Original Feedback
by MikeGene
Now that some of you have read The Design Matrix, it might be interesting for y'all to revisit the feedback I received from one of the book's editors.
I have no particular bias on this issue, with the exception of one against its current politicization. I'm lucky to have some excellent molecular biologists as friends, though my science background isn't a formal one"¦"¦Overall, you put forward a fair and well reasoned argument. Its great strength is that it attempts to circumvent a polarized issue by providing a fresh interpretation, and then provides a tool for progress. You bolster your points with many good, specific examples, and on the whole you present your topic in a smart, accessible style. Any reader interested in the topic will be lucky to lay hands on your book"¦..On the whole, my experience of your argument was that it started out shaky and gradually got much stronger. This may be a natural consequence of how readers approach a new idea, guarded at first, and more accepting as the writer earns their trust"¦"¦Your book was a delightful intellectual project, and I can't wait to see it in print.
December 15th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
That's some fine feedback, Mike! Other than the fact that I DO have a bias on this issue (strongly suspect teleological design), I think your reviewer describes your approach fairly and echoes what I thought when reading your book - it's a "delightful intellectual project," and left me even more convinced than before that science itself can handle an approach just like yours without sacrificing its philosophy or principles at all.
While I'd have loved to see you crash some gates, the careful approach is much more accessible and non-threatening. When can we look forward to Volume 2?
Comment by Joy — December 15, 2007 @ 2:02 pm
December 16th, 2007 at 11:27 am
Hi Joy,
Well, it is an open-ended approach that can be used to argue for or against design.
The first five chapters of Vol 2 are written (but in rough draft form). In this volume, I attempt to apply the Matrix as part of a story. But whether it ever sees the light of day is a function of the real world; it will ultimately depend on the first volume being a modest success.
Comment by MikeGene — December 16, 2007 @ 11:27 am
December 17th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Hey, Mike. Have there been any critical reviews from the prominent anti-ID folks? I'd be interested in knowing what the take will be from the other side on your very interesting book.
CThomas
Comment by cthomas — December 17, 2007 @ 5:49 pm
December 18th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Hi CThomas,
It wouldn't seem that difficult to predict what the response would be. I'll make some predictions and others are invited to join along. We can then return to this thread in the future to see who raked up the highest score (1 point for each time a prediction is fulfilled).
First, I think it very safe to predict such reviews would be negative because they have to be negative (so no points for predicting that). The only question is what shape this negativity will take.
I'll provide my predictions later tonight.
Comment by MikeGene — December 18, 2007 @ 4:03 pm
December 18th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Predictions of critiques particular to The Design Matrix:
If this book means anything why wasn't it peer-reviewed?
1) Creationists are dangerous, murderous, theocrats who want to take over the schools.
2) ID is vacuous.
3) Dover refuted this book 2 years ago.
4) Dembski bugs me, Johnson's a Christian, Behe never read that stack of books and there's a moonie in there somewhere as well.
5) The Wedge document was marked "Top Secret", I bet.
6) The author is ignorant. Hasn't he ever heard of co-option, exaptation, endo-symbiosis, lateral transfer, convergence, the multi-verse and lucky luckity luck?
7) Mike Gene is an pseudonymous blogger.
Comment by Pez — December 18, 2007 @ 4:43 pm
December 18th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
I don't know about the others (which of course are largely stereotypes of critics - I didn't think we liked stereotypes around here…), but this one strikes me as eminently believable. At least Mike isn't trying to claim that the book is anything other than what it is: a starting point.
Comment by thechristiancynic — December 18, 2007 @ 5:04 pm
December 19th, 2007 at 12:54 am
Here are my predictions.
1. It will be tied to creationism.
2. It will be set in the context of the culture wars.
3. I personally will be attacked in some fashion.
4. There will be a feigned sense of "˜disappointment.'
5. Cherry picking will be used to comb for mistakes or contentious points in order to turn molehills into mountains which are in turn are portrayed as representative.
Comment by MikeGene — December 19, 2007 @ 12:54 am
December 19th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Does Bill Dembski calling you an "amateur at the philosophy of science" qualify as a personal attack?
Comment by valerie — December 19, 2007 @ 10:33 pm
December 19th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
I predict that Arbor Vitae Press will be labeled a Creationist Vanity Press.
