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Reprinted
from The Creation Hypothesis, ed. by J.P. Moreland (InterVarsity Press,
1994)
Stephen C. Meyer
During
the last thirty years the idea of design has undergone a renaissance in some
scientific and philosophical circles. Developments in physics and cosmology, in
particular, have placed the word design back in the scientific
vocabulary as physicists have unveiled a universe apparently fine-tuned for the
possibility of human life (see discussion in chapter four). The speed of light,
the strength of gravitational attraction, the properties of the water molecule
and many other features of the cosmic architecture appear to have been
fortuitously arranged and balanced for human benefit.
While
many have postulated so-called anthropic principles or "many worlds
scenarios" to explain (or explain away) this apparent design without
recourse to God, some have eschewed these secular notions and posited the
activity of a preexistent intelligence a Creator as the simplest explanation
for the "coincidences" upon which life seems to depend. As Sir Fred
Hoyle has suggested, a common sense interpretation suggests that "a
superintellect has monkeyed with physics" in order to make life possible.
Similarly, astronomer George Greenstein wrote in a recent book provocatively
subtitled Life and Mind in the Cosmos: "The thought insistently
arises that some supernatural agency or rather Agency must be involved. Is it
possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific
proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so
providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?"
Despite
this renewal of interest in the (intelligent) design hypothesis among
physicists and cosmologists, biologists have remained reluctant to consider
such notions. As historian of science Timothy Lenior has observed,
"Teleological thinking has been steadfastly resisted by modern biology.
And yet, in nearly every area of research biologists are hard pressed to find
language that does not impute purposiveness to living forms."
The
tendency Lenior has observed among biologists seems both puzzling and ironic.
At first glance, the complexity of living systems far exceeds any encountered
in the physical sciences. Information-storage and transfer systems, regulatory
and feedback mechanisms, structures for manufacturing and repairing precisely
coded and sequenced strings of chemical "symbols"all on a miniaturized
scale characterize even the simplest cells. Ernst Haeckel's nineteenth-century
vision of simple "homogeneous globules of plasm" has yielded to the
modern molecular image of a complex cellular factory.
Moreover,
the growing awareness of biological complexity has created something of an
impasse in contemporary origins theory (see the chapter by Bradley and Thaxton
in this volume). Various contradictory conjectures have appeared as scientists
have attempted to explain how purely natural processes could have given rise to
the unlikely and yet functionally specified systems found in biology systems
that comprise, among other things, massive amounts of coded genetic
information. The origin of such information, whether in the first protocell or
at those discrete points in the fossil record that attest to the emergence of
structural novelty, remains essentially mysterious on any current naturalistic
evolutionary account.
Not
surprisingly, critical scientific analyses of both chemical and neo-Darwinian
evolutionary theory have proliferated in recent years. Some observers have gone
so far as to characterize origin-of-life studies and neo-Darwinism as paradigms
in crisis or degenerate research programs. As biophysicist Dean Kenyon, a
once-prominent origin-of-life researcher, said concerning his own discipline
several years ago: "The more . . . we have learned in recent two or three
decades about the chemical details of life, from molecular biology and
origin-of-life studies . . . the less likely does a strictly naturalistic
explanation of origins become."
Similarly,
Francis Crick has written, "An honest man, armed with all the knowledge
available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life
appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which
would have been satisfied to get it going."
While
Kenyon has since embraced the design hypothesis (thus explaining his fall from
prominence), Crick and most others in the biological community have remained
firmly committed to the view that naturalistic processes will eventually
suffice to explain the origin of new biological information and structure.
Thus, despite the current impasse and a growing body of at least highly
suggestive evidence for intelligent design, discussion of the design hypothesis
has remained almost entirely out of bounds in biology. Why?
At
least part of the reason for this reticence may not be hard to discern.
Biologists, and scientists generally, assume the rules of science prohibit any
deviation from a strictly materialistic mode of analysis. Even most physicists
sympathetic to design would quickly label their intuitions
"religious" or "philosophical" rather than
"scientific." Science, it is assumed, must look for exclusively
natural causes. Since the postulation of an intelligent Designer or Creator
clearly violates this methodological norm, such a postulation cannot qualify as
a part of a scientific theory. Thus Stephen J. Gould refers to "scientific
creationism" not just as factually mistaken but as
"self-contradictory nonsense." As Basil Willey put it, "Science
must be provisionally atheistic, or cease to be itself."
Most
scientists who are theists also accept this same conception of science. As
Raymond Grizzle wrote in a prominent evangelical scientific journal recently,
"God cannot be part of a scientific description. . . . [Further], any
description that implies a creator will probably also be looked at as
improper by most scientists." Nancey Murphy, a philosopher and Fuller
Seminary professor, agrees. She wrote recently in the same journal:
"Science qua science seeks naturalistic explanations for all natural
processes. Christians and atheists alike must pursue scientific questions in
our era without invoking a Creator. . . . Anyone who attributes the
characteristics of living things to creative intelligence has by definition
stepped into the arena of either metaphysics or theology."
Yet
on what basis is this definition of science asserted? For Murphy and Grizzle
the answer seems clear. A respect for the rules and practices of science as
they have come down to us dictates that Christians should avoid invoking
creative intelligence in their theories. In Murphy's words, "For better
or worse, we have inherited a view of science as methodologically
atheistic" (emphasis added). Grizzle, too, appeals to convention to
justify methodological naturalism:
All
modern science, not just biological evolutionary theory, by definition excludes
God. . . . There is no rule book that spells this out, and indeed it has been
argued that it is an arbitrary restriction. Furthermore, this has become the
case only in the last 100 years or so. Nonetheless, this is one of the
restrictions almost universally put upon science by those who practice it, and
it seems to me quite desirable and likely that science will retain this
restriction in the foreseeable future.
Of
course, it does not follow that just because science is or has been wholly
naturalistic, it should remain so. The indicative does not, after all, imply
the imperative. Therefore, Murphy and Grizzle's appeal to convention and
current practice invites scrutiny of the grounds on which the scientific
community has asserted naturalism as normative to its practice. Indeed, if the
customary definition of science is exposed as just an arbitrary
convention, some practicing scientists may wish to repudiate it, especially if
they now judge empirical evidence sufficient to motivate a consideration of
some nonnaturalistic theory of origins. In any case, beyond a fallacious appeal
to power, it would be difficult to see why those disinclined to accept
methodological naturalism should not be free to operate under a less
restrictive definition of science.
However
Christian intellectuals might go about defending methodological naturalism,
secular defenders of the principle assure us that the prohibition against
invoking God or creative intelligence is anything but arbitrary. Instead, they
assert that good independent reasons exist for the conventional exclusion of
such notions from all scientific theories. Theories of design or creation do
not, they say, meet objective standards of scientific method and practice. Such
theories do not explain by reference to natural law, nor do they manifest a
host of other features of true scientific theories such as testability,
observability and falsifiability. Thus, unlike naturalistic evolutionary
theories, creationist or design theories are methodologically deficient.
Creationist theories may or may not be true, but they can never, that is, in
principle be considered scientific.
The
use of what philosophers of science call "demarcation arguments
"arguments that purport to distinguish science from pseudoscience,
metaphysics or religion in defense of a favored theory has a long history.
Darwin himself employed such arguments to defend his theory from idealist and
creationist challenges. While philosophical arguments about what does or does
not constitute science have generally been discredited within philosophy of science,
they nevertheless continue to play a vital role in persuading biologists that
alternative scientific explanations do not, and in the case of nonnaturalistic
theories cannot, exist for biological origins. Indeed, various
demarcation criteria are often cited by scientists as reasons for rejecting the
very possibility of intelligent design.
The
purpose of this chapter is to examine the case against the possibility of a
scientific theory of intelligent design or creation. Several of the criteria
said to distinguish the scientific status of naturalistic evolutionary theories
(hereafter "descent") from admittedly nonnaturalistic theories of
creation or design (hereafter "design") will be examined. It will be
argued that a priori attempts to make distinctions of scientific status on
methodological grounds inevitably fail and, instead, that a general equivalence
of method exists between these two competing approaches to origins. In short, I
will argue that intelligent design and naturalistic descent are methodologically
equivalent--that is, that design and descent prove equally scientific or
equally unscientific depending upon the criteria used to adjudicate their
scientific status and provided metaphysically neutral criteria are selected to
make such assessments. In the process of making this argument, I will also
discuss whether a scientific theory of creation or design could be formulated
or whether methodological objections, forever and in principle, make the
assertion of a scientific theory of creation an "oxymoron" or
"self-contradictory nonsense," as Ruse, Stent, Gould and others have
claimed.
Throughout
this paper, the alliterative terms design and descent will be
used as a convenient shorthand to distinguish two types of theories: (1) those
that invoke the causal action of an intelligent agent (whether divine or
otherwise) as part of the explanation for the origin of biological form or
complexity and (2) those (such as Darwin's "descent with
modification") that rely solely on naturalistic processes to explain
the origin of form or complexity.
