within the applicable domain.

What part of this could be wrong? There may be some misconceptions about "why" certain things predicted by the theory happen that way, but science in the current sense doesn't really deal with the question of why. Classical physics is a perfectly valid theory of how dynamic systems behave within a useful range. 

Matthew,

Your last sentence says it all! Philosophical and theological discussions and musings are fine, but they are not science. Enough said.

If that's true, so are epicyles. Both will give you good results up to a certain precision, though the reason behind it turned out to be wrong. So what's the difference?

An epicycle theory isn't minimal, but it's not obvious to me that it is not "true". Actually, models with epicyles can be more useful than the pure theory. For instance, it may be more convenient to shift to a coordinate system in which the earth is stationary and contend with coriolsis forces, depending on what you're trying to calculate. Obviously, scientists adhere to Occam's razor and prefer simpler theories that explain the same observations. But when one model that made accurate predictions is replaced by another simpler one, the usual conclusion is that the new one is better, not that the old one was false.

Why does gravity work? Because of the shape of spacetime.

In this case, the "shape of spacetime" is itself an abstraction only meaningful insofar as it is a way of making verifiable predictions. For spacetime literally to have a "shape" in the intutive sense almost requires it to be embedded in a higher-dimensional flat Euclidean space. Far from explaining the why of anything that would just seem to defer the question. In fact, there's a theory that matches some observations. We use the word "shape" to describe part of the theory only because it's a way to grasp it in our mind, not because that explains anything.

BTW, in very conventional classic physics you can shift to high-degree coordinate systems. A system with n degrees of freedom can always be thought of as particle with a trajectory through n-dimensional space. We may consider the theory dealing with a such a particular to be both true and nearly minimal in the sense of Occam's razor, but we also understand that the n-dimensional space is merely an abstraction. The use of such abstraction is so commonplace that it is dangerous to try and evaluate theories in terms of whether things "really are" that way and only obviously meaningful to focus on prediction and confirmation.

The theory is right because its predictions match observation to measurable precision within the applicable domain.

An alternative view is attributed to George Box: "All models are wrong. Some models are useful." He was talking about statistical models rather than scientific theories, but I think the general idea is the same. All theories are contingent, and at some point the mapping between the theory and the real world breaks down, if for no other reason than that theories have limited scope in their descriptive and predictive abilities. (Not that I think most practicing scientists hold this kind of radical scepticism in the front of their minds as they're working, and I certainly don't think ID deserves serious scientific attention, but if we're outside the realm of logic, a theory is always open to question in principle.)

For instance, it may be more convenient to shift to a coordinate system in which the earth is stationary and contend with coriolsis [sic] forces, depending on what you're trying to calculate.

Oops, that should be coriolis. But to put it another way, I wouldn't argue about the "truth" of an epicycle theory if the guy at the other end is aiming long-range artillery.

It no longer matters if the theory is right, a credible scientiest has already stated that it was wrong.

This isn't about science and it isn't about religion, ID is political manipulation.

All the bullshit posted on this thread is not going to translate into simple sound bites that the non scientist, non political animal can sink their teeth into. Godless Scientist, Atheist Scientists, Religious Bigots all do, and they may very well be true, and they damn sure translate into energizing the base of the Republican party. All this fine edumacation on display, and no one has a clue.

If this all Josh and Matt have got to write about maybe they ought to switch careers or parties, because they ain't helping the Democrats.

One way to think about the right's attempt to politicize science is the various ways they label the scientists they disagree with, issue by issue.

Evolution - scientists who only want evolution taught in classrooms are easy targets.  They are atheists, agnostics and secular humanists (translation: liberals).  Moreover, they are elitists who would tell Americans how to teach their children.

Global Warming - scientists who claim global warming exists are radical environmentalists, conspiracy buffs, and alarmists.  They intentionally muddy their results to further their agenda or overreact to insignificant data.

Food Science - vegetarians and obesity alarmists who hate corporations and want to tell Americans what to do.  They hate freedom and your spoiled, fat little kids.

Social Sciences - a no brainer.  Everybody knows American universities have been infiltrated by leftists, god-hating liberals.

When you look at the big picture, you see that it's not just science under attack.  Republicans are trying to undermine something even more fundamental: the idea of mutally agreed upon, objective facts.  Science can't be trusted.  All journalism is biased.  Universities are infected with liberals.  There is no objective truth.  Believe in mysticism.  Believe in conspiracy.  Question everything you see in the media, regardless of its source.

