In his essay, The Question of Purpose, David Zeigler states his objective:

My "purpose" (we can create our own temporally and spatially limited purposes) in writing this piece is to point out one of the most important and real issues in the teaching of Darwinian evolution that so often goes unaddressed, or more amazingly"”unrecognized, and this issue is really fairly obvious.

Yet before getting to the "most important and real issues," it would help for Zeigler to explain his views of science:

I decided to enter science because I came to view it as the only discipline in which one could find real objective truth, the only view which could inform one as to the true nature of reality. I would hope that many (although undoubtedly not all) students still hunger for the same thing.

Zeigler thus views science as a vehicle, the vehicle, for delivering "real objective truth." From this vantage point, Zeigler then spells out the most important and real issues in the teaching of Darwinian evolution that so often goes unaddressed:

Darwinian evolution by natural selection results in adaptations which increase the ability of the individuals to survive and reproduce successfully in their respective environments, or as biologists would say"”adaptations increase the fitness of individuals. This is the only evolutionary goal or purpose for which science has found objective evidence. In our science, there is no mention of, or mechanism for achieving, any long-term metaphysical or teological goals of form, complexity, or intelligence"”as Gould has argued so eloquently.

Twice Zeigler appeals to science as an authority. First, evolution by natural selection is the "only evolutionary goal or purpose for which science has found objective evidence." Second, in science, there is no mention of or mechanism for teleology.

From here, Zeigler thinks that science has exorcised teleology not only from biology and evolution, but from all reality that exists outside our brains. And that is what we are supposed to teach. It's as if science has discovered Truth, for how can an "objective, real truth" be anything other than The Truth?

But what of this notion that science has discovered no evidence for teleology and has discovered that the only purpose behind life is to leave more offspring than your competitors? Zeigler never truly supports the belief that these facts tell us something about reality more so than they tell us something about science.

Zeigler treats science as if it is a disembodied AI program that objectively discovers things and renders objective judgments. But in reality, science is a human expression. It is humans who decide what work to fund, what experiments to do, and what perspective to employ when it comes to interpreting the data. And they do so as a social community. In other words, if science is to pose as an authority capable of rendering metaphysical judgments, we humans would like a closer look at this social class. We need a well developed sociology of science to determine whether questions about purpose and meaning can indeed be addressed by this community in accord with the idealistic vision that many have about science.

For example, what type of data would this social community (the scientists) accept as evidence "for long-term metaphysical or teological goals of form, complexity, or intelligence?" And what about the mountain of anecdotal evidence which supports the fact that science strongly prefers a reductionist approach to a teleological approach? Consider the comments of several scientists:

Now, I am not saying there is anything wrong with such attitudes and perspectives, as such ground rules have been very effective for science. But if such attitudes/perspectives effectively define the focus of the scientific community, then why be surprised that "In our science, there is no mention of, or mechanism for achieving, any long-term metaphysical or teological goals of form, complexity, or intelligence." And more importantly, why think that an epistemology so constrained does indeed speak authoritatively about all "objective reality?"

Or consider it from another angle. The sociology of science may not be the only thing that imposes limitations on scientific conclusions, but perhaps the limitations are even more deeper. Consider the fact that Zeigler has told us there was indeed a purpose behind writing his essay. He says, "we can create our own temporally and spatially limited purposes."" Yet apart from his testimony and our common sense experience of being human, how would science itself have ever discovered this purpose? An objective, reductionist description of Zeigler would be scientifically expressed in terms of neurotransmitters, graded potentials, action potentials, muscle contraction, and all the cellular/biochemical events associated with these. Would such a scientific description be capable of detecting a purpose we know that exists? If the purpose of Zeigler exists in the blind spot of science, what else may reside there?

Then again, might someone push the approach of science to its extreme and maintain that even Zeigler's temporally and spatially limited purpose is an illusion and delusion?

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 11:04 am and is filed under Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. The trackback link is: http://telicthoughts.com/question-of-purpose-part-2/trackback/