Every year there is an unfortunate battle at some rural elementary school over the teaching of evolution. Complaining parents, more often than not fundamentalist Christians, often make fools of themselves, denying the weight of scientific evidence and, worse in my view, appealing to the same standards as multiculturalists, by demanding inclusion of their alternative curricula in the name of diversity.
I wonder, though, if there might be some peaceful way out. For all of the cultural elite’s condescension towards pro-creationist critics, it seems that their view of science, while it may make its adherents feel good, has little to do with what science actually can and cannot say.
First, science and its methods do not produce a series of irrefutable and immutable pronouncements from on high. That would be magic or prophecy. Rather, it is a method that eschews final and definitive announcements; it makes progress narratively, through a series of falsifiable explanations, any of which may be refuted by some additional fact found in some later experiment, that is, by some better and more definitive explanation. Any of its intermediate explanations are provisional, as they are all by their nature falsifiable.
Second, schools would be well served to use the debate on creationism and evolution to distinguish science from religion and philosophy, as well as to distinguish different branches of philosophy. The hardest of the hard sciences, such as physics and chemistry, proceed through experimentation. X will or won’t happen. And it will or won’t happen regularly and predictably. Saying these things with greater clarity and precision does not strictly speaking answer the bigger questions of these events’ significance. To use Aristotelian language, physics (and science generally) can explain efficient causes but not final causes. In addition, and perhaps more plausibly, the taxonomic or historical methods of biology are distinct from physics and chemistry. When the biologist finds fossils and tries to explain their significance and relationships, his methods are not so different from those of a historian or anthropologist. His activity is inductive and imaginitive. The presence of these historical and descriptive methods in what is ordinarily thought of as the experimental world of falsifiable hypothese would be a useful clarification of why such biological inquiry should not and cannot claim the same pedigree as, for example, formulae that show the effects of gravity or radiation. Competing, defensible explanations may emerge from the same facts. And those facts cannot be proven or disproven through experiments; they can merely be known as more or less supported by the evidence.
As it stands, not science but a rationalistic and near religious faith in science–scientism, if you will–makes unsupported claims about what science can reliably tell us regarding the origins of man and the universe that alienate religous people, who would otherwise be open to its message. Far from encouraging superstition and obscurantism, a science curriculum that acknowledged its well-known limitations–limitations essential to its circumscribed methods and subject matter–would find a more receptive audience and a happier coexistence with all Americans. Instead archaic religious views confronts an equally archaic and quaint scientism, which would be more at home among the encyclopedists than it would be with any thoughtful scientist. Perhaps a starting point for this discussion would be the frank acknowledgement that the scientific method finds its cultural origins in the Christian worldview, which describes an orderly universe created and set in motion predictably for our benefit by God.
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“Complaining parents, more often than not fundamentalist Christians…” The complaining parents are almost inevitably fundamentalist Christians. Some Muslims and ultra-Orthodox Jews are creationists, but in these actual public school controversies the objectors always seem to be Christians.
It’s true that science isn’t always experimental and sometimes operates more like history, but just as one can prove historical facts one can also prove scientific facts without experimentation. It’s simply a fact that Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War, and it’s simply a fact that dinosaurs once roamed the earth.
Students should learn about the principles of scientific inquiry, and I think in most science courses students genuinely learn these principles. But students need to have a certain level of scientific knowledge to begin with. They need to understand what evolution is before they can understand why biologists believe it to be true. Because of this, I don’t see much hope for finding roach’s “peaceful way out.” Creationists consider evolution not just false, but dangerous and therefore unsuitable for children: they would prefer evolution not to be taught at all. They are not requesting the teaching of “alternative” theories to foster a greater understanding of scientific inquiry but to minimize the damage wrought by the teaching of evolution.
One word: hobbits
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3948165.stm
So, Peter, even though science is provisional in nature, and even though it cannot answer definitively questions about the past (and how and why those things happened), and even though its methodology would make such statements impossible, science curricula should be aimed at overstating what science can teach such that it infringes on deeply held religious beliefs. This is a prejudicial view straight out of the French philosophes.