The more the concept of mutally agreed upon, objective facts erodes, the easier it becomes for the GOP machine to influence things using money and propaganda.  On every level.  People who believe nothing can be convinced of anything.

Sundog,
Those enboldened statements are maybe better said to be the sort of statements that both scientists and philosophers might want to take a critical look at- each in their own way.

I'm not a defender of ID. Far from it. What drew my attention to this post and string of comments was my sympathy for what I saw to be Matt's point- which I tried to paraphrase in my own far from perfect way in my statement about frustration and straightjackets- that scientistst sometimes overstep the bounds of reason by using "positivistic" type reasoning in their arguments against ID. Hence that little jab at what I saw to be a contradiction in your earlier comment.

So, when it comes to criticizing ID- I'm on board. Though I do wonder what folks who are sympathetic to ID get out of it in terms of meaning. My speculation is that some folks feel threatened in their identity as persons somehow by evolutionary theory. And I think that positivism tends to feed that sense of threat. So I think that positivism might be a problematic  philosophy of science and also might be part of what feeds the fuels of distrust of science. But that's just my meager attempts to work out why ID finds a home in the popular imagination. And that's a different concern than the argumentation against what passes for ID theory that you are interested in.

The underlying issue of the WWJD-ID debate is simply anti-intellectualism, and has nothing to do with the silly specifics of this revision of ID theory. As a belief system, it doesn’t even have the sophistic appeal of deconstructionism for example.

ID is simply a computational failure. It's the "I give up" theory. It’s intellectual laziness, combined with fancy, familiar to every cartographer who ever wrote “beyond here be dragons.”

Science can explain relative aesthetic judgements?

Evolutionary psychology, at least in the abstract if not as now practiced, could probably tell you a lot about the human perception of beauty, though it might be hopeless to carry it down to the individual level.

Let me know when we have any significant results from philosophy.

Let me know when we have any significant results from science. Your satellite radio was created by an engineer, not a scientist. I took personal offense to your comment, as someone who has degrees in philosophy and electrical engineering.

Philosophers of science often smirk at scientists who have an unsophisticated view of the philosophy of science. Most seem to subscribe to Popperian ideas of falsifiability distinguishing science and pseudoscience. Meanwhile, scientists and mathematicians look at engineers and scoff at engineers' unsophisticated understanding of modern science and mathematics.

By the way, philosophers make plenty of contributions to computer science, artificial intelligence, and legal academia, among other fields.

Relative aesthetic judgements, ethics, speculative questions like "what existed before the physical universe we can observe" are all completely outside the domain of science.

This sentence nicely defines the problem.

In your view, consciousness and the associated questions arising out of it are some sort of spiritual phenomenon. A critical thinker rejects such a supposition. There is nothing that is "outside the domain of science." The very idea is nonsensical to one who trusts the scientific process.

Not necessarily. Aesthetic judgment is certainly open to empirical analysis

Sure, an impoverished analysis. A text on neurological systems might tell you what is going on in the brain when you see certain figures/colors, etc. Evolutionary psychologists might be able to explain why certain colors evoke certain emotions more often then others, but neither of these things can answer questions like "how skilled is this painter vs. this other painter" or, more fundamentally, "what is the artist saying?" or "is it good?"

Sundog - one point which you might be missing is that philosophy is necessary to make the sort of intuitive leaps that for example led Einstein to his discoveries. Philosophy is not just "sky castles" it's an exercise in attempting to frame the unknown using.

For example, here is a philosophical issue regarding animism, which goes to your initial posts. Where does life originate? What lives? Those aren’t questions we have to ask. But, if we ask them, they lead to theories, experiments, and eventually usable technology.

For example, are we simply the sum of our material parts? Where then does our consciousness come from? Does life exist in all things? Is consciousness simply something which occurs when a pattern is formed in unconscious inanimate matter? How does life self assemble? Are there principles which can be extrapolated into manufacturing on the nano-scale for example.

Taking that further, can man construct life in the lab? How about mad made living things constructed on the molecular level from inorganic matter? If those were assembled into something as complex as a sheep or even human being, is it alive? Conscious? At what point? Can it be tested? Those questions have direct implication for bio-ethics and shape research and discovery today for example.

Nick, those are of course good points. I am confusing my personal disdain for philosophy with my disdain for how Chopra is abusing it.

