Teaching Intelligent Design (Pt. I)

The inestimable Charles Krauthammer falls victim to the temptation to disregard Dirty Harry's dictum that "A man's got to know his limitations." Krauthammer, who's right about so much he comments upon in the political sphere, makes the mistake of wading into unfamiliar philosophical waters with all the confidence of one who has tested them many times before. He writes:

To teach faith as science is to undermine the very idea of science, which is the acquisition of new knowledge through hypothesis, experimentation and evidence. To teach it as science is to encourage the supercilious caricature of America as a nation in the thrall of religious authority. To teach it as science is to discredit the welcome recent advances in permitting the public expression of religion. Faith can and should be proclaimed from every mountaintop and city square. But it has no place in science class. To impose it on the teaching of evolution is not just to invite ridicule but to earn it.

Krauthammer simply embraces here the old canard that Darwinian evolution is science and Intelligent Design is religion when in fact neither proposition is correct. Both views might perhaps be best understood as important hypotheses in the philosophy of science. As such, either they're both suitable for discussion in a science class or neither are. I've argued on numerous occasions on Viewpoint that the former position is the more sensible. When science instruction ignores the philosophical implications and underpinnings of the empirical side of science it reduces to a sterile, barren collection of facts of significantly less interest to students than it would otherwise have.

To argue that the philosophy of science has no place in a science class is as silly as arguing that the history of science has no place in a science class. Yet we wouldn't dream of stripping our discussions of Newton, Boyle, Faraday, Kepler, and Darwin of their historical context. No one would suggest that we should henceforth omit all mention of dates because they're not matters subject to experimentation. It's absurd to suggest that Galileo's disagreement with the Church or the story of the Manhatten Project or an account of the work of the early alchemists is inappropriate in a science class. If it's perfectly appropriate to discuss the historical background of scientific ideas and progress then by what logic do we not extend the same acceptance to discussions of the philosophical context and ideas of science?

President Bush has recently urged that ID be discussed in school along with Darwinism. He presumably has no more expertise in this area than does Krauthammer, but he certainly has better instincts.

In another post I'd like to discuss a few ways in which I think ID could be presented by science teachers without frightening the children, or liberals, with the boogeyman of religion.