By
way of qualification, it should be noted that by defending the methodological
and scientific legitimacy of design, this chapter is not seeking to
rehabilitate the empirically inadequate biology of many nineteenth-century
creationists or their belief in the absolute fixity of species; nor is it
attempting to endorse modern young-earth geology. The following analysis
concerns the methodological legitimacy of design in principle as defined above,
not the empirical adequacy of specific theories that might invoke intelligent
design in the process of making other empirical claims.
The
methodological equivalence of intelligent design and naturalistic descent will
be suggested in three stages by three lines of argument. First, the reasons for
the failure of demarcation arguments within philosophy of science generally
will be examined and recapitulated. This analysis will suggest that attempts to
distinguish the scientific status of design and descent a priori may well be
suspect from the outset on philosophical grounds. Second, an examination of
specific demarcation arguments that have been employed against design will
follow. It will be argued that not only do these arguments fail, but they do so
in such a way as to suggest an equivalence between design and descent with
respect to several features of allegedly proper scientific practice that is,
intelligent design and naturalistic descent will be shown equally capable or
incapable of meeting different demarcation standards, provided such standards
are applied disinterestedly. Third, design and descent will be compared in
light of recent work on the logical and methodological character of historical
inquiry. This analysis will show that the mode of inquiry utilized by advocates
of both design and descent conforms closely to that evident in many other
characteristically historical disciplines. Thus a more fundamental
methodological equivalence between design and descent will emerge as a result
of methodological analysis of the historical sciences.
To
show that design "can never be considered a scientific pursuit,"
biologists and others have asserted that design does not meet certain objective
criteria of scientific method or practice. In short, biologists have employed
so-called demarcation arguments to separate a scientific approach to origins
(descent) from an allegedly nonscientific approach (design). While an
examination of the particular criteria employed in such arguments will not
concern us in the first part of this chapter, the general practice of
demarcation will.
From
the standpoint of the philosophy of science, the use of demarcation arguments
is generally problematic. Historically, attempts to find methodological
"invariants" that provide a set of necessary and sufficient
conditions for distinguishing true science from pseudoscience have failed.
Moreover, most current demarcation arguments presuppose an understanding of how
science operates that reflects the influence of a philosophy of science known
as logical positivism. Yet since the 1950s philosophers of science have
decisively rejected positivism for a number of very good reasons (see below).
As a result, the enterprise of demarcation has generally fallen into disrepute
among philosophers of science.
In
his essay "The Demise of the Demarcation Problem," philosopher of
science Larry Laudan gives a brief but thorough sketch of the different grounds
that have been advanced during the history of science for distinguishing science
from nonscience. He notes that the first such grounds concerned the degree of
certainty associated with scientific knowledge. Science, it was thought, could
be distinguished from nonscience because science produced certainty whereas
other types of inquiry such as philosophy produced opinion. Yet this approach
to demarcation ran into difficulties as scientists and philosophers gradually
realized the fallible nature of scientific disciplines and theories. Unlike
mathematicians, scientists rarely provide strict logical demonstrations
(deductive proofs) to justify their theories. Instead, scientific arguments
often utilize inductive inference and predictive testing, neither of which
produces certainty. As Owen Gingerich has argued, much of the reason for Galileo's
conflict with the Vatican stemmed from Galileo's inability to meet scholastic
standards of deductive certainty a standard that he regarded as neither
relevant to nor attainable by scientific reasoning. Similar episodes
subsequently made it clear that science does not necessarily possess a superior
epistemic status; scientific knowledge, like other knowledge, is subject to
uncertainty.
By
the nineteenth century, attempts to distinguish science from nonscience had
changed. No longer did demarcationists attempt to characterize science on the
basis of the superior epistemic status of scientific theories; rather, they
attempted to do so on the basis of the superior methods science employed to
produce theories. Thus science came to be defined by reference to its method,
not its content. Demarcation criteria became methodological rather than
epistemological.
Nevertheless,
this approach also encountered difficulties, not the least of which was a
widespread disagreement about what the method of science really is. If
scientists and philosophers cannot agree about what the scientific
method is, how can they disqualify disciplines that fail to use it? Moreover,
as the discussion of the historical sciences in part three of this chapter will
make clear, there may well be more than one scientific method. If that is so,
then attempts to mark off science from nonscience using a single set of
methodological criteria will most likely fail. The existence of a variety of
scientific methods raises the possibility that no single methodological
characterization of science may suffice to capture the diversity of scientific
practice. Using a single set of methodological criteria to assess scientific
status could therefore result in the disqualification of some disciplines already
considered to be scientific.
As
problems with using methodological considerations grew, demarcationists shifted
their focus again. Beginning in the 1920s, philosophy of science took a
linguistic or semantic turn. The logical positivist tradition held that
scientific theories could be distinguished from nonscientific theories not
because scientific theories had been produced via unique or superior methods,
but because such theories were more meaningful. Logical positivists asserted
that all meaningful statements are either empirically verifiable or logically
undeniable. According to this "verificationist criterion of meaning,"
scientific theories are more meaningful than philosophical or religious ideas,
for example, because scientific theories refer to observable entities such as
planets, minerals and birds, whereas philosophy and religion refer to such
unobservable entities as God, truth and morality.
Yet
as is now well known, positivism soon self-destructed. Philosophers came to
realize that positivism's verificationist criterion of meaning did not achieve
its own standard. That is, the assumptions of positivism turn out to be neither
empirically verifiable nor logically undeniable. Furthermore, positivism's
verificationist ideal misrepresented much actual scientific practice. Many
scientific theories refer to unverifiable and unobservable entities such as
forces, fields, molecules, quarks and universal laws. Meanwhile, many
disreputable theories (e.g., the flat-earth theory) appeal explicitly to
"common-sense" observations. Clearly, positivism's verifiability
criterion would not achieve the demarcation desired.
With
the death of positivism in the 1950s, demarcationists took a different tack.
Other semantic criteria emerged, such as Sir Karl Popper's falsifiability.
According to Popper, scientific theories were more meaningful than
nonscientific ideas because they referred only to empirically falsifiable
entities. Yet this, too, proved to be a problematic criterion. First,
falsification turns out to be difficult to achieve. Rarely are the core
commitments of theories directly tested via prediction. Instead, predictions
occur when core theoretical commitments are conjoined with auxiliary
hypotheses, thus always leaving open the possibility that auxiliary hypotheses,
not core commitments, are responsible for failed predictions.
Newtonian
mechanics, for example, assumed as its core three laws of motion and the theory
of universal gravitation. On the basis of these, Newton made a number of
predictions about the positions of planets in the solar system. When
observations failed to corroborate some of his predictions, he did not reject
his core assumptions. Instead, he scrutinized some of his auxiliary hypotheses
to explain the discrepancies between theory and observation. For example, he
examined his working assumption that planets were perfectly spherical and
influenced only by gravitational force. As Imre Lakatos has shown, Newton's
refusal to repudiate his core in the face of anomalies enabled him to refine
his theory and eventually led to its tremendous success. Newton's refusal to
accept putatively falsifying results certainly did not call into question the
scientific status of his gravitational theory or his three laws.
The
function of auxiliary hypotheses in scientific testing suggests that many
scientific theories, including those in so-called hard sciences, may be very
difficult, if not impossible, to falsify conclusively. Yet many theories that
have been falsified in practice via the consensus judgment of the scientific
community must qualify as scientific according to the falsifiability criterion.
Since they have been falsified, they are obviously falsifiable, and since they
are falsifiable, they would seem to be scientific.
And
so it has gone generally with demarcation criteria. Many theories that have
been repudiated on evidential grounds express the very epistemic and
methodological virtues (testability, falsifiability, observability, etc.) that
have been alleged to characterize true science. Many theories that are held in
high esteem lack some of the allegedly necessary and sufficient features of
proper science. As a result, with few exceptions most contemporary philosophers
of science regard the question "What methods distinguish science from
nonscience?" as both intractable and uninteresting. What, after all, is in
a name? Certainly not automatic epistemic warrant or authority. Thus
philosophers of science have increasingly realized that the real issue is not
whether a theory is scientific but whether it is true or warranted by the
evidence. Thus, as Martin Eger has summarized, "demarcation arguments have
collapsed. Philosophers of science don't hold them anymore. They may still
enjoy acceptance in the popular world, but that's a different world."
The
"demise of the demarcation problem," as Laudan calls it, implies that
the use of positivistic demarcationist arguments by evolutionists is, at least
prima facie, on very slippery ground. Laudan's analysis suggests that such
arguments are not likely to succeed in distinguishing the scientific status of
descent vis-a#2-vis design or anything else for that matter. As Laudan puts it,
"If we could stand up on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like
'pseudo-science.'. . . They do only emotive work for us."
If
philosophers of science such as Laudan are correct, a stalemate exists in our
analysis of design and descent. Neither can automatically qualify as science;
neither can be necessarily disqualified either. The a priori methodological
merit of design and descent are indistinguishable if no agreed criteria exist
by which to judge their merits.
Yet
lacking any definite metric, one cannot yet say that design and descent are
methodologically equivalent in any nontrivial sense. In order to make this
claim we must compare design and descent against some specific standards. Let's
now consider the specific demarcation arguments that have been erected against
design. For though demarcation arguments have been discredited by philosophers
of science generally, they still enjoy wide currency in the scientific and
"popular world," as the following section will make abundantly clear.