In my mind, philosophy is good for just that: formulating questions. But it never seems to provide answers. That's fine, I don't think it's for getting answers.

But the stuff Chopra is peddling is not philosophy, in my mind. It is just sheer speculation backed by nothing but air. And it offends me mightily that he wraps it all up in a package with patently absurd pseudoscientific ideas and hopes we'll swallow it. 

It seems to me that people are undervaluing social practices.  Reading is a social practice.  Societies work a lot better if they do it.  Science is a social practice with very high payoffs in terms of the capabilities of a society.  If someone does not want to practice science as we understand it, that is all right (for them).  They just should not be surprised when societies that do practice science pass them by. 

Your analysis is exactly what I am talking about. I don't think we give up on Kansas anymore than I think we give up on NM-01 in another thread.

Push the authoritarian slogan, "Leave science to the scientists." Or at least try to convince people that scientists should be trusted when they say something abot their field.

Agreed, Science is how, religion is why.

Improve science education (but how?) enough to convince people that conflicts with their religious beliefs should be resolved in favor of what works in the real world.

Science isn't about meaning. It's about results. Measurable data, and results. That's all. Posted by: quixote on Matt's blog link comment section, which is also a very informative section of information in its' own right.

I don't have a problem with the information in the thread personally, but politically I do have a problem with the tone.

Give up on Kansas, and take our knocks.

I disagree, I think these things need to be debated in the state and local school board meetings where scientists can present all the above arguments to the respective boards. If the IDers want to debate then debate them there, in public, and let them loose their cool, not us.  I just don't want to load the pistol I am going to get shot with here, in a public debate, or more apropos feeding frenzy of self righteous indignation.

We probably think, "Given the influence of religious thinking at the time, Copernicus hardly had a chance, at least in the short term." How different is it today?

Agreed, the Church's acceptance came long after Copernicus because there wasn't any clergy at higher levels that understood and accepted it, or if they did, could reconcile it to the superstitions that they themselves had inculcated into the layity.

Our situation is quite different today. Admittedly not all people are sophisticated enough to understand scientific jargon and debates on the level here, but they do use scientific methodology all the time in their daily lives, making a loaf of bread or baking a cake.

1) The thing being studied has to be measurable.

) The hypothesis has to be testable. I don't know if it's one of the philosophy types who came up with the term "falsifiable," but it's does little but generate confusion. Look it up in your OED, and one of the meanings of falsifiable is testable.

1. The test has to give the same results when performed the same way by independent experimenters or observers
   
2. The results form a probability statement. Those with a very high probability wind up being called Laws, like gravity. A slightly lower probability results in a Theory, like evolution. Posted by: quixote YA

Although, string theory unlike ID will be useful no matter what. ST even if wrong is a highly intellectual pursuit. ID is essentially an anti-intellectual and fundamentally misguided pursuit.

No disagreement from me Nick.  The only thing I was trying to point out is neither currently can be taught as scientific fact.  I am actually very excited about String Theory...

I am confusing my personal disdain for philosophy with my disdain for how Chopra is abusing it. 

Yea, I do know what you mean. There is some point at which it just becomes bumper sticker, feel-good, gobbygook. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not critiquing you or Deepak. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder as they say, although that’s arguable as well. ;^)

One person’s gobblygook is someone else’s poetry. I tend to distinguish one from the other not based on the initial hearing, but on whether it can be further explained on merits.

For example Einstein said to Max Born:

"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 any closer to the secret of the Old One. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice" which is often quoted as "god does not play dice." 

Profound? Gobbygook? Depends. When people claim Einstein believed in an old white guy with a beard ruling the universe, it’s gobbygook. When discussing physics, profound.

Sundog - But it never seems to provide answers.

Sure it does. The first step to getting answers is asking good questions. Most things don't require profound questions, and a lot of profound questions don't get many good answers, but occasionally a really great question does produce answers, and those ultimately move humanity forward.

If we are making progress at all that is….. Which is another profound question that many have devoted their lives to answering. Some, after a lifetime spent in deliberation and through many passionate debates, have arrived at the conclusion, passionately, with great certainty and zeal, that we are in fact making no progress whatsoever.

heh.

Occam's original formulation was "Do not multiply entities unnecessarily".  The ID people add a new entity, the designer, but neglect to explain the origin of the designer.

Let me leave aside the Political implications of ID, which I think is the sole purpose of its' being foisted on us now.

