I came upon ID via my discovery of "Darwin's Black Box" in a local book store called "Chapters." I am not at all familiar with "Panda's."

2. Omitting any excerpts you may have encountered on the web, have you ever read Of Pandas And People?
Yes. It was assigned to me in an anti-ID course I took at UCSD by harshly anti-ID evolutionist biology professors at Scripps Institution for Oceanography. That was the first time I'd ever even seen the book or heard it discussed about in any non-trivial fashion (even though I'd followed ID closely for about 4 years prior to the class). I note that in my junior year at UCSD, I took a neutral course by a professor who was friendly to ID, and we never discussed Pandas. We read Dembski and Behe to learn ID-science in that course.

3. Has Of Pandas And People played a significant role in shaping your opinions about ID?
No.

4. Would you rank Of Pandas And People as a important book in the debate over whether or not intelligent design plays a role in biology?
No.

I'd like to make one last point. Nick Matzke has been taunting people here on this blog claiming they are running away from Pandas. I'd like to point out that in February of 2005, long before I started working for Discovery Institute and before the Dover trial started, I wrote a response to an Intelligent Design FAQ from the ACLU, which I posted on the IDEA Center website (I was still in school when I wrote this and at the time had no idea I'd later be working for Discovery Institute or attend any of the Dover trial.)

In this response, long before the Dover trial started, I explained how Pandas really has played a minor role in the development of ID. This was long before any talk of prior editions of Pandas came out or anything like that. I repeat part of the response here for the benefits of Telic Thoughts readers to show that there is no "running away" from Pandas. This pre-Dover-trial documentation shows that even before the trial, there were good reasons to view modern ID as not heavily dependent upon the work in Pandas.

Thanks to all the contributors who do such great work here. I hope we can all always keep a respectful tone with our anti-ID opponents, even when they taunt us.

~Casey Luskin

——————

Response to ACLU ID FAQ: Part 1: "What is the concept of 'intelligent design'?" from http://www.ideacenter.org/cont... (first posted February 11, 2005) (table reformatted for the blog):

Though Pandas was indeed one of the first major works to mention "intelligent design," that title must be read in its context: Pandas predates all of the seminal and widely known books of the intelligent design movement which have specifically formulated the design hypothesis. To demonstrate how out-of-date Pandas is, the book contains neither the term "irreducible complexity" nor any hint of Dembski's famous explanatory filter for detecting design–both of which are fundamental concepts in current intelligent design theory. Many see the first true ID book as Darwin's Black Box, by Michael Behe. The first edition of Pandas was published 7 years before the publication of Darwin's Black Box. Others may see the seminal book in design detection as William Dembski's The Design Inference. The first edition of Pandas was published 9 years before The Design Inference and 12 years before its sequel, No Free Lunch. A timeline comparing the publication date of Pandas with these and other major ID books is summarized in table 1.

To be sure, Pandas is one of the first major works to elaborate on intelligent design theory. Despite this fact, it has not historically played a major role in the development of intelligent design theory. The Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, perhaps the largest organization funding intelligent design research, does not list Pandas in its online list of "Essential Readings" on intelligent design. The reason many have probably never even read Pandas is because it's basically out-dated and predates nearly all widely-known ID scholarship which has played a significant role in formulating current intelligent design theory.

Table 1. Publication Dates of Seminal Books on ID

Book: Of Pandas and People (1st Ed.)
Year of publication: 1989
Years Since Pandas 1st ed.: 0
Years Since Pandas 2nd Ed.: -4

Book: Of Pandas and People (2nd Ed.)
Year of publication: 1993
Years Since Pandas 1st ed.: 4
Years Since Pandas 2nd Ed.: 0

Book: Darwin's Black Box
Year of publication: 1996
Years Since Pandas 1st ed.: 7
Years Since Pandas 2nd Ed.: 3

Book: The Design Inference
Year of publication: 1998
Years Since Pandas 1st ed.: 9
Years Since Pandas 2nd Ed.: 5

Book: Signs of Intelligence
Year of publication: 1999
Years Since Pandas 1st ed.: 10
Years Since Pandas 2nd Ed.: 6

Book: Intelligent Design
Year of publication: 1999
Years Since Pandas 1st ed.: 10
Years Since Pandas 2nd Ed.: 6

Book: No Free Lunch
Year of publication: 2001
Years Since Pandas 1st ed.: 12
Years Since Pandas 2nd Ed.: 8

Book: The Design Revolution
Year of publication: 2004
Years Since Pandas 1st ed.: 15
Years Since Pandas 2nd Ed.: 11

Book: Darwinism, Design, and Public Education
Year of publication: 2004
Years Since Pandas 1st ed.: 15
Years Since Pandas 2nd Ed.: 11

What's the point of this table? Pandas was originally penned nearly a decade before most of the seminal books on intelligent design theory and is clearly out-dated with regards to adequately representing current thought in intelligent design. The most poignant examples of its primordial nature are that it contains neither the phrase "irreducible complexity" nor the concept of Dembski's explanatory filter.

This table should clearly indicate that Pandas is somewhat out-dated with respect to the current mainstream ID movement. In my personal experience, I have rarely (if ever) seen Pandas relied upon by ID scholars as a source for discussing intelligent design theory. I do not think that ID proponents see it as an authority on intelligent design theory. Before writing this response, I personally had never used Pandas in any context other than reading a few assigned pages for a course I took at Scripps Institution for Oceanography in 1999. I had to go to the library to check out Pandas for the class.

Thus, regardless of whether or not teaching out of Pandas is constitutional, it seems very possible that conclusions about the general constitutionality of teaching ID based upon the treatment of ID in Pandas would not necessarily apply to teaching ID theory in general, such as in future textbooks presenting intelligent design.

• no
• no
• no
• no

2 no

3 no

4 yes "“ because Paul Nelson said it was part of the political/legal controversy and I count that as part of the "˜Politics of Nature' "¦

2. Yes — I was a reviewer of the MS, in fact.

3. No.

4. No, but an obvious role in the political/legal controversy. Persuading Judge Jones that Pandas was important was another coup, among many, for the Dover plaintiffs. And another reason that Jones's opinion will prove largely irrelevant to the real (long term) discussion, which has little to do with what gets taught in schools.

Here's a rule of thumb to keep in mind. If your main interest in ID concerns what is presented in science classrooms, you don't really understand ID, and you're doomed to miss the point. That goes for pro- and anti-ID folks.