Posted on 09/19/2005 6:01:22 PM PDT by gobucks
In 1993, the journalist Jonathan Rauch published a book called Kindly Inquisitors, in which he catalogued contemporary threats to the Enlightenment tradition of seeking truth through logical or empirical discourse. One of Rauch's points was that, while this (classical) liberal system for amassing knowledge appeared to be under attack from both the religious right and the multicultural left, in fact the two groups were making a version of the same argument: Mainstream science didn't accord their beliefs the respect they deserved, whether it was creation science on the one hand or feminist or Afro-centric science on the other.
Rauch's book has held up remarkably well in the twelve years since it was published. This is particularly so in light of the current debate over intelligent design (ID)--the idea, popular on the right, that life is too complex to have resulted from random variation. Even President Bush has suggested, as the creation scientists (and multiculturalists) of the 1980s and 1990s did before him, that both sides of the supposed debate be treated as legitimate in public school curricula.
But there was one thing Rauch didn't anticipate. At the time, he suggested that, even though creationists had adopted the tactics of the academic left--the demand for equal time--they still believed in objective truths. They just didn't think all of these truths were discoverable by science. By contrast, today's IDers have gone further and adopted the epistemology of the left--the idea that ostensibly scientific truths may be relative.
The animating principle of the postmodern left is the notion that truth follows from power and not from its intrinsic rightness. It's a conceit that began in the humanities but eventually spread to hard sciences like physics. "The point is that neither logic nor mathematics escapes the contamination of the social," as postmodern pooh-bah Stanley Aronowitz has put it. What makes this approach so radical is its implication that the way to win intellectually is to win politically.
In making their arguments, the postmodernists rely heavily on the work of historians of science like Thomas Kuhn. It was Kuhn who famously argued that scientific knowledge proceeds as a sequence of "paradigm shifts"--revolutions in the way we understand the world--and that the shifts occur not simply when the evidence in favor of the new paradigm becomes overwhelming, but when the people invested in the old paradigm are in some sense defeated (which may not occur until long after they're proved wrong). Mainstream science has taken from Kuhn the belief that evidence and logic are necessary, if not quite sufficient, conditions for a paradigm shift and that, in the long run, successive shifts bring society closer to objective truth. Where the postmodernists go awry is in their emphasis on Kuhn's relativism.
Unfortunately, these postmodernist ideas have become a staple of the ID movement. As laid out in a strategic memo produced by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, the leading backer of intelligent design, "Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud portrayed humans not as moral and spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled by purely impersonal forces." There was nothing particularly objective about this view, according to the IDers. Instead, applying the same reading of Kuhn that the postmodernists embrace, they argue that it was simply the result of a political struggle between insurgents and the establishment. (In fact, the IDers frequently cite Kuhn to this effect.) Probably the clearest example of this comes courtesy of Bruce K. Chapman, the Discovery Institute's president. "All ideas that achieve a sort of uniform acceptance ultimately fall apart, whether it's in the sciences or philosophy or politics, after a few people keep knocking away at it," he recently told The New York Times. But that's nuts. Germ theory, relativity, the idea that the earth is round--with apologies to Tom Friedman, the fact that all have withstood the occasional challenge suggests that truth counts for something.
Chapman might protest that he's simply proposing a more accurate alternative to evolution, the same way Darwin proposed a more accurate alternative to creationism. But ID isn't a new theory, just a new attempt to advance an old one, with some new empirical claims thrown in for good measure. As Jerry Coyne has pointed out ("The Faith that Dare Not Speak Its Name," August 22 & 29), scientists can discredit ID using the exact same evidence they used to debunk creationism. Once you realize this, it's no longer possible to interpret Chapman as echoing the belief in a steady progression toward truth.
Like all conservatives, of course, the IDers claim to decry relativism and to embrace absolutes. But, for them, the claim is logically incoherent in a way it wasn't when it came from their creationist predecessors. When a proposition is empirically false, as both creationism and ID (to the extent that it makes empirical claims) are, you're free to assert its truth; you just can't call it science. The creationists had no problem with this; they just rejected any science that contradicted the Bible. But the IDers aspire to scientific truth. Unfortunately, the only way to claim that something empirically false is scientifically true is to question science's capacity for sorting out truth from falsehood, the same way postmodernists do.