The whole argument of the ID'ers is that since the universe is so complex and can't be completely explained it can therefore be said that a higher form of intelligence/life created all we see.  The problem is the proof is not quantifiable by observation.

Not at all. The argument is that since the mechanism for chemical reactions to form RNA and DNA cannot be duplicated in any known to have existed on earth environments, they must have been designed by a higher intelligence. After this postulation it devolves into muddying the distinction between abiogenesis and evolution, and points out well known flaws in different scientific hypothesis of each disipline as proof of the falsification of those hypothesis. It has nothing to do with cosmology, unless we include the Popes displeasure with the multiverse hypothesis.

I think you may be confusing apolegetics with ID, which uses scientific theory and hypothesis and applies them to Biblical mysteries and miracles as reaffirmations of those events. Liberal Christians tend toward apologetics, while conservatives tend towards ID.

The only thing I was trying to point out is neither currently can be taught as scientific fact.  I am actually very excited about String Theory...

Sure, understood. 

Every time we rely upon our intelligence or ability to reason to solve problems we draw upon knowledge. Either knowledge we have gained personally or that which has been established and shared by others. When we seek answers to very difficult problems that have no precedence we are challenged to devise new ways of viewing things to broaden our knowledge. The base of knowledge we start off with and the precision of the methodology used to discover new things are critical to the eventual outcome of our search. The limits we face are almost always related to the knowledge we possess, the knowledge we have access to and our methodology. Recognizing these things as barriers in our search should always direct us to overcoming those barriers. A real problem arises when we are breaking new ground. The process is slowed dramatically because each step must be independently examined, paying careful attention to what we already think we know to assure we don’t have a condition of inconsistency. The requirement to continuously reestablish the existing base of knowledge is absolutely necessary. That is the reference and when we encounter things that don’t accommodate the reference we must stop and examine why. Every piece of every puzzle must fit precisely with all the others. When we don’t adhere to that discipline the opportunity for placing a piece incorrectly makes all the pieces that come after suspect in their placement.

Scientifically speaking, everything must be able to be stated and then be proven, over and over, to either eliminate or at least significantly reduce the probability that the statement is false. There can never be a hypothetical that does not require and adhere to this regimen of proof. When we discard this idea we deviate from science and thus we have the problem with ID (Intelligent Design). It simply does not fit with the existing base of knowledge. Given that all the elemental aspects of that base have stood the test of time, we must necessarily be very skeptical of ID. That skepticism must logically extend to any notion of teaching it, as science, in our schools. The very fact that ID is so in conflict with the established base of science is cause to reject it.

The actual condition we have today is one of having reached a point of critical mass in reference to the total accumulation of scientific knowledge. We could change the entire thing tomorrow if necessary but the fact is there is too much we know about our world and the universe. Unless something we learned was so elemental and so basic so as to render all that we already know false, then it leaves only to build upon our existing base of knowledge. Where there are holes in the knowledge we possess, it only serves to identify what we have yet to learn. And we can see through investigation that there is much we have to do in that regard.

The wonder of our world and our universe is the diversity within it. And an even greater wonder is the connectedness of it all that we are only beginning to discover and appreciate. The complexities of all the interaction defies our ability to comprehend fully the consequences of things that we do. That is changing, but there are subtleties to this that escape our present ability to penetrate the wonder that exists. This interaction has been going on for billions of years. Our search for what came before serves as a guide that can help us know and preserve what is necessary for us to survive. ID would rob us of the vast storehouse of knowledge that, so far, we have not been able to disprove, and thus would compromise our chances for survival.

Ultimately we cannot know we are right. Or wrong. We know empirically though, that if we stack one rock upon another, and do it properly, they will remain standing. The forces of nature notwithstanding, the idea of carefully examining what it is we are doing tells us we have an ability to discover, that not too long ago, had not even been considered. All indications are that we have no inherent means to abandon or ignore that particular skill. We'll go on searching and sometimes take false steps that impede our progress. Even in the event of the inevitable error, we learn. As long as we don't stop we'll be fine. The scientific community will examine ID and likely reject it but not before it has been given a thorough review. The time it may take is not lost because it will help us test our knowledge and perhaps lead to new insights that we had never before considered.