Despite
the consensus among philosophers of science that the demarcation problem is both
intractable and ill-conceived, many scientists continue to invoke demarcation
criteria to discredit quacks, cranks and those otherwise perceived as
intellectual opponents. Yet to the average working scientist Laudan's arguments
against demarcation may seem counter intuitive at best. On the surface it may
appear that there ought to be some unambiguous criteria for distinguishing such
dubious pursuits as parapsychology, astrology and phrenology from established
sciences such as physics, chemistry and astronomy. That most philosophers of
science say that there are not such criteria only confirms the suspicions many
scientists have about philosophers of science. After all, don't some
philosophers of science say that scientific truth is determined by social and
cultural context? Don't some even deny that science describes an objective
reality?
Well,
as it turns out, one does not need to adopt a relativistic or antirealist view
of science to accept what Laudan and others say about the demarcation problem.
Indeed, the two positions are logically unrelated. Laudan is not arguing that
all scientific theories have equal warrant (quite the reverse) or that
scientific theories never refer to real entities. Instead, he simply says that
one cannot define science in such a way as to confer automatic epistemic
authority on favored theories simply because they happen to manifest features
alleged to characterize all "true science." When evaluating the
warrant or truth claims of theories, we cannot substitute abstractions about
the nature of science for empirical evaluation.
Nevertheless,
establishing Laudan's general thesis is not the main purpose of this chapter.
This chapter is not seeking to establish the impossibility of demarcation in
general, but the methodological equivalence of intelligent design and
naturalistic descent. Since some may yet doubt that demarcation always
fails, the following section will examine some of the specific demarcation
arguments that have been deployed against design by proponents of descent. It will
suggest that these arguments fail to provide any grounds for distinguishing the
methodological merit of one over the other and, instead, that careful analysis
of these arguments actually exposes reasons for regarding design and descent as
methodologically equivalent. Indeed, the following analysis will suggest that
metaphysically neutral criteria do not exist that can define science narrowly
enough to disqualify theories of design tout court without also
disqualifying theories of descent on identical grounds.
Unfortunately,
to establish this conclusively would require an examination of all the
demarcation arguments that have been used against design. And indeed, an
examination of evolutionary polemic reveals many such arguments. Design or
creationist theories have been alleged to be necessarily unscientific because
they (a) do not explain by reference to natural law, (b) invoke unobservables,
(c) are not testable, (d) do not make predictions, (e) are not falsifiable, (f)
provide no mechanisms, (g) are not tentative, and (h) have no problem-solving
capability.
Due
to space constraints, a detailed analysis of only the first three arguments
will be possible. Nevertheless, an extensive analysis of (a), (b) and (c) will
follow. These three have been chosen because each can be found in one form or
another all the way back to the Origin of Species. The first one, (a),
is especially important because the others derive from it a point emphasized by
Michael Ruse, perhaps the world's most ardent evolutionary demarcationist.
Consequently an analysis of assertion (a) will occupy the largest portion of
this section. There will also be a short discussion of arguments (d), (e) and
(f) and references to literature refuting (g) and (h). Thus while an exhaustive
analysis of all demarcationist arguments will not be possible here, enough will
be said to allow us to conclude that the principal arguments employed against
design do not succeed in impugning its scientific status without either begging
the question or undermining the status of descent as well.
Explanation
via natural law. Now let
us examine the first, and according to Michael Ruse most fundamental, of the
arguments against the possibility of a scientific theory of design. This
argument states: "Scientific theories must explain by natural law. Because
design or creationist theories do not do so, they are necessarily
unscientific."
This
argument invokes one of the principal criteria of science adopted by Judge
William Overton after hearing the testimony of philosopher of science Michael
Ruse in the Arkansas creation-science trial of 1981-82. As recently as March
1992, Ruse has continued to assert "must explain via natural law" as
a demarcation criterion, despite criticism from other philosophers of science
such Philip Quinn and Larry Laudan. Ruse has argued that to adopt the
scientific outlook, one must accept that the universe is subject to natural
law, and further, that one must never appeal to an intervening agency as an
explanation for events. Instead, one must always look to what he calls
"unbroken law" if one wishes to explain things in a scientific
manner.
There
are several problems with this assertion and the conception of science that
Ruse assumes. In particular, Ruse seems to assume a view of science that equates
scientific laws with explanations. There are two problems with this view and
correspondingly two main reasons that "explains via natural law" will
not do as a demarcation criterion.
First,
many laws are descriptive and not explanatory. Many laws describe regularities
but do not explain why the regular events they describe occur. A good example
of this drawn from the history of science is the universal law of gravitation,
which Newton himself freely admitted did not explain but instead merely described
gravitational motion. As he put it in the "General Scholium" of the
second edition of the Principia, "I do not feign hypotheses"in
other words, "I offer no explanations." Insisting that science must
explain by reference to "natural law" would eliminate from the domain
of the properly scientific all fundamental laws of physics that describe
mathematically, but do not explain, the phenomena they "cover."
For
the demarcationist this is a highly paradoxical and undesirable result, since
much of the motivation for the demarcationist program derives from a desire to
ensure that disciplines claiming to be scientific match the methodological
rigor of the physical sciences. While this result might alleviate the
"physics envy" of many a sociologist, it does nothing for
demarcationists except defeat the very purpose of their enterprise.
There
is a second reason that laws cannot be equated with explanations or causes.
This, in turn, gives rise to another reason that science cannot be identified
only with those disciplines that explain via natural law. Laws cannot be
equated with explanations, not just because many laws do not explain but also
because many explanations of particular events, especially in applied or
historical science, may not utilize laws. While scientists may often use laws
to assess or enhance the plausibility of explanations of particular events,
analysis of the logical requirements of explanation has made clear that the
citation of laws is not necessary to many such explanations. Instead, many explanations
of particular events or facts, especially in the historical sciences, depend
primarily, even exclusively, upon the specification of past causal conditions
and events rather than laws to do what might be called the "explanatory
work." That is, citing past causal events often explains a particular
event better than, and sometimes without reference to, a law or regularity in
nature.
One
reason laws play little or no role in many historical explanations is that many
particular events come into existence via a series of events that will not
regularly reoccur. In such cases laws are not relevant to explaining the
contrast between the event that has occurred and what could have or might have
ordinarily been expected to occur. For example, a historical geologist seeking
to explain the unusual height of the Himalayas will cite particular antecedent
factors that were present in the case of the Himalayan orogeny but were absent
in other mountain-building episodes. Knowing the laws of geophysics relevant to
mountain-building generally will aid the geologist very little in accounting
for the contrast between the Himalayan and other orogenies, since such laws
would presumably apply to all mountain-building episodes. What the geologist
needs in the search for an explanation in this case is not knowledge of a
general law but evidence of a unique or distinctive set of past conditions.
Thus geologists have typically explained the unique height of the Himalayas by
reference to the past position of the Indian and Asian land masses (and plates)
and the subsequent collision that occurred between them.
The
geologist's situation is very similar to that faced by historians generally.
Consider the following factors that might help explain why World War I began:
the ambition of Kaiser Wilhelm's generals, the Franco-Russian defense pact and
the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Note that such possible explanatory
factors invariably involve the citation of past events, conditions or actions
rather than laws. Invoking past events as causes in order to explain subsequent
events or present evidences is common both in history and in natural scientific
disciplines such as historical geology. As Michael Scriven has shown, one can
often know what caused something even when one cannot relate causes and effects
to each other in formal statements of law. Similarly, William Alston has shown
that laws alone often do not explain particular events even when we have them.
The law "Oxygen is necessary to combustion" does not explain why a
particular building burned down at a particular place and time. To explain such
a particular fact requires knowing something about the situation just before
the fire occurred. It does little good to know scientific laws; what one
requires is information concerning, for example, the presence of an arsonist or
the lack of security at the building or the absence of a sprinkler system. Thus
Alston concludes that to equate a law with an explanation or cause "is to
commit a 'category mistake' of the most flagrant sort."
Perhaps
another example will help. If one wishes to explain why astronauts were able to
fly to the moon when apples usually fall to the earth, one will not primarily
cite the law of gravity. Such a law is far too general to be primarily relevant
to explanation in this context, because the law allows for a vast array of
possible outcomes depending on initial and boundary conditions. The law stating
that all matter gravitates according to an inverse square law is consistent
with both an apple falling to the earth and with an astronaut flying to the
moon. Explaining why the astronaut flew when apples routinely fall, therefore,
requires more than citing the law, since the law is presumed operative in both
situations. Accounting for the differing outcomes the falling apple and the
flying astronaut will require references to the antecedent conditions and
events that differed in the two situations. Indeed, explanation in this case
involves an accounting of the way engineers have used technology to alter the conditions
affecting the astronauts to allow them to overcome the constraints that gravity
ordinarily imposes on earthbound objects.
Such
examples suggest that many explanations of particular events--explanations that
occur frequently in fields already regarded as scientific such as cosmology,
archaeology, historical geology, applied physics and chemistry, origin-of-life
studies and evolutionary biology would lose their scientific status if Ruse's
criterion of "explains via natural law" were accepted as normative to
all scientific practice.
Consider
an example from evolutionary biology that impinges directly on our discussion.