Conservatives were quick to point out the danger of this view in the '80s and '90s. They argued that a science that rejected the idea of truth was vulnerable to the most inane forms of intellectual hucksterism. And they were right. It's not hard to imagine scams like cold fusion or the Scientologist critique of psychiatric drugs gaining ground in a world where science's ability to identify knowledge has been undermined. (Among other monuments to postmodern thought was the idea that E=mc² might be a "sexed equation" that "privileges the speed of light over other speeds," as Belgian-French theorist Luce Irigaray once asserted.)
Americans don't like thinking of themselves as backward. As a result, the risk from science-rejecting creationists hasn't been particularly acute in recent decades. But most people don't have very strong views on the philosophy of science. If, unlike the postmodern left, the ID movement can enlist mainstream conservatives in questioning science's capacity to produce objective truth, then it's by no means clear the effort won't succeed. In that case, it will end up threatening a whole lot more than just evolution.
LOL! Now, just take deep, slow breaths. You will be fine...
What indeed?
gobucks, I read the TNR article you posted 3 times through, trying to work out for the life of me how this piece says anything which isn't utterly damning to the case you generally make in these threads--but nope, just couldn't see it.
I have now tried, also 3 times, to follow your argument in your posted reply to jennyp--but nope again, I just can't follow your reasoning here at all. I pretty much lose you somewhere around the 'shows like South Park are all the rage' part.
You appear to be claiming some sort of elaborate 'entryism' into the GOP by--well, by whom exactly is one of the things I honestly can't work out from your posting. My best guess is that "the 'conservative' Christian-haters" are meant.
As a conservative, as a Christian, and as one persuaded by the scientific arguments of Darwinian evolutionary theory, I would probably find both the characterisation and the allegation here objectional--except that it is not even intelligible
You appear to be claiming some sort of elaborate 'entryism' into the GOP by--well, by whom exactly is one of the things I honestly can't work out from your posting. My best guess is that "the 'conservative' Christian-haters" are meant.
Close - I just wouldn't call them conservative. I would call them 'deliberately false-flagged-conservatives'. But, how is this confusing? How is it not obvious? This thread already provides total PROOF of what I am stating...
TNR if filled chock full w/ looney leftists. But, amazingly, the 'rightists' evo types here at FR LOVE this article!! Patrick 'song-in-my-heart' Henry is nearly drooling!!!! Somebody help me here....; SeaLion has read it 3 times, and still doesn't get it...
The guy reading the letter keeps saying: "I believe it. I believe it!"
Their main similarity is in an appeal to authority, the State in one case and God on the other. When the two mix, disaster occurs.
Your statement is self-refuting.
Cordially,
Here's the cause of some of the confusion. It seems that The New Republic isn't your father's Oldsmobile. From this source: The New Republic, From Wikipedia:
In 1975, the magazine was bought by Harvard lecturer Martin Peretz, who transformed TNR into its current incarnation. Peretz was a veteran of the New Left who had broken with that movement over its support of various Third World liberationist movements, particularly the Palestine Liberation Organization. Under Peretz TNR has advocated both strong U.S. support for Israel and a muscular U.S. foreign policy. During the 1980s the magazine generally supported President Reagan's anti-Communist foreign policy, including provision of aid to the Contras. It has also supported both Gulf Wars and, reflecting its belief in the moral efficacy of American power, intervention in "humanitarian" crises, such as those in Bosnia and Kosovo during the Yugoslav wars. ... Domestically, TNR supports policies first associated with the Democratic Leadership Council and such "New Democrats" as former-President Bill Clinton. These policies, while seeking to achieve the ends of traditional social welfare programs, often use market solutions as their means, and so are often called "business-friendly".In other words, they're still liberal, but not flaming, kool-aid drinking insane liberal. Kinda like John Kennedy liberals, is how I see it (but they could be worse than that). Anyway, they're capable of publishing an intelligent article from time to time.
