Saturday, September 3, 2005

Stages of Grief

William Dembski traces the steps of a scientific revolution and finds them very much the same as the stages of grief. When a person is suddenly beset by tragedy he first goes through a time of denial followed by anger, then bargaining with God, depression and, finally, resignation.

We are witnessing such a transition today in the contest between ID and materialistic Darwinism, and the materialists are deep into the anger stage. Thomas Kuhn, in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions, wrote that a revolution is rarely completed by the older generation of scientists. They have devoted too much of their lives and reputations to the old theory to give it up. Like Kuhn, Dembski believes that the final stage will never be reached by the present generation of materialists but will be left to a younger cadre of thinkers who are not so heavily invested in the materialism of their predecessors.

It's an interesting read.