The Disenchanting
by Steve PetermannWell established scientific theories that eventually become displaced "do not go quietly into that good night". Instead as Quine/Durkheim pointed out they can attempt to deploy all sorts of strategies to hang on. These include nuancing core assumptions, morphing definitions, eschewing anomalies, writing promisory notes, etc. Because of this there is rarely a knockout punch that unseats a particular theory from its throne. Instead of death by coup d'état, it is death by a thousand pricks. What eventually happens is that thinkers become disenchanted with the theory and move on to something else.
This is what is happening to Darwinian theory, a disenchanting. Every time a scientist finds Darwinian explanations lacking in their research the disenchantment grows. Every supporting argument that is found lacking in dialog disenchants. Every shortcoming of the Darwinian framework that comes to light, casts a disenchanting shadow over its future. Every public controversy that frames Darwinism in a bad light adds another prick.
The problem that Darwinism has is that there is no means to stop this disenchantment. Its soft underbelly is now being publicly exposed and enchanting it is not. There will not be a knock out argument, paper, speech, media event, or even law that displaces Darwinism. Instead each will contribute to what is going on right now, a steady, unrelenting, expanding disenchantment.
June 3rd, 2005 at 1:33 am
I believe you mean Quine and Duhem, not Quine and Durkheim.
The Quine/Duhem hypothesis was known to Popper, who developed his theory accordingly, a fact distinguishing his falsificationism from the naive falsificationism with which it is normally confused. Popper's student, Imre Lakatos, extended Popper's ideas in a way making them very similar to those of Thomas Kuhn. Importantly Kuhn (but not Lakatos) claimed that different theories were incommensurable. But Lakatos realised that different "research programs" (equivalent to Kuhn's "paradigms") were rationally comparable. Progressive research programs are marked by its growth, and the discovery of stunning novel facts. Degenerative research programs are marked by lack of growth, or growth of a protective belt that leads to no novel facts.
Measured independantly of the desires of protagonists, it is clear that evolution, but not ID, is a progressive research program. Every month new facts are published in papers that make intimate and explicit use of evolutionary theory in the discovery. The ID movement has yet to disover of a single novel emperical fact.
No wonder 95% plus of scientists are sticking firmly with evolution, while ID is running second to Young Earth Creationism in getting articles published in scientific journals.
If you wish to appeal to paradigm shifts in defence of ID, you should first check to see whether the paradigm of working scientists has actually shifted.
Comment by tom_kbel — June 3, 2005 @ 1:33 am
June 5th, 2005 at 1:25 pm
I'm sure the Discovery Institute hopes evolution will die a death by a thousand pricks — hence their frantic search to find a thousand people to sign their anti-Darwin letters.
You keep forgetting, as Kuhn did not, that intelligent design is the old paradigm, and evolution the new.
Probably the side with the fewest pricks wins.
Comment by edarrell — June 5, 2005 @ 1:25 pm