Ah ... thanks. The accurate version is still applicable.
True, true, but c'mon, work with me here. This is what I've got so far:
[1] TNR, a leftist rag, publishes and article which, inter alia, acknowledges that the conservative case against mindless 'relativism' is, in fact, correct--just as we have long pointed out.
[2] The TNR article goes on to highlight the irony that the Creationist/ID bunch, who profess conservatism, have in fact adopted a classic (and discredited, even in the eyes of TNR) liberal 'relativistic' stance in order to attempt to introduce non-science into the science curricula of state schools.
[3] I, while marvelling at the source, applaud the argument of the TNR article
[4] Gobucks offers his ergo: there "are leftists indeed hidden inside a horse"
Boy, that's cleared that up.
Except I still don't get the part about South Park
...Hang on! Are you trying to illustrate for the world what passes for logic in the Creationist camp?
Ok, now I get it!
Cheers!
If the old lady floats, burn her--she's a witch.
If she sank and drowned, she was innocent.
Got it
:-)
Thanks for the update--I've been away longer than I realised. I thought New Republic was way out there, with Ramparts (anyone else remember them? How the mighty are fallen!)
I'm even old enough to remember a far distant time when the GOP didn't embrace the Inquisitors of Faith...but don't get me started on that one!
"You pro evo's really get me....your quote of me was taken out of context so as to mean something completely different than what I said...go back to my original post."
It is EXACTLY what you said. Period, end of discussion--your refutation of the statement "intelligent design is not science" was to site ID's proponents' assertions to the contrary.
The Discovery Institute is based in...Seattle
The Thomas Moore Center is based in...Ann Arbor
And Philip Johnson operates out of...Berkeley. BERKELEY!
And within the scientific community, the most famous opponets of Neo-Darwinian theory are Richard Lewontin and Steve Rose...avowed Marxists who let ideology cloud their views the same way the IDers let theology cloud theirs. Yes, creationuts and the left are not-so-strange bedfellows. In fact, they were made for each other.
Thank you for providing yet more empirical evidence to prove my statement correct. :)
American conservatism is inherently rational at its intellectual base. No one can read the writings of Jefferson, Franklin, and the other Founders without immediately coming to that conclusion. Any assault on rationality is therefore anti-conservative. And anti-American too.
What he's saying is that even if TNR publishes an article that says "liberalism sucks, conservatism rules" (basically this article), it's still wrong since it comes from TNR and therefore those agreeing with such an article must be 'liberals in disguise'.... and ironically, coming from a guy who had to have a subscription to TNR in order to be able to get the text to post! :-)
fizziwig, I misread the statement in your original post in precisely the same way BeHoldAPaleHorse did, and thought he had made an appropriate reply. It was your re-direct to the original post that made me look again--and to see, I think, where the problem is. Here's the original again:
"You folks who dismiss ID as science rejecting are not very well informed. In fact, ID supporters assert that it is established science which is "science rejecting" when the issue of first causes (and evolution) is raised."
The sense that I and BAPH first read this as was something like:
1. You claim that ID is not science
2. But ID scientists assert that ID is established science--Q.E.D.
3. Moreover, ID is a particular form of science which rejects norms of science when issues of first causes are concerned
All of which I thought, as BeholdAPaleHorse did, was rather foolish and open to challenge
But from your answer to his challenge, I can now see that your intended sense was something like:
1. You claim that ID is not scientific
2. IDers claim that so-called "established science", when confronted by some issues (such as evolution) does not behave as 'science.'
In other words, fizziwig didn't make the nonsense claim that "ID is an established science, because ID proponents assert that is." But he certainly did appear to make that claim, because it is, frankly, a somewhat tangled pair of sentences. Does that make sense?
Sorry if my intervention here is either wrong and/or unwlecome (flame me instead, in that case). It just struck me that you guys have an interesting point of difference in position to consider, but that got lost in a mini-flame session over some confusing syntax
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