Comment by chunkdz — December 19, 2007 @ 11:27 pm
December 20th, 2007 at 1:31 am
I think valerie has a point, Mike.
If you ask me (and of course no one is), I think Dembski's blowing hot air because the claims of the DM are modest, whereas he would like ID claims to be overblown and egotistical (like his claims and…well, him). It's almost like it's not good enough for ID to be an inquiry - Dembski won't settle for anything less than a total revolution. That would explain this comment nicely in the context of basically all the rhetoric he's ever used about ID.
Comment by thechristiancynic — December 20, 2007 @ 1:31 am
December 20th, 2007 at 3:20 am
I have criticisms of the way Dembski sometimes approaches the PR part of ID. But in his defense, he represented Mike's book fairly, and stated where he disagrees - and even on the issue of whether or not ID is science, he acknowledged that that's a philosophical question, and that he (Dembski) is actively trying to challenge that view as well.
I wouldn't speak for MikeGene, but I also note that he regards ID as 'nascent protoscience'. That's different from the 'ID is not science' view many critics takes. A nascent protoscience can eventually become science, and may ask questions or explore ideas that are scientifically valid, though the answers it provides may not be reliable or applicable enough to 'count'. Deciding what's scientific and not is tricky itself, and open to political maneuvering.
Comment by nullasalus — December 20, 2007 @ 3:20 am
December 20th, 2007 at 8:36 am
This whole "is ID science debate" shows that science has become a religion to many folks.
Think about the presidential race in our country. A big deal is being made about Romney's Mormonism and the question of whether or not it is Christianity. Why do folks even care? It's because Christianity still holds a special place in the religious mind of many here. Much better questions would be is Mormonism rational and does it produce the kind of character we want in a president. But we can't seem to get to those kinds of questions because of the religious nature of the subject.
The same goes for ID. The questions we should be asking are: Is it interesting? Can it be a useful? Can it lead to further research? Is it a correct reading of the evidence?
But we can't seem to get to those questions because of the religious nature of the subject.
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — December 20, 2007 @ 8:36 am
December 20th, 2007 at 11:11 am
If ID can answer yes to all these, then it will start to get accepted as science.
Comment by The Pixie — December 20, 2007 @ 11:11 am
December 20th, 2007 at 11:40 am
valerie:
I don't think so. Dembski's statement qualifies more as a philosopher of science asserting his expertise in that particular subject to a critic who cited philosophers in his agreement with Mike that ID isn't a scientific theory [critic]. I don't recall that Mike ever claimed to be a philosopher of science.
Dembski apparently believes ID *is* a scientific theory. I do not agree, though I do think it's 'science' if one approaches it scientifically. There are a couple of developed sub-theories (CSI and IC), but these two things - possibly testable yet not so far confirmed - do not an uber-theoretic make. The NDS and its many developed sub-theories *do* add up to an uber-theoretic and it still holds sway in science. Will continue to hold sway until and unless something comparable in scope and more explanatory than this comes along. ID is not there yet.
Mike clearly approaches the issue scientifically in his book, but asking the questions and seeking the clues is not a theory. Developing a test and doing the experiment is not a theory either, even if it confirms your suspicions and falsifies the standard model's predictions per that experiment.
There is a good deal of design-informed and design-oriented science going on in fields of biology, with spin-offs to pharmaceutical design, information systems and materials science. It's just not called Intelligent Design. It's called "non-linear dynamics" or "self-organizing systems" or "computational genomics" or even "programmed nanotechnology." The RM-NS ideology-tainted pablum will soon fade away from disuse, and biology will do just fine for awhile without any restrictive uber-theoretic to constrain its discoveries.
Then, one day in the future, philosophy may put the disparate conclusions together into a new uber-theoretic. They won't call that Intelligent Design either, but it will look a lot like ID. And everyone will go on as if they'd known it all along, and wonder why scientists ever felt so threatened by it here in our age of relative ignorance. Such is the way of things… time (and knowledge) marches on.
Comment by Joy — December 20, 2007 @ 11:40 am
December 20th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
It is interestng to speculate on a post-FLE world (i.e., where FLE has been accepted as mainstream science). I would suggest that 99+% of modern evolutionary theory would survive in the new theory (comon descent, natural selection, point mutations, etc., all these would still be rellevant), though obviously with additions. Atheism would survive unscathed; we are only talking about a human-like intelligence, afterall (and personally I would find it very it fascinating that we had evidence for ETI). The creationists would still be campaigning against the new version of modern evolutionary theory, as it still disagrees with the Bible about God creating each kind. As far as the culture war goes, the difference would be a few people at Telic Thoughts coming on to our side!