Stephen Jay Gould, Mark Ridley and Michael Ruse argue that the "fact of
evolution" is secure even if an adequate theory has not yet been formulated
to describe or explain how large-scale biological change generally occurs. Like
Darwin, modern evolutionary theorists insist that the question whether
evolution did occur can be separated logically from the question of the means
by which nature generally achieves biological transformations. Evolution in one
sense historical continuity or common descent is asserted to be a
well-established scientific theory because it alone explains a diverse class of
present data (fossil progression, homology, biogeographical distribution,
etc.), even if biologists cannot yet explain how evolution in another sense a
general process or mechanism of change occurs. Some have likened the logical
independence of common descent and natural selection to the logical independence
of continental drift and plate tectonics. In both the geological situation and
the biological there exist theories about what happened that explain why
we observe many present facts, and separate theories that explain how
things could have happened as they apparently did. Yet the former purely
historical explanations do not require the latter nomological or mechanistic
explanations to legitimate themselves. Common descent explains some facts well,
even if nothing yet explains how the transformations it requires could have
occurred.
This
example again illustrates why historical explanations do not require laws. More
important, it also demonstrates why Ruse's demarcation criterion proves fatal
to the very Darwinism he is seeking to protect. Common descent, arguably the
central thesis of the Origin of Species, does not explain by natural
law. Common descent explains by postulating a hypothetical pattern of
historical events which, if actual, would account for a variety of presently
observed data. Darwin himself refers to common descent as the vera causa
(that is, the actual cause or explanation) for a diverse set of biological
observations. In Darwin's historical argument for descent, as with historical
explanations generally, postulated past causal events (or patterns thereof) do
the primary explanatory work. Laws do not.
At
this point the evolutionary demarcationist might grant the explanatory function
of antecedent events but deny that scientific explanations can invoke supernatural
events. To postulate naturally occurring past events is one thing, but to
postulate supernatural events is another. The first leaves the laws of nature
intact; the second does not and thus lies beyond the bounds of science. As Ruse
and Richard Lewontin have argued, miraculous events are unscientific because
they violate or contradict the laws of nature, thus making science impossible.
Many
contemporary philosophers disagree with Ruse and Lewontin about this, as have a
number of good scientists over the years Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle, for
example. The action of agency (whether divine or human) need not violate the
laws of nature; in most cases it merely changes the initial and boundary
conditions on which the laws of nature operate. But this issue must be set
aside for the moment. For now it will suffice merely to note that the criterion
of demarcation has subtly shifted. No longer does the demarcationist repudiate
design as unscientific because it does not "explain via natural law";
now the demarcationist rejects intelligent design because it does not
"explain naturalistically." To be scientific a theory must be
naturalistic.
But
why is this the case? Surely the point at issue is whether there are
independent and metaphysically neutral grounds for disqualifying theories that
invoke nonnaturalistic events--such as instances of agency or intelligent
design. To assert that such theories are not scientific because they are not
naturalistic simply assumes the point at issue. Of course intelligent design is
not wholly naturalistic, but why does that make it unscientific? What
noncircular reason can be given for this assertion? What independent criterion
of method demonstrates the inferior scientific status of a nonnaturalistic
explanation? We have seen that "must explain via law" does not. What
does?
Unobservables
and testability. At this
point evolutionary demarcationists must offer other demarcation criteria. One
that appears frequently both in conversation and in print finds expression as
follows: "Miracles are unscientific because they can not be studied
empirically. Design invokes miraculous events; therefore design is
unscientific. Moreover, since miraculous events can't be studied empirically,
they can't be tested. Since scientific theories must be testable, design is,
again, not scientific." Molecular biologist Fred Grinnell has argued, for
example, that intelligent design can't be a scientific concept because if
something "can't be measured, or counted, or photographed, it can't be
science." Gerald Skoog amplifies this concern: "The claim that life
is the result of a design created by an intelligent cause can not be tested and
is not within the realm of science." This reasoning was recently invoked
at San Francisco State University as a justification for removing Professor Dean
Kenyon from his classroom. Kenyon is a biophysicist who has embraced
intelligent design after years of work on chemical evolution. Some of his
critics at SFSU argued that his theory fails to qualify as scientific because
it refers to an unseen Designer that cannot be tested.
The
essence of these arguments seems to be that the unobservable character of a
designing agent renders it inaccessible to empirical investigation and thus
precludes the possibility of testing any theory of design. Thus the criterion
of demarcation employed here conjoins "observability and
testability." Both are asserted as necessary to scientific status, and the
converse of one (unobservability) is asserted to preclude the possibility of
the other (testability).
It
turns out, however, that both parts of this formula fail. First, observability
and testability are not both necessary to scientific status, because
observability at least is not necessary to scientific status, as theoretical
physics has abundantly demonstrated. Many entities and events cannot be
directly observed or studied in practice or in principle. The postulation of
such entities is no less the product of scientific inquiry for that. Many
sciences are in fact directly charged with the job of inferring the
unobservable from the observable. Forces, fields, atoms, quarks, past events,
mental states, subsurface geological features, molecular biological structures
all are unobservables inferred from observable phenomena. Nevertheless, most
are unambiguously the result of scientific inquiry.
Second,
unobservability does not preclude testability: claims about unobservables are
routinely tested in science indirectly against observable phenomena. That is,
the existence of unobservable entities is established by testing the
explanatory power that would result if a given hypothetical entity (i.e., an
unobservable) were accepted as actual. This process usually involves some
assessment of the established or theoretically plausible causal powers of a
given unobservable entity. In any case, many scientific theories must be
evaluated indirectly by comparing their explanatory power against competing
hypotheses.
During
the race to elucidate the structure of the genetic molecule, both a double
helix and a triple helix were considered, since both could explain the
photographic images produced via x-ray crystallography. While neither structure
could be observed (even indirectly through a microscope), the double helix of
Watson and Crick eventually won out because it could explain other observations
that the triple helix could not. The inference to one unobservable stucture the
double helix was accepted because it was judged to possess a greater
explanatory power than its competitors with respect to a variety of relevant
observations. Such attempts to infer to the best explanation, where the
explanation presupposes the reality of an unobservable entity, occur frequently
in many fields already regarded as scientific, including physics, geology,
geophysics, molecular biology, genetics, physical chemistry, cosmology,
psychology and, of course, evolutionary biology.
The
prevalence of unobservables in such fields raises difficulties for defenders of
descent who would use observability criteria to disqualify design. Darwinists
have long defended the apparently unfalsifiable nature of their theoretical
claims by reminding critics that many of the creative processes to which they
refer occur at rates too slow to observe. Further, the core historical
commitment of evolutionary theory that present species are related by common
ancestry has an epistemological character that is very similar to many present
design theories. The transitional life forms that ostensibly occupy the nodes
on Darwin's branching tree of life are unobservable, just as the postulated
past activity of a Designer is unobservable. Transitional life forms are
theoretical postulations that make possible evolutionary accounts of present
biological data. An unobservable designing agent is, similarly, postulated to
explain features of life such as its information content and functional
integration. Darwinian transitional, neo-Darwinian mutational events,
punctuationalism's "rapid branching" events, the past action of a
designing agent none of these are directly observable. With respect to direct
observability, each of these theoretical entities is equivalent.
Each
is roughly equivalent with respect to testability as well. Origins theories
generally must make assertions about what happened in the past to cause present
features of the universe (or the universe itself) to arise. They must
reconstruct unobservable causal events from present clues or evidences.
Positivistic methods of testing, therefore, that depend upon direct
verification or repeated observation of cause-effect relationships have little
relevance to origins theories, as Darwin himself understood. Though he
complained repeatedly about the creationist failure to meet the vera causa
criterion a nineteenth-century methodological principle that favored theories
postulating observed causes he chafed at the application of rigid positivistic
standards to his own theory. As he complained to Joseph Hooker: "I am
actually weary of telling people that I do not pretend to adduce direct
evidence of one species changing into another, but that I believe that this
view in the main is correct because so many phenomena can be thus grouped and explained"
(emphasis added).
Indeed,
Darwin insisted that direct modes of testing were wholly irrelevant to
evaluating theories of origins. Nevertheless, he did believe that critical
tests could be achieved via indirect means. As he stated elsewhere: "This
hypothesis [common descent] must be tested . . . by trying to see whether it
explains several large and independent classes of facts; such as the geological
succession of organic beings, their distribution in past and present times, and
their mutual affinities and homologies." For Darwin the unobservability of
past events and processes did not mean that origins theories are untestable.
Instead, such theories may be evaluated and tested indirectly by the assessment
of their explanatory power with respect to a variety of relevant data or
"classes of facts."
Nevertheless,
if this is so it is difficult to see why the unobservability of a Designer
would necessarily preclude the testability of such a postulation. Though Darwin
would not have agreed, the basis of his methodological defense of descent seems
to imply the possibility of a testable theory of design, since the past action
of an unobservable agent could have empirical consequences in the present just
as an unobservable genealogical connection between organisms does. Indeed,
Darwin himself tacitly acknowledged the testability of design by his own
attempts to expose the empirical inadequacy of competing creationist theories.
Though Darwin rejected many creationist explanations as unscientific in
principle, he attempted to show that others were incapable of explaining
certain facts of biology. Thus sometimes he treated creationism as a serious
scientific competitor lacking explanatory power; at other times he dismissed it
as unscientific by definition.
Recent
evolutionary demarcationists have contradicted themselves in the same way. The
quotation cited earlier from Gerald Skoog ("The claim that life is the
result of a design created by an intelligent cause can not be tested and is not
within the realm of science") was followed in the same paragraph by the
statement "Observations of the natural world also make these dicta [concerning
the theory of intelligent design] suspect." Yet clearly something cannot
be both untestable in principle and subject to refutation by empirical
observations.
The
preceding considerations suggest that neither evolutionary descent with
modification nor intelligent design is ultimately untestable. Instead, both
theories seem testable indirectly, as Darwin explained of descent, by a
comparison of their explanatory power with that of their competitors. As Philip
Kitcher no friend of creationism has acknowledged, the presence of unobservable
elements in theories, even ones involving an unobservable Designer, does not
mean that such theories cannot be evaluated empirically. He writes, "Even
postulating an unobserved Creator need be no more unscientific than postulating
unobserved particles. What matters is the character of the proposals and the
ways in which they are articulated and defended."
Thus
an unexpected equivalence emerges when design and descent are evaluated against
their ability to meet specific demarcation criteria. The demand that the
theoretical entities necessary to origins theories must be directly observable
if they are to be considered testable and scientific would, if applied
universally and disinterestedly, require the exclusion not only of design but
also of descent. Those who insist on the joint criteria of observability and
testability, conceived in a positivistic sense, promulgate a definition of
correct science that evolutionary theory manifestly cannot meet. If, however, a
less severe standard of testability is allowed, the original reason for
excluding design evaporates. Here an analysis of specific attempts to apply
demarcation criteria against design actually demonstrates a methodological
equivalence between design and descent.
Other
demarcation criteria. I
claim that a similar equivalence between design and descent will emerge from an
analysis of each of the other criteria (d) through (h)listed above.
Falsification, for example, in addition to the problems mentioned in part one,
seems an especially problematic standard to apply to origins theories. So does
prediction. Origins theories must necessarily offer ex post facto
reconstructions. They therefore do not make predictions in any strong sense.
The somewhat artificial "predictions" that origins theories do make
about, for example, what evidence one ought to find if a given theory is true
are singularly difficult to falsify since, as evolutionary paleontologists
often explain, "the absence of evidence is no evidence of absence."
Similarly,
the requirement that a scientific theory must provide a causal mechanism fails
to provide a metaphysically neutral standard of demarcation for several
reasons. First, as we have already noted, many theories in science are not
mechanistic theories. Many theories that explicate what regularly happens in
nature either do not or need not explain why those phenomena occur
mechanically. Newton's universal law of gravitation was no less a scientific
theory because Newton failed indeed refused to postulate a mechanistic cause
for the regular pattern of attraction his law described. Also, as noted
earlier, many historical theories about what happened in the past may
stand on their own without any mechanistic theory about how the events
to which such theories attest could have occurred. The theory of common descent
is generally regarded as a scientific theory even though scientists have not
agreed on a completely adequate mechanism to explain how transmutation between
lines of descent can be achieved. In the same way, there seems little
justification for asserting that the theory of continental drift became
scientific only after the advent of plate tectonics. While the mechanism
provided by plate tectonics certainly helped render continental drift a more
persuasive theory, it was nevertheless not strictly necessary to know the
mechanism by which continental drift occurs (1) to know or theorize that
drift had occurred or (2) to regard the continental drift theory as
scientific.
Yet
one might concede that causal mechanisms are not required in all scientific
contexts, but deny that origins research is such a context. One might argue
that since origins theories necessarily attempt to offer causal explanations,
and since design admittedly attempts to explain the origin of life or major
taxonomic groups, its failure to offer a mechanism disqualifies it as an
adequate theory of origins.
But
this argument has difficulties as well. First, an advocate of design could
concede that his theory does not provide a complete causal explanation of how
life originated without forfeiting scientific status for the theory. Present
clues and evidences might convince some scientists that intelligence
played a causal role in the design of life, without those same scientists'
knowing exactly how mind exerts its influence over matter. All that
would follow in such a case is that design is an incomplete theory, not that it
is an unscientific one (or even an unwarranted one). And such incompleteness is
not unique to design theories. Both biological (as just discussed) and chemical
evolutionary theories have often provided less than completely adequate causal
scenarios. Indeed, most scientific theories of origin are causally incomplete
or inadequate in some way.
In
any case, asserting mechanism as necessary to the scientific status of origins
theories begs the question. In particular, it assumes without justification
that all scientifically acceptable causes are mechanistic causes. To
insist that all causal explanations in science must be mechanistic is to insist
that all causal theories must refer only to material entities (or their
energetic equivalents). Yet this requirement is merely another expression of
the very naturalism whose methodological necessity has been asserted because of
ostensibly compelling demarcation arguments. Insofar as the statement "All
scientific theories must be mechanistic" is a demarcation argument,
this requirement is evidently circular. Science, the demarcationist claims,
must be mechanistic because it must be naturalistic; it must be naturalistic
because otherwise it would violate demarcation standards in particular, the
standard that all scientific theories must be mechanistic.
This
argument clearly assumes the point at issue, which is whether or not there are
independent that is, metaphysically neutral reasons for preferring exclusively
materialistic causal explanations of origins over explanations that invoke
putatively immaterial entities such as creative intelligence, mind, mental
action, divine action or intelligent design. While philosophical naturalists
may not regard the foregoing as real or (if real) immaterial, they certainly
cannot deny that such entities could function as causal antecedents if they
were.
Thus
we return to the central question: What noncircular reason can be offered for
prohibiting the postulation of nonmechanistic (e.g., mental or intelligent)
causes in scientific origins theories? Simply asserting that such entities may
not be considered, whatever the empirical justification for their postulation,
clearly does not constitute a justification for an exclusively naturalistic
definition of science. Theoretically there are at least two possible types of
causes: mechanistic and intelligent. The demarcationist has yet to offer a
noncircular reason for excluding the latter type.
Let
us now turn to a more fundamental reason for the methodological equivalence of
design and descent. As stated earlier, the equivalence of design and descent
follows from an understanding of the distinctive logical and methodological
character of the historical sciences. An examination of scientific disciplines
concerned with past events and causes, such as evolutionary biology, historical
geology and archaeology, reveals a distinctive pattern of inquiry that
contrasts markedly with nonhistorical sciences such as branches of chemistry,
physics or biology that are concerned primarily with the discovery and
explication of general phenomena. This section will show that both design and
descent do, or could, instantiate this distinctive historical pattern of
scientific investigation. In other words, a fundamental methodological
equivalence between design and descent derives from a common concern with
history--that is, with historical questions, historical inferences and
historical explanations.
We
can see this historical concern first by looking at why the demarcation
arguments analyzed earlier fail. Consider, for example, the assertion that to
be scientific one must explain by reference to natural law. To insist that
"science must explain by natural law" betrays much confusion about
the alleged universality of explanation in science, about the necessary role of
laws in explanations and about the distinction between laws and causes. But fundamentally
this demarcation criterion fails to do the work required of it by evolutionary
writers because it ignores that some scientific disciplines
("historical" according to my lexicon) seek to explain events or data
not primarily by reference to laws but by reference to past causal events or
sequences of events what might be called "causal histories." Since
natural laws are not necessary to such activity, the demarcation criterion
"must explain by natural law" can't be used to distinguish between
two competing programs of historical scientific research, whether evolutionary
or otherwise.
Next
consider the idea that scientific theories must not postulate unverifiable or
unobservable entities. Certainly this criterion is untenable in light of many
fields, not the least of which is modern physics. Yet it is completely
irrelevant to historical study almost in principle. All historical theories
depend on what C. S. Peirce called "abductive inferences." Such
inferences frequently posit unobservable past events in order to explain
present phenomena,facts or clues. Making a claim about history nearly always
involves postulating,invoking, or inferring an unobservable event or entity
that cannot be studied directly. The attempt to distinguish the methodological
merit of competing origins theories on the basis of unobservables therefore
seems quite misguided and futile.
Finally,
consider the claim that to be scientific a theory must be testable. As we saw
above, neither design nor descent can meet standards of testability that
require strict verifiability. I have also emphasized that neither can meet
standards of testability that depend on notions of repeatability. Yet both can
meet alternate standards of testability, such as inference to the best
explanation or "consilience," that involve notions of comparative
explanatory power. This equivalence was suggested again from the historical
nature of the claims that design and evolutionary theorists make. Like other
historical theorists, both make claims about events they believe occurred in
the past that cannot be directly verified and may never recur. Yet like other
historical theories, these theories can be tested after the fact by reference
to their comparative explanatory power. To impose stricter standards ignores the
limitations inherent in all historical inquiry and thus again fails to provide
grounds for distinguishing the status of competing historical or origins
theories.
So
the evolutionary demarcation arguments above seem to fail in part because they
attempt to impose (as normative) criteria of method that ignore the historical
character of origins research. Indeed, each one of the demarcationist arguments
listed above fails because it overlooks a specific characteristic of the
historical sciences. But what are these characteristics? And could they
provide grounds for distinguishing the scientific, or at least methodological,
status of design and descent?
The
nature of historical science.
Answering these questions will require briefly summarizing the results of my
doctoral research on the logical and methodological features of the historical
sciences. Through that research I have identified three general features of
historical scientific disciplines. These features derive from a concern to
reconstruct the past and to explain the present by reference to the past. They
distinguish disciplines motivated by historical concerns from disciplines
motivated by a concern to discover, classify or explain unchanging laws and
properties of nature. These latter disciplines may be called
"inductive" or "nomological" (from the Greek word nomos,
for law); the former type may be called "historical." I contend that
historical sciences generally can be distinguished from nonhistorical
scientific disciplines by virtue of the three following features:
1.
The historical interest or questions motivating their practitioners: Those in
the historical sciences generally seek to answer questions of the form
"What happened?" or "What caused this event or that natural
feature to arise?" On the other hand, those in the nomological or
inductive sciences generally address questions of the form "How does
nature normally operate or function?"
2.
The distinctively historical types of inference used: The historical sciences
use inferences with a distinctive logical form. Unlike many nonhistorical
disciplines, which typically attempt to infer generalizations or laws from
particular facts, historical sciences make what C. S. Peirce has called
"abductive inferences" in order to infer a past event from a present
fact or clue. These inferences have also been called "retrodictive"
because they are temporally asymmetric that is, they seek to reconstruct past
conditions or causes from present facts or clues. For example, detectives use
abductive or retrodictive inferences to reconstruct the circumstances of a
crime after the fact. In so doing they function as historical scientists. As
Gould has put it, the historical scientist proceeds by "inferring history
from its results."
3.
The distinctively historical types of explanations used: In the historical
sciences one finds causal explanations of particular events, not nomological
descriptions or theories of general phenomena. In historical explanations, past
causal events, not laws, do the primary explanatory work. The explanations
cited earlier of the Himalayan orogeny and the beginning of World War I
exemplify such historical explanations.
In
addition, the historical sciences share with many other types of science a
fourth feature.
4.
Indirect methods of testing such as inference to the best explanation: As
discussed earlier, many disciplines cannot test theories by direct observation,
prediction or repeated experiment. Instead, testing must be done indirectly
through comparison of the explanatory power of competing theories.
Descent
as historical science.
Enough has been said previously--about the function of common descent as an
explanatory causal history, the retrodictive character of Darwin's inference of
common descent and his use of indirect methods of theory evaluation--to suggest
that evolutionary research programs conform closely to the general
methodological pattern of the historical sciences. But a few additional
observations may make this connection more explicit.
With
respect to the first characteristic of historical science enumerated above
(historical motive or purpose), Darwin clearly was motivated by such a purpose.
One of Darwin's primary goals in the Origin of Species was to establish
a historical pointnamely, that species had not originated independently but had
derived via transmutation from one or very few common ancestors. Indeed, Darwin
sought to show that the history of life resembled a single, continuous
branching tree, with the first and simplest living forms represented by the
base of a tree and the great diversity of more complex forms, both past and
present, represented by the connecting branches. This picture of biological
history contrasted markedly with that of his creationist opponents, who
envisioned the history of life as an array of parallel (nonconvergent) lines of
descent. Darwin's (perhaps primary) purpose in the Origin of Species was
to argue for this continuous view of life's history as opposed to the
discontinuous view favored by his creationist opponents.
Thus
he would repeatedly explicate his priorities in such a way as to show the
primacy of his concern to demonstrate the historical thesis of common descent,
even over his concern to establish the efficacy of his proposed mechanism,
natural selection. He himself tells us what he had in mind: "I had two
distinct objects in view; firstly to shew that species had not been
separately created [i.e., that they had evolved from common ancestors], and second,
that natural selection had been the chief agent of change" (emphasis
added).
Similarly,
at the close of his chapter 13 Darwin states the priorities of his argument by
concluding: "The several classes of facts which have been considered . . .
proclaim so plainly that the innumerable species, genera, and families with
which the world is peopled are all descended . . . from common parents
and have been modified in the course of descent, that I should without
hesitation adopt this view, even if it were unsupported by other facts
or arguments" (emphasis added).
Not
only was Darwin motivated by a historical purpose, but he also used (concerning
feature 2 above) a characteristically historical mode of reasoning. As Gould
has argued so persuasively, Darwin used historical inferences. Beginning in the
middle of his chapter on the "Geological Succession of Organic
Beings" and continuing through his next three chapters, Darwin offered a
series of arguments to support his historical claim of common descent. These
arguments are instances of retrodictive or abductive reasoning. In each case,
extant evidence from the fossil record, comparative anatomy, embryology and
biogeography were used as clues from which to infer a pattern of past
biohistorical events. Notice, for example, the language Darwin uses in his
argument from vestigial structures: "Rudimentary organs may be compared
with the letters in a word, still retained in the spelling but become useless
in the pronunciation, but which serve as a clue in seeking for its
derivation."
Notice,
too, the temporally asymmetric character of each of the inferences he employs:
"The several classes of facts which have been considered . . .
proclaim so plainly that the innumerable species, genera, and families with
which the world is peopled are all descended, each within its own class
or group, from common parents." As Gould has written, Darwin used a
method of "inferring history from its results."
Darwin
not only inferred an historical past, but (with respect to feature 3 above) he
also formulated historical explanations. Indeed, a reciprocal relationship
exists between historical inferences and explanations. Historical scientists
will often seek to infer causal antecedents that, if true, would explain the
widest class of relevant data. The causal past inferred on the basis of its
potential to explain will often serve, when accepted, as an explanation. Darwin
repeatedly argued that the supposition that all organisms descended from common
parents should be accepted because it "explains several large and
independent classes of facts." Moreover, common descent (and the past
events implied by it) served as a causal explanation for Darwin. He
refers to "propinquity of descent" as "the only known cause
of the similarity of organic beings." Elsewhere he refers to common
descent or "propinquity of descent" as the vera causa (or true
cause) of organic similarity. By inferring descent as a past cause, Darwin
constructed a historical explanation in which a pattern of past events did the
primary explanatory work in relation to the facts of biogeography, fossil
progression, homology and so on. As Gould has put it, the Origin of Species
makes "the claim that history stands as the coordinating reason for
relationships among organisms."
The
explanatory function of antecedent events and causal histories is perhaps even
more readily apparent in the work of many chemical evolutionary theorists.
Alexander Oparin, Russian scientist and father of modern origin-of-life
research, formulated detailed causal histories involving a sequence of
hypothetical past events to explain how life emerged in its present form. The
formulation of these "scenarios," as they are called in
origin-of-life biology, has remained an important part of origin-of-life
studies to the present. Thus evolutionary biologists employ not only historical
inferences but also historical explanations in which past causal events, or
patterns thereof, serve to explain the origin of present facts.
As
already discussed, Darwin also (with respect to feature 4 above) employed a
method of indirect testing of his theory by assessing its relative explanatory
power. Recall his statement that "this hypothesis [i.e., common descent]
must be tested . . . by trying to see whether it explains several large and
independent classes of facts" He makes this indirect and comparative
method of testing even more explicit in a letter to Asa Gray:
I
. . . test this hypothesis [common descent] by comparison with as many general
and pretty well-established propositions as I can find--in geographical
distribution, geological history, affinities &c., &c. And it seems to
me that, supposing that such a hypothesis were to explain such general
propositions, we ought, in accordance with the common way of following all
sciences, to admit it till some better hypothesis be found out.
(emphasis added)
Design
as historical science.
The foregoing suggests that evolutionary biology, or at least Darwin's version
of it, does conform to the pattern of inquiry described above as historically
scientific. To show that design and descent are methodologically equivalent
with respect to the historical mode of inquiry outlined above, it now remains
to show that a design argument or theory could exemplify this same historical
pattern of inquiry.
In
the case of feature 1 this equivalence is quite obvious. As just noted, a clear
logical distinction exists between questions of the form "How does nature
normally operate or function?" and those of the form "How did this or
that natural feature arise?" or "What caused this or that event to occur?"
Those who postulate the past activity of an intelligent Designer do so as an
answer, or partial answer, to questions of the latter historical type. Whatever
the evidential merits or liabilities of design theories, such theories
undoubtedly represent attempts to answer questions about what caused certain
features in the natural world to come into existence. With respect to an
interest in origins questions, design and descent are clearly equivalent.
Design
and descent are also equivalent with respect to feature 2. Inferences to intelligent
design are clearly abductive and retrodictive. They seek to infer a past
unobservable cause (an instance of creative mental action or agency) from
present facts or clues in the natural world such as the information content of
DNA, the functional coadaptation of biomolecules, the sudden appearance of a
new form in the fossil record, the uniqueness of human language and the
hierarchical organization of biological systems. Moreover, just as Darwin
sought to strengthen the retrodictive inferences that he made by showing that
many facts or classes of facts could be explained on the supposition of
descent, so too may proponents of design seek to muster a wide variety of clues
to demonstrate the explanatory power of their theory. In the second half of this
volume, for example, evidence from at least four distinct domains of the
natural world will be cited to demonstrate the explanatory power (or
"consilience") of the design inference.
With
respect to feature 3, design inferences, once made, may also serve as causal
explanations. The same reciprocal relationship between inference and
explanation that exists in arguments for descent can exist in arguments for
design. Thus, as noted, an inference to intelligent design may gain support
because it could, if accepted, explain many diverse classes of facts. Clearly,
once adopted it will provide corresponding explanatory resources. Moreover,
theories of design involving the special creative act of an agent conceptualize
that act as a causal event, albeit involving mental rather than purely physical
antecedents. Indeed, design theories--whether posited by young-earth Genesis
literalists, old-earth progressive creationists, theistic macromutationalists
or religiously agnostic biologists--refer to antecedent causal events or
express some kind of causal scenario just as, for example, chemical
evolutionary theories do. As a matter of method, advocates of design and
descent alike seek to postulate antecedent causal events or event scenarios in
order to explain the origin of present phenomena. With respect to feature 3,
design and descent again appear methodologically equivalent.
Much
has already been said to suggest that with respect to feature 4 design may be
tested indirectly in the same way as descent. Certainly, advocates of design
may seek to test their ideas as Darwin did--against a wide class of relevant
facts and by comparing the explanatory power of their hypotheses against
competitors'. Indeed, many biologists who favor design now make their case for
it on the basis of its ability to explain the same evidences that descent can
as well as some that descent allegedly cannot (such as the presence of
sequentially encoded information in DNA).
Thus
design and descent again seem methodologically equivalent. Both seek to answer
characteristically historical questions, both rely upon abductive inferences,
both postulate antecedent causal events or scenarios as explanations of present
data, and both are tested indirectly by comparing their explanatory power
against that of competing theories.
A
theory of everything?
Yet before one is willing to concede this methodological equivalence, one might
demand to know that design can really function as a valid explanation without
trivializing scientific inquiry. The perennial worry about allowing theories of
design, of course, concerns not their explanatory power but the inability to
constrain that power. This concern lies behind some secular scientists' worry
that a theory of design would leave them nothing to do, since presumably the phrase
"God did it" could be invoked as the answer to every scientific
question. As David Hull wrote recently, "Scientists have no choice [but to
define science as totally naturalistic]. Once they allow reference to God or
miraculous forces to explain the first origin of life or the evolution of the
human species, they have no way of limiting this sort of explanation."
This worry also finds expression in the familiar theistic worry about
embarrassing "God-of-the-gaps" arguments, as J. P. Moreland pointed
out in chapter one. So both theists and secularists may worry: "If design
is allowed as a (historically) scientific theory, couldn't it be invoked at
every turn as a theoretical panacea, stultifying inquiry as it goes? Might not
design become a refuge for the intellectually lazy who have refused to study
what nature actually does?"
Well,
of course it might. But so might the incantation "Evolution accomplished X."
Nevertheless, design need not stultify inquiry, nor can it be offered
appropriately in every context as a theoretical panacea. The distinction
between the historical sciences and the nomological or inductive sciences helps
to explain why. Indeed, it helps to show how design can be both legitimated (as
a possible historical explanation) and at the same time constrained or even
prohibited, depending on the context of inquiry. In other words, the
distinction between the historical and the nomological helps to show why the
past action of an intelligent agent may serve as a legitimate explanation in
the historical sciences, whereas it would not in many nonhistorical scientific
contexts.
When
a research program concentrates on questions of how nature normally (unassisted
by the special activity of agency) operates, any reference to agency (whether
divine or human) becomes inappropriate because it fails to address the question
motivating the inquiry. A geologist who inquires about the stress-strain
relationship of a particular type of rock at various temperatures will rightly
regard the postulation of God's creative activity (or, for that matter, a
corresponding evolutionary scenario) as irrelevant to her inquiry. As noted
above, nomological or inductive scientific endeavor typically seeks to infer or
explain general nomological relations (i.e., scientific laws), whereas
historical sciences typically infer past causal events. To propose the action
of agency (as an event in space and time) when a law is required simply misses
the context and character of nomological inquiry. Neither divine nor human
action qualifies as a law. To offer either when a law is sought is
syntactically inappropriate. To offer "God did it" as an answer to a
question such as "How does weightlessness generally affect crystal
growth?" clearly misses the point of the question. The answer does not so
much violate the rules of science as the rules of grammar. Such an answer not
only stultifies inquiry but misses the point of such inquiry altogether.
It
does not follow, however, that references to agency are necessarily
inappropriate when we are reconstructing a causal history that is, when we are
attempting to answer questions about how a particular feature in the natural
world (or the universe itself) arose. In the first place, classical examples of
inappropriate postulations of divine activity (God-of-the-gaps arguments) occur
almost exclusively in the inductive or nomological sciences, as Newton's
ill-fated use of agency to provide a more accurate description of planetary
motion suggests. Second, many fields of inquiry routinely invoke the action of
agents to account for the origin of features or events within the natural
world. Forensic science, history and archaeology, for example, all sometimes
postulate the past activity of human agents to account for the emergence of
particular objects or events. Several such fields suggest a clear precedent for
inferring the past causal activity of intelligent agents within the historical
sciences. Imagine the absurdity of someone's claiming that scientific method
had been violated by the archaeologist who first inferred that French cave
paintings had been produced by human beings rather than by natural forces such
as wind and erosion.
There
is another, more fundamental reason that postulating the past action of agency
can be appropriate in the historical sciences. That again has to do with the
nature of historical explanations. As already noted, historical explanations
require the postulation of antecedent causal events; they do not seek to infer
laws. To offer past agency as part of a historical explanation is therefore
logically and syntactically appropriate. The type of theoretical entity
provided--a past causal event--corresponds to the type required by historical
explanations. Simply put, past agency is a causal event. Agency, therefore,
whether seen or unseen, may serve as a logically and syntactically appropriate
theoretical entity in a historical explanation, even if it could not do so in a
nomological or inductive theory. Mental action may be a cause, even if it is
certainly not a law.
In
any case, postulations of design are constrained by background knowledge about
the causal powers and proclivities of both nature and agency. In addition to
the features of historical explanation mentioned already, successful historical
explanations (as I have discussed elsewhere) must usually meet independent
criteria of causal adequacy. This criterion, which seems to function
normatively in much historical scientific practice, expresses the idea that
postulated causal antecedents should generally be known to be capable of
producing the relevant explanandum--that is, the event or object
requiring explanation. In other words, before a cause can be postulated to have
been present in the past, one should know that some causal precedent (which is
not the same thing as knowing a law) exists for believing the cause capable of
producing the effect of interest. Intelligent design can be offered, therefore,
as a necessary or best causal explanation only when naturalistic processes seem
incapable of producing the explanandum effect, and when intelligence is
known to be capable of producing it and thought to be more likely to have
produced it. Thus modern scientific advocates of design such as Charles Thaxton
or Walter Bradley (see their chapter in this present volume) insist that they
postulate antecedent intelligent activity not because of what we do not know
but because of what we do know about what is and is not capable of
producing coded information. Conversely, there are many effects that do not,
based on our present background knowledge of causal powers, suggest design as a
necessary, best or most likely historical explanation.
Postulations
of design are constrained in yet another way. There are many particular events,
even in history, for which design could not be considered the best or most
likely explanation. The reason for this is that postulations of intelligent
design are constrained by background assumptions about the proclivities of
potential designing agents, both human and divine. Most biblical theists, for
example, assume that God acts in at least two ways: (1) through the natural
regularities or laws that he upholds and sustains through his invisible power
and (2) through more dramatic, discernible and discrete actions at particular
points in time. Because theists assume that the second mode of divine action is
by far the rarer and usually associated with the accomplishment of some
particular divine purpose on behalf of human beings (e.g., creation or
redemption), they assume that divine action of the second variety will be
unlikely as an explanation of most particular events. In philosophical terms,
theists generally approach their study of nature with a set of background
assumptions that would lead them to regard most hypotheses of divine action as
unlikely, though not completely impossible. Theism itself constrains design
inferences. Thus theistic background assumptions would generally allow
consideration of special divine action as the best or most likely explanation
for a particular event only when it seemed empirically warranted and
theologically plausible. Nevertheless, given a biblical (though not
necessarily literalist) understanding of creation and sufficient empirical
justification, there is no reason to believe that both these conditions could
not be met in some cases, as with, for example, explanations of the origin of
life, human consciousness and the universe.
The
above considerations suggest that allowing the design hypothesis as the best
explanation for some events in the history of the cosmos will not cause science
to grind to a halt. While design does have the required logical and syntactic
features of some scientific (i.e., historical) explanations, it cannot be
invoked appropriately in all scientific contexts. Furthermore, because effective
postulations of design are constrained by empirical considerations of causal
precedence and adequacy and by extraevidential considerations such as
simplicity and theological plausibility, concerns about design theory
functioning as a "theory of everything" or "providing cover for
ignorance" or "putting scientists out of work" can be shown to
be largely unfounded. Many important scientific questions would remain to be
answered if one adopted a theory of design. Indeed, all questions about
how nature normally operates without the special assistance of agency remain
unaffected by whatever view of origins one adopts. And that, perhaps, is yet
another equivalence between design and descent.