I remember distinctly watching Cosmos in 9th grade biology when the militant atheist Carl Sagan declared that “we need trees more than trees need us” and that “evolution is a fact.” These harsh (and unscientific) moral judgments have no place in the classroom. I believe in evolution. I also believe God created the universe. The way we teach science makes these things too high states. (And besides, if a bunch of redneck fundamentalists believe in some superstitious view of how the world works, who is really harmed anyway. It seems we’re more harmed if at the age of 15 they think their religion is pile of nonsense).
I don’t see why you’re getting on your high horse, Chris, especially when I deliberately avoided making a blatant statement about evolution like Sagan’s “evolution is a fact”. (That makes me cringe a little bit, too, though mostly because I’m a nit-picker.) I certainly don’t think we should overstate what science can teach for purposes of bashing religion.
I was making the rather didactic point that scientific knowledge gained through “historical” methods can sometimes be just as thoroughly proven as knowledge gained experimentally, if not more so. Strictly speaking, all knowledge is provisional: there’s a slight chance that the Peloponnesian War did not happen, and there’s a slight chance that space aliens buried fake dinosaur bones. But the occurrence of the Peloponnesian war and the former existence of dinosaurs are about as well proven as anything can be proven in either history or science.
As for evolution itself, we can’t assert that it occurred with as much assurance as we can assert the former existence of dinosaurs, but we can come pretty darn close. There’s so much evidence for evolution that it’s almost as well established as many scientific “facts” derived experimentally. In my opinion, we’re as likely to disprove the First Law of Thermodynamics as to disprove evolution.
I still hold my opinion on the motives of creationists who demand the teaching of “alternative theories”. They are not high-mindedly trying to teach the limits of science, they are trying to counter what they consider to be a false and dangerous theory with the hope of eventually banning its teaching altogether.
You wrote, “The way we teach science makes these things too high states.” I simply don’t understand what this sentence means. What are you trying to say?
P.S. Was it really unscientific for Sagan to say, “We need trees more than trees need us”? We’re at the top of the food chain. If a plague wiped out humanity the trees would get by fine. If all the trees were destroyed we’d find it a bit difficult to adjust, to say the least.
I think the way things are presented now is overly militant, that’s all, and that it would be received more charitably by Christians who are perhaps not super-extreme if it proceded charitably. You’re right that the fact of dinosaurs is pretty reliably known. I didn’t mean to become a complete epistemological skeptic. And natural selection is also known. But the exact mechanism of “evolution” is something of a mystery because of the various discontinuities (and the miracle of life at all). To present this explnation and to gloss over indicia of, for example, intelligent design in favor of a purely materialist account of life and creation and the universe is as much a religion as any other, and a less satisfying one at that.
Along these lines, it seems to me it’s also equally “known” tha it’s wrong to rape and murder and own slaves. Do you agree? Yet these moral truths are treated as opinions and tastes, unworthy of serious study in the schools. That’s idiotic to me. But that’s the outcome of the “logical positivist” materialist heritage we’ve inherited over the last 200 years.
You’re right that the role natural selection plays in evolution isn’t well understood, and even if it were teachers shouldn’t teach evolution as if it proves a materialist philosophy. But Intelligent Design, or at least the way it’s usually advocated regarding biology, makes me cringe. Its proponents essentially argue that order implies conscious design, a conclusion that lies far beyond what science can prove or disprove.
“Yet these moral truths are treated as opinions and tastes, unworthy of serious study in the schools.” An odd statement that seems to be belied by your earlier comments about multiculti public schools relentlessly teching white guilt. Schools, especially schools overly influenced by political correctness, are painfully moralistic. Can you really find a high school teacher who tells his students that the immorality of rape is merely a matter of opinion?
Peter you raise a good point on liberal indoctrination. But it seems to me that this strident moralism exists alongside moral relativism. The language of the sexual harassment seminar and multicultural indoctrination is that of power, as in, there is no right and wrong, just power relations, so the oppressed, who have been labeled criminals, lazy, undeserving etc. need to seize whatever they can. After all, that’s how the rich got to where they are. What a corrosive lesson.
As for the materialism/intelligent design question, intelligent design is a meta conclusion from scientific facts. A 500 word side bar on it would quell about 90% of the militant creationists. This view, incidentally, is where that crowd seems to be headed as far as the mainstream view.
Finally, can any physics or other field of study without a sound grounding in metaphