Hey hey hey!! How much does religion affect MIT?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>I agree with Mollie and Jessie on the practical issue, but think you are being too bold on one point.</p>

<p>Science is not a fundamental, logically defined category of knowledge or an activity amenable to a nice definition like the one given in that Wikipedia article above. People much smarter than I, like the late, great philosopher and historian of science Thomas Kuhn (of MIT!) have thought about these things very deeply for their whole lives and concluded that if things like this are taken as the definition, then much of what we consider science today isn't, and vice versa.</p>

<p>Science is a human institution; fundamentally it is a club. The club decides who is in and who is out based on who plays by the club's current (unstated!) rules -- NOT based on an abstract definition of scientific activity. ID today is definitely not part of the club, not because it fails to meet some abstract, putatively objective criteria of what makes science, but because it hasn't won admission into the club.</p>

<p>Society has decided science is a very important club and should get 40 minutes a day for many years to hold club meetings with children in schools. During this time, the club gets to pass down what it wishes. And, indeed, since the vast majority of the club (especially the biology subclub) does not regard ID as clubworthy, it excludes it from its discussions.</p>

<p>While tempting and popular, it is silly to try to formulate a logical distinction between the ID theory and evolutionary theory, or the theory of quantum gravity. What makes the first unscientific and the latter two scientific is, maddeningly for you, sociological. Scientists regard the former as nonscience, and that's enough.</p>

<p>It's enough because science has been the most fertile manmade source of practical progress in the known history of he world. That entitles it to some leeway.</p>

<p>Indeed, the sociological definition is the only one that's going to work. ID does make empirically testable claims and predictions (about the nonoccurence of certain kinds of evolution on certain timescales under certain experimental conditions) and has a peer-reviewed literature. </p>

<p>Objective criteria are easy to game. The one criterion that matters is whether scientists, as a worldwide community, accept your science. This definitely hasn't happened for ID, and so for that reason it's wrong to teach it in a science classroom.</p>

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<p>P.S. The trouble is that high school science teachers are not full members of the science club, and the club does not exercise very tight control over them. This is an important regulatory issue in pedagogy. As Olo said, they can let things that seem like science (indeed, by Jessie's definition, which are science) slip to the front of the line without respecting what the wise club regards as important.</p>

<p>A more frankly sociological definition of science would allow us to settle this debate by a vote of the National Academy of Science. If we try to settle it by trying to prove from first principles that ID is unscientific (according to an abstract definition), we are going to lose, and would deserve to.</p>

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<p>*I agree with Mollie and Jessie on the practical issue, but think you are being too bold on one point.</p>

<p>Science is not a fundamental, logically defined category of knowledge or an activity amenable to a nice definition like the one given in that Wikipedia article above. People much smarter than I, like the late, great philosopher and historian of science Thomas Kuhn (of MIT!) have thought about these things very deeply for their whole lives and concluded that if things like this are taken as the definition, then much of what we consider science today isn't, and vice versa.</p>

<p>Science is a human institution; fundamentally it is a club. The club decides who is in and who is out based on who plays by the club's current (unstated!) rules -- NOT based on an abstract definition of scientific activity. ID today is definitely not part of the club, not because it fails to meet some abstract, putatively objective criteria of what makes science, but because it hasn't won admission into the club.</p>

<p>Society has decided science is a very important club and should get 40 minutes a day for many years to hold club meetings with children in schools. During this time, the club gets to pass down what it wishes. And, indeed, since the vast majority of the club (especially the biology subclub) does not regard ID as clubworthy, it excludes it from its discussions.</p>

<p>While tempting and popular, it is silly to try to formulate a logical distinction between the ID theory and evolutionary theory, or the theory of quantum gravity. What makes the first unscientific and the latter two scientific is, maddeningly for you, sociological. Scientists regard the former as nonscience, and that's enough.</p>

<p>It's enough because science has been the most fertile manmade source of practical progress in the known history of he world. That entitles it to some leeway.</p>

<p>Indeed, the sociological definition is the only one that's going to work. ID does make empirically testable claims and predictions (about the nonoccurence of certain kinds of evolution on certain timescales under certain experimental conditions) and has a peer-reviewed literature.</p>

<p>Objective criteria are easy to game. The one criterion that matters is whether scientists, as a worldwide community, accept your science. This definitely hasn't happened for ID, and so for that reason it's wrong to teach it in a science classroom.*</p>

<p>This is a very good post. I remember myself debating Thomas Kuhn over Karl Popper in one of my philosophy classes. We came to the vague conclusion that Kuhn's philsophy only being a paradigm of its own too, can't possibly meet its inherent premises. Or something like that :).</p>

<p>This may sound harsh, but here in Germany a teacher who denies evolution would be fired immediately, no question about that. I was quite shocked to read about all the teachers talking about ID and creationism. It's funny because I was just working on one of my essays, writing how the theory of evolution (Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" in particular) has inspired and influenced me.</p>

<p>(by the way is there no quote function ?)</p>

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<p>Alright, this is my last comment then I'm outta this thread, promise!</p>

<p>Good points by all who responded to the points I raised, especially Ben with making the distinction of WHY it wouldn't be proper to raise the point of ID and such as equal with evolution.</p>

<p>It's so funny that Darwin himself believed in ID AND evolution. :-)</p>

<p>I stand by my opening paragraph about this thread's origin. As for my point about evolution vs. other stuff in the classroom, I think I have to give a hearty touch? to Ben.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
While tempting and popular, it is silly to try to formulate a logical distinction between the ID theory and evolutionary theory

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</p>

<p>How about, evolution is falsifiable, whereas the notion of a creator is not?</p>

<p>I agree with the analogy of a club. But those criteria that you don't think are good enough ARE the rules made by the club.</p>

<p>What testable claims does ID make about itself, as opposed to about evolution?</p>

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<p>
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It's so funny that Darwin himself believed in ID AND evolution. :-)

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<p>This is just patently false. Darwin lost his faith in large part due to his work, and died a professed agnostic, claiming he had no evidence or indication that a god exists.</p>

<p>I would like to direct you to any biography of Charles Darwin. :/</p>

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<p>
[quote]
I agree with the analogy of a club. But those criteria that you don't think are good enough ARE the rules made by the club.

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<p>Jessie -- you spent a lot of time around professional scientists in college; how many times did you hear this definition of science or any other discussion of the scientific method? That is a more common thing in grade school, I think... professional scientists just don't spend much time talking about what rules make their work uniquely scientific because each field passes on these rules like a guild, in an unspoken way through a long and complicated apprenticeship.</p>

<p>The reason is not hard to see. It seems to me that the state of the art analysis of this issue is that rules like the ones you quoted don't quite produce the boundaries that are, in fact, used to demarcate science. String theory in physics is science, whereas certain crank physics is not, and it's hard to distinguish between them on grounds other than sociological ones. </p>

<p>
[quote]
How about, evolution is falsifiable, whereas the notion of a creator is not?

[/quote]
That's certainly not true in general. If a theory posits that some force decreased the entropy of some system a large amount on a short time scale at a particular time a long time ago, that theory can be tested and falsified in the same way that we falsify other theories whose primary evidence is historical (like evolution). That entropy-decreaser is the creator posited by ID.</p>

<p>There are people who are professionals at defending ID based on these objective criteria, and they will beat you both because they are better at arguing and also because they are right on the merits. The boundaries of science are sociological, not logical. That's not a problem with science; it's a virtue. I wish scientists were more forthright about that. (Though I can see how the apparent elitism would draw political protest.)</p>

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<p>I do agree that the definition of science is sociological, but I stand by my characterization of intelligent design/creationism as nonscience on many levels. In a fundamental sense, it's not just that ID is not falsifiable, but that ID appeals to an agency outside the laws of science -- it's nonnaturalistic. </p>

<p>

But those are not predictions about ID, they're predictions about evolution. ID itself is not falsifiable, and falsifying evolution would not be evidence in favor of ID. (I also think it's disingenuous to refer to ID's sole scientific publication as "a peer-reviewed literature".)</p>

<p>It's true that science is a club, but ID isn't accepted not because its proponents aren't members of the club -- it's not accepted because it's not supported by the evidence, and therefore, those denialists who cling to it passionately are not in the club. In the same way, people who deny other amply supported phenomena (that HIV causes AIDS, for example), are widely ridiculed, even if they're already members of the club fully endowed with all the rights and privileges thereof (Kary Mullis).</p>

<p>There may be a smudgy line that divides what we consider science from what we consider nonscience. ID is not anywhere near that smudgy line.</p>

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<p>Mollie -- Far be it from me to say that, because the line demarcating science is smudgy and sociological, ID is near it. It is not anywhere near it.</p>

<p>But I still think you are overenthused about falsifiability and the quality of being "naturalistic". Lots of ID-style theories could make claims that smell falsfiable AND naturalistic, such as that the emergence of high complexity (defined appropriately) is always accompanied by a sudden decrease of entropy through processes that aren't iterative. There is a cottage industry of cooking claims like this. Logical definitions will engage us in a decades-long philosophical war. My way, this can be settled by one vote of the national academy every 10 years.</p>

<p>Your Kary Mullis example is pretty good one, but it illustrates my point more than it refutes it. No objective machine verified that his claims were not supported by the evidence. The community examined the evidence and decided that it wasn't up to its standard. The evaluative mechanism is exactly the social aggregate that I say defines science. And I never claimed, by the way, that being admitted into the club grants you eternal rights as an incontrovertible priest. Just that it gives you a vote on club issues. On this vote, Mullis lost. In what way is my argument refuted?</p>

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<p>Well, I think that ID proponents often claim they're discriminated against just because the scientific community has some sort of vested interest in promoting evolution, and I was just trying to point out that it's not mere discrimination -- that being in the club doesn't prevent you from being ostracized, even if you have a Nobel Prize. </p>

<p>I guess my view is that having the national academies vote is a little dangerous too -- the majority of scientists are not always right. In my field, until not very long ago, the majority of scientists would have said that there was no neurogenesis in the adult brain, and they would have been profoundly wrong. (And it's not that it just hadn't been investigated, and therefore they didn't know -- it had been examined, and people said there was no neurogenesis.) A vote tracked over time would perhaps be useful.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Jessie -- you spent a lot of time around professional scientists in college; how many times did you hear this definition of science or any other discussion of the scientific method?

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</p>

<p>Depending on the class/scientist, anywhere from none to quite a lot.</p>

<p>
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String theory in physics is science, whereas certain crank physics is not, and it's hard to distinguish between them on grounds other than sociological ones.

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</p>

<p><em>laughing</em> I know some physicists who would maintain that string theory is, in fact, crank physics and nonscience, and would be happy to throw it out with ID. I don't actually know enough about string theory to have an opinion on that.</p>

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[quote]
There are people who are professionals at defending ID based on these objective criteria, and they will beat you both because they are better at arguing and also because they are right on the merits.

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<p>Glad to know that you have so much respect for my positions and rhetorical ability. :P Anyway, do you think I don't know about the Discovery Institute, about the cottage industry of people trying to defend ID based on objective criteria? Dembski, Behe, etc?</p>

<p>
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In a fundamental sense, it's not just that ID is not falsifiable, but that ID appeals to an agency outside the laws of science -- it's nonnaturalistic.

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<p>Yes.</p>

<p>
[quote]
That's certainly not true in general. If a theory posits that some force decreased the entropy of some system a large amount on a short time scale at a particular time a long time ago, that theory can be tested and falsified in the same way that we falsify other theories whose primary evidence is historical (like evolution). That entropy-decreaser is the creator posited by ID.

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</p>

<p>Design != intelligent design. Intelligent design implies capacity to plan.</p>

<p>I will also echo Mollie's comment that challenges to evolution, while often advanced these days by ID proponents, are not ID, they're just challenges to evolution (e.g. Behe's argument of irreducible complexity).</p>

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<p>
[quote]

[quote]
Jessie -- you spent a lot of time around professional scientists in college; how many times did you hear this definition of science or any other discussion of the scientific method?

[/quote]

Depending on the class/scientist, anywhere from none to quite a lot.

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</p>

<p>Really? I wasn't trying to be glib -- that would be real news to me. One might have predicted that after all the talk about "the scientific method" in high school, MIT and other science schools might have a whole class about what this is, but I barely heard the words. Do you think that the professors who did talk about these things were sensitive to the flaws in definitions of science based on things like falsifiability, or did they have the impression that these issues were all nicely worked out?</p>

<p>
[quote]
Glad to know that you have so much respect for my positions and rhetorical ability. :P Anyway, do you think I don't know about the Discovery Institute, about the cottage industry of people trying to defend ID based on objective criteria? Dembski, Behe, etc?

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</p>

<p>I think you DO know about this industry but don't have enough respect for it. The fact that they are funded by an interest group to which you have objections does not entail that they are unskilled or that the arguments they make are always wrong. The great danger is that the scientific community will get glib about the ways it defends it work and its authority. Don't you agree that no matter how misguided these people are, science shouldn't be defended with overly simplistic theories of science?</p>

<p>
[quote]
Design != intelligent design. Intelligent design implies capacity to plan.

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Would your objection be withdrawn if they took out that word and admitted that planning ability is beyond their ability to diagnose at this point? </p>

<p>
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I will also echo Mollie's comment that challenges to evolution, while often advanced these days by ID proponents, are not ID, they're just challenges to evolution (e.g. Behe's argument of irreducible complexity).

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</p>

<p>Whence arises your conviction that work aimed at disproving a reigning scientific theory without a comprehensive alternative hypothesis is not scientific? If a group sets up a huge array of telescopes to test whether a certain phenomenon predicted by quantum gravity theory occurs, and they find that, though the instruments are sensitive enough to detect it if it did occur, the phenomenon is not observed, are they not doing science? Is their project merely a challenge to quantum gravity and hence to be dismissed (and not taught in science classes if it finds only negative results)? What is the theory of science that justifies this view? It would certainly be new to me.</p>

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<p>
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Whence arises your conviction that work aimed at disproving a reigning scientific theory without a comprehensive alternative hypothesis is not scientific?

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<p>It is. As far as I know, however, it is also not intelligent design, it's just science that some proponents of ID also happen to do.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Really? I wasn't trying to be glib -- that would be real news to me. One might have predicted that after all the talk about "the scientific method" in high school, MIT and other science schools might have a whole class about what this is, but I barely heard the words.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I might have gotten more of it than most people because there are aspects what is put forth and published in brain & cognitive science (my major) that are pretty sketchy and are either not scientific (psychoanalysis) or are poorly-done science because the newness and immaturity of the subfield has led to a lack of rigor (a lot of fMRI-based cognitive neuroscience). The folks who taught classes in fields that had some component of sketchiness were concerned that we understand this sort of thing, so that we didn't fall into the traps common in those fields.</p>

<p>In fact, it's partly because of that that I see something dangerous in a view of science that is "whatever doctrines we like at the moment". Even among smart people, the majority view is not always right. I think that the definition of science is sociological, but that once you've got that definition, what goes under that name needs to meet that definition.</p>

<p>
[quote]
I think you DO know about this industry but don't have enough respect for it. The fact that they are funded by an interest group to which you have objections does not entail that they are unskilled or that the arguments they make are always wrong. The great danger is that the scientific community will get glib about the ways it defends it work and its authority. Don't you agree that no matter how misguided these people are, science shouldn't be defended with overly simplistic theories of science?

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</p>

<p>Oh, I do think that they are smart and skilled, and I think that it is a great mistake on the part of scientists who care about the teaching of science in schools and the public's scientific literacy to ignore them, or simply dismiss them as idiots, as many do...I think it only makes the public think that the scientific community has something to hide/be afraid of.</p>

<p>Really, I think "It's not science because we said so, even though we don't really have a definition of what science is" is rather overly simplistic. :)</p>

<p>Robert Pennock, a philosopher and AAAS fellow who testified for the plaintiff in Kitzmiller vs. Dover to the effect that ID is not science, has some interesting things to say about this issue and methodological naturalism vs. metaphysical naturalism.</p>

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<p>Jessie -- </p>

<p>
[quote]
Really, I think "It's not science because we said so, even though we don't really have a definition of what science is" is rather overly simplistic.

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</p>

<p>That point is certainly well-taken. While I pushed my point a little more strongly than it deserved in order to overcome the popular conception that science is JUST a logical construct, I actually agree with you. While what constitutes the corpus of science is a sociologically determined thing, those determinations are not whimsical but hinge on standards. So I agree with you almost completely when you say
[quote]
I think that the definition of science is sociological, but that once you've got that definition, what goes under that name needs to meet that definition.

[/quote]
The only thing is that "definition" in this context, if it is to be honest and plausible, would take a few books to articulate. The danger in writing out a Wikipedia-style definition is that you make it seem like determining what is and isn't science is something that anybody reasonably intelligent can do. That's not the case. The decision has to be made by a thoughtful group of experts who have been cooking in these ideas for decades. </p>

<p>I think the true challenge here, certainly from a political standpoint, is how to convince people that school boards aren't equipped to evaluate what is science; and also how to do this without seeming elitist or falling into the "majority of elites is always right" trap. Science is an elite activity, but must also be reasonably responsive to the public's needs and desires, especially with respect to things like education. How to negotiate that tricky path is, I think, the really serious and important question here. Any thoughts?</p>

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<p>Mollie --</p>

<p>
[quote]

I guess my view is that having the national academies vote is a little dangerous too -- the majority of scientists are not always right. In my field, until not very long ago, the majority of scientists would have said that there was no neurogenesis in the adult brain, and they would have been profoundly wrong. (And it's not that it just hadn't been investigated, and therefore they didn't know -- it had been examined, and people said there was no neurogenesis.) A vote tracked over time would perhaps be useful.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>This is certainly a valid criticism. My preferred outcome would be a vote of the national academies every 5 or 10 years, preceded by expert testimony and debate, with representatives of other intellectual disciplines having a role too. But, of course, it is easy for the broad public to feel excluded from such a process... How to allow qualified people to decide these issues without seeming elitist is, as I said above, the big political challenge. I have no particularly good ideas on this point.</p>

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<p>

It's like pornography -- I know it when I see it. ;)</p>