Comment by The Pixie — December 20, 2007 @ 4:45 pm
December 20th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Mike, if I were assigned to write a Panda's Thumb-style negative review of your book, I think I would do something like this. Start with an expression of feigned disappointment, working in the claim that my expectations had been built up by your long lead in to the publication. Then I would say that in the book itself, I kept wading through a bunch of admitted speculations and alleged "hints" that certainly don't hint at any design from my perspective (and all of which have been dealt with extensively in the literature that you completely ignore). During all this, I kept waiting for the actual evidence to come in. Then I would say that at the end it turned out that the big test turned out to boil down to nothing more than, "if it looks designed to me then it must be designed," because the test is admittedly totally subjective. The numerical values create the illusion of rigor but are completely meaningless because there is no basis to substantiate any values in the test. Then I would say that I am more convinced than ever that intelligent design must just be a pretext for biblical creationism. [None of this represents my actual views of the book, of course.]
CThomas
Comment by cthomas — December 20, 2007 @ 5:20 pm
December 20th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Pixie:
Oh, I doubt it'll be just FLE. I've long suspected science was moving much more rapidly toward an EAM-like model. And I expect that will factor large in the amalgam we end up with.
The die-hard ideologists fighting science vs. religion wars have been at it for thousands of years, they aren't going to quit any time soon. For most people, such perennial dueling metaphysics is a total bore, doesn't affect their lives or beliefs in the least, and nobody but the combatants really cares. For all the good it does them, which is zilch. Wannabe mind-tyrants are a dime a dozen in all generations.
What I'd like to see is less rust on the scaffolding of science (rust never sleeps, you know). IOW, get the wannabe mind-tyrants out of the business of claiming their metaphysical beliefs *are* science. That's a hefty corruption bound to lose in any open warfare with the 99% of the rest of humanity who believes as they choose to believe despite what scientists have to say about it. Science is too important to allow it to collapse from sheer weight of ideological corruption.
If "our side" means real science, most of us have been there all along, just waiting on you to open your eyes. Is that really so surprising to you? §;o)
Comment by Joy — December 20, 2007 @ 6:08 pm
December 21st, 2007 at 6:45 pm
"At least Mike isn't trying to claim that the book is anything other than what it is: a starting point."
A starting point for what exactly? MikeGene has "conceded" that ID is "not science." If it's not science, what exactly is it, and what kind of book should we classify the Matrix as? Is it a starting point for a particular philosophy?
I think Mike should retract the nonsense about ID not being "scientific." It's every bit as scientific as the blind-watchmaker hypothesis. Ideas regarding design detection, retroviral influence, front loading detection, CSI, etc, are not merely philosophical. One need not be religious nor non-religious to consider them. One or more of the "ID" ideas may be true or false, but they are within the realm of scientific enquiry.
Comment by kornbelt888 — December 21, 2007 @ 6:45 pm
December 21st, 2007 at 7:31 pm
kornbelt888,
I see this coming up repeatedly, but the quote I saw with MikeGene is that he doesn't believe ID is science, but is instead a nascent protoscience. Psychology could have been classified as the same, once upon a time. So could sociology, or a number of other fields (Hard as well as soft, I imagine.)
My only regret with MikeGene saying that is it's nuanced, and it's easier to quote him out of context. On the other hand, watching people do that is a great way to expose people who either misunderstand what he's saying, or are being dishonest.
Wonder if that's by design or chance.
Comment by nullasalus — December 21, 2007 @ 7:31 pm
December 21st, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Mike predicted:
Looks like ID supporters want to fulfill that prophecy even before any critics get around to reviewing the book.
This is from DaveScot at UD:
As angryoldfatman put it, all you Mike-loving Europeans might as well pick out your prayer rugs now, while you still have a choice.
Comment by valerie — December 21, 2007 @ 10:06 pm
December 21st, 2007 at 10:41 pm
In other words,
Comment by MikeGene — December 21, 2007 @ 10:41 pm
December 22nd, 2007 at 1:27 am
Looks more like a shrinking daffodil to me.
Comment by valerie — December 22, 2007 @ 1:27 am