I remember in the 1960s we put a few hundred transistors on a chip. Today that number is 100 million. Science isn't about to stop. Making sure it works to our benefit and survival is the tricky part.


thepeoplechoose

You have hit the the nail on the head here in a major way.  It has long amused me that the non-fact based community--in this administration, in the ID community, on the stem cell debate, you name it--professes a belief in absolute moral rights and wrongs and yet practices the most concerted effort to effect a social construction of reality than any other group.  Bingo.  If this is what Scheiber is saying, terrific.

 At the same time, I think Matt makes a very important point.  Science is a social practice which aims at establishing a sharp view of reality.  If you doubt this, just think about how any field of science would work without a functioning community.  Moreover, as in any social practice, politics and choices do come in;  anonymous referees can trash a work that is competing with theirs or apply lax standards to admit a work that is close to marginal but may contain the germ of an interesting idea.  Whole subfields can be abandoned if they fail to yield their mysteries to experimental testing and theory generation.  Yet, at the core of all scientific practice is the generation of falsifiable hypotheses, and when science works at its best a theoretical framework for a set of phenomena will continue to generate such hypotheses and scientists will continue to test them and thus enhance our view of reality. That fits relativity, quantum mechanics, and Darwin/Wallace evolution. That process is a social practice, but that social practice is simply not what ID is about, as Matt has eloquently explained. 

At best, the IDers are  guerilla intellectuals, taking pot shots at as yet unexplained aspects of the biological record while offering no coherent alternative.  To some extent this was true of the steady state universe alternative generated by Hoyle et al as an alternative to big bang cosmology, and the advocates of the steady state kept it on life support for decades primarily by taking pot shots at the big bang via anomalies.  However, at least the steady state did generate falsifiable tests, and in this regard the big bang and its extensions fared better under the data provided by observers(they held up while no one outside an aging band of cosmologists could argue for the steady state).  The problem with ID is that these guys are unwilling to subject their work to the standards of science (it would die on the vine) and yet want to use their political and PR savvy to strip the science out of the classroom.  That is dangerous in my opinion.

 The Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg said in ``Dreams of a Final Theory'' that an ultimate unified theory of forces would represent  an intellectual discontinuity unlike anything we have ever seen, and would make it harder for the public to hold superstitions.  The whole ID discourse proves this wrong.  These people understand that the science of evolution has in this country produced no significant shift in public understanding since the Scopes trial, leaving fertile soil for planting seeds of doubt.  People will believe what they will believe, but in that science room, we ought to teach science, and as argued by all here, that is not ID.

Another way of looking at the issue is with regard to teleology.  Even with a Kuhnian revolutionary approach to science, the hypothetical goal is tested, either by empirical or mathematical verification.  The new science either holds up (evolution) though perhaps with gaps or it does not (cold fusion).

Intelligent Design is NOT--I repeat, NOT--a new or revolutionary idea.  Medieval philosophers of all three theological persuasions (Jewish, Christian, Islamic) advanced precisely the same argument as proofs for the existence of God.  And this same teleology is at work among today's ID believers.

The end point of Intelligent Design, its telos, can NOT be verified through either empirical or mathematical means.  In fact, what above all distinguishes ID from modern science, even Kuhnian revolutionary science, is its METHOD and TELEOLOGY.

Science begins with a a more or less stable method and proceeds guided by a HYPOTHETICAL teleology.

Intelligent Design begins with an absolute, not hypethetical teleology, and the "method" is little more than a rational dressed up as empirical method proceeding toward that absolute goal.

Oranges and Apples. 

Part of the problem with the ID debate is that it virtually approached from the question is it science or what is science.  This discussion was endlessly fascinating.  However, we should remember that Descartes borrowing from St. Anselm used the "watch maker" metaphor to prove the existence of God in his "Meditations on First Philosophy."  From there he positted the view that a belief in God was a requirement for science even mathematics.

The difference between Descartes and ID is how they viewed God and religion.  Descartes view of God was very personal and very anti-clerical and anti-Church.  Creationists have a frozen collectivist view of God, the Bible and the Church. This is the real, or a real, problem with ID.

ID may be bad science but it is so bad religion.

This is what happens when 65 girls in 490 girl school get pregnant. Wow, and this happened in the battle ground state of Ohio.  Netroots and politicians take note. Scientists and religious people you can join the debate. 

 
HIGH PREGNANCY RATE IN HICH SCHOOL SPURRS DEVBATE ABOUT INTELLIGENT DESIGN AND EVOLUTION

Vis-a-vis the last paragraph, absolutely. It's metaphysics and consequently doesn't belong in a science class.