So
what should we make of these methodological equivalencies? Can there be a
scientific theory of intelligent design? At the very least it seems we can
conclude that we have not yet encountered any good in principle reason to exclude
design from science. Design seems to be just as scientific (or unscientific) as
its evolutionary competitors when judged according to the methodological
criteria examined above. Moreover, if the antidemarcationists are correct, our
lack of universal demarcation criteria implies there cannot be a negative a
priori case against the scientific status of design--precisely because there is
not an agreed standard as to what constitutes the properly scientific. To say
that some discipline or activity qualifies as scientific is to imply the
existence of a standard by which the scientific status of an activity or
discipline can be assessed or adjudicated. If no such standard presently
exists, then nothing positive (or negative) can be said about the scientific
status of intelligent design (or any other theory for that matter).
But
there is another approach that can be taken to the question. If (1) there
exists a distinctively historical pattern of inquiry, and (2) a program of
origins research committed to design theory could or does instantiate that pattern,
and (3) many other fields such as evolutionary biology also instantiate that
pattern, and (4) these other fields are already regarded by convention as
science, there can be a very legitimate if convention-dependent sense in which
design may be considered scientific. In other words, the conjunction of the
methodological equivalence of design and descent and the existence of a
convention that regards descent as scientific implies that design should by
that same convention be regarded as scientific too. Thus, one might quite
legitimately say that both design and descent are historically scientific
research programs, since they instantiate the same pattern of inquiry.
Perhaps,
however, one just really does not want to call intelligent design a scientific
theory. Perhaps one prefers the designation "quasi-scientific historical
speculation with strong metaphysical overtones." Fine. Call it what you
will, provided the same appellation is applied to other forms of inquiry that
have the same methodological and logical character and limitations. In
particular, make sure both design and descent are called "quasi-scientific
historical speculation with strong metaphysical overtones."
This
may seem all very pointless, but that in a way is just the point. As Laudan has
argued, the question whether a theory is scientific is really a red herring.
What we want to know is not whether a theory is scientific but whether a theory
is true or false, well confirmed or not, worthy of our belief or not. One can
not decide the truth of a theory or the warrant for believing a theory to be
true by applying a set of abstract criteria that purport to tell in advance how
all good scientific theories are constructed or what they will in general look
like.
Against
method? Now none of the
above should be construed to imply that methodology does not matter. The
purpose of this essay is not to argue, as Paul Feyerabend does, against method.
Methodological standards in science can be important for guiding future inquiry
along paths that have been successful in the past. The uniformitarian and/or
actualistic method in the historical sciences, for example, has proved a very
helpful guide to reconstructing the past, even if it can't be used as
demarcation between science and pseudoscience, and even if some theories
constructed according to its guidelines turn out to be false.
Standards
of method may also express some minimal logical and epistemic conditions of
success--for example, the conditions related to causal explanation. Successful
causal explanations must as a condition of logical sufficiency cite more than
just a necessary condition of a given outcome. To explain why a given explosion
occurred, it will not suffice to note that oxygen was present in the
atmosphere; nor can the death of a patient be explained simply by citing the
patient's birth, though clearly birth is necessary to death. These cases
illustrate how methodological guidelines (whether tacit or explicit) can help
eliminate certain (in this case logically) inadequate hypotheses, even if such
guidelines cannot be used to define science exhaustively. Methodological
anarchism need not result from a rejection of methodological demarcation
arguments.
Nevertheless,
following methodological criteria and recipes (of any of the preceding types)
does not guarantee theoretical success; nor, again, can such recipes be used to
define science exhaustively, if for no other reason than the variety of
scientific methods that exist. Moreover, methodological recipes can sometimes
become fatal to the success of inquiry if they so dictate the content of
acceptable theorizing that they automatically eliminate empirically and
logically possible explanations or theories.
And
this, I believe, has occurred within origins research. The deployment of flawed
or metaphysically tendentious demarcation arguments against legitimate
theoretical contenders has produced an unjustified confidence in the epistemic
standing of much evolutionary dogma, including "the fact of
evolution" defined as common descent. If competing hypotheses are
eliminated before they are evaluated, remaining theories may acquire an
undeserved dominance.
So
the question isn't whether there can be a scientific theory of design or
creation. The question is whether design should be considered as a competing
hypothesis alongside descent in serious origins research (call it what you
will). Once issues of demarcation are firmly behind us, understood as the red
herrings they are, the answer to this question must clearly be yes that
is, if origins biology is to have standing as a fully rational enterprise,
rather than just a game played according to rules convenient to philosophical
materialists.
Naturalism:
the only game in town?
G. K. Chesterton once said that "behind every double standard lies a
single hidden agenda." Advocates of descent have used demarcation
arguments to erect double standards against design, suggesting that the real
methodological criterion they have in mind is naturalism. Of course for many
the equation of science with the strictly materialistic or naturalistic is not
at all a hidden agenda. Scientists generally treat "naturalistic" as
perhaps the most important feature of their enterprise. Clearly, if naturalism
is regarded as a necessary feature of all scientific hypotheses, then design
will not be considered a scientific hypothesis.
But
must all scientific hypotheses be entirely naturalistic? Must scientific
origins theories, in particular, limit themselves to materialistic causes? Thus
far none of the arguments advanced in support of a naturalistic definition of
science has provided a noncircular justification for such a limitation.
Nevertheless, perhaps such arguments are irrelevant. Perhaps scientists should
just accept the definition of science that has come down to them. After all,
the search for natural causes has served science well. What harm can come from
continuing with the status quo? What compelling reasons can be offered for
overturning the prohibition against nonnaturalistic explanation in science?
In
fact, there are several. First, with respect to origins, defining science as a
strictly naturalistic enterprise is metaphysically gratuitous. Consider: It is
at least logically possible that a personal agent existed before the appearance
of the first life on earth. Further, as Bill Dembski argues in the next
chapter, we do live in the sort of world where knowledge of such an agent could
possibly be known or inferred from empirical data. This suggests that it is
logically and empirically possible that such an agent (whether divine or
otherwise) designed or influenced the origin of life on earth. To insist that
postulations of past agency are inherently unscientific in the historical
sciences (where the express purpose of such inquiry is to determine what happened
in the past) suggests we know that no personal agent could have existed prior
to humans. Not only is such an assumption intrinsically unverifiable, it seems
entirely gratuitous in the absence of some noncircular account of why science
should presuppose metaphysical naturalism.
Second,
to exclude by assumption a logically and empirically possible answer to the
question motivating historical science seems intellectually and theoretically
limiting, especially since no equivalent prohibition exists on the possible
nomological relationships that scientists may postulate in nonhistorical
sciences. The (historical) question that must be asked about biological origins
is not "Which materialistic scenario will prove most adequate?" but
"How did life as we know it actually arise on earth?" Since one of
the logically and syntactically appropriate answers to this later question is
"Life was designed by an intelligent agent that existed before the advent
of humans," it seems rationally stultifying to exclude the design hypothesis
without a consideration of all the evidence, including the most current
evidence, that might support it.
The
a priori exclusion of design diminishes the rationality or origins research in
another way. Recent nonpositivistic accounts of scientific rationality suggest
that scientific theory evaluation is an inherently comparative enterprise.
Notions such as consilience and Peter Lipton's inference to the best
explanation discussed above imply the need to compare the explanatory power of
competing hypotheses or theories. If this process is subverted by philosophical
gerrymandering, the rationality of scientific practise is vitiated. Theories
that gain acceptance in artificially constrained competitions can claim to be
neither "most probably true" nor "most empirically
adequate." Instead such theories can only be considered "most
probable or adequate among an artificially limited set of options."
Moreover,
where origins are concerned only a limited number of basic research programs
are logically possible. (Either brute matter has the capability to arrange
itself into higher levels of complexity or it does not. If it does not, then
either some external agency has assisted the arrangement of matter or matter
has always possessed its present arrangement.) The exclusion of one of the
logically possible programs of origins research by assumption, therefore,
seriously diminishes the significance of any claim to theoretical superiority
by advocates of a remaining program. As Phillip Johnson has argued, the use of
"methodological rules" to protect Darwinism from theoretical
challenge has produced a situation in which Darwinist claims must be regarded
as little more than tautologies expressing the deductive consequences of
methodological naturalism.
An
openness to empirical arguments for design is therefore a necessary condition
of a fully rational historical biology. A rational historical biology must not
only address the question "Which materialistic or naturalistic
evolutionary scenario provides the most adequate explanation of biological
complexity?" but also the question "Does a strictly materialistic
evolutionary scenario or one involving intelligent agency or some other theory
best explain the origin of biological complexity, given all relevant evidence?"
To insist otherwise is to insist that materialism holds a metaphysically
privileged position. Since there seems no reason to concede that assumption, I
see no reason to concede that origins theories must be strictly naturalistic.
For
helpful comments and criticisms I would like to thank Ed Olson, Forrest Baird,
Dale Bruner, Bill Dembski, Norman Krebbs, J. P. Moreland, Paul Nelson and Jitse
van der Meer. For assistance with typing references I would like to thank
Lorrie Nelson. For generous research support I thank the Pascal Centre in
Ontario, Canada, and C. Davis Weyerhaeuser.
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File Date: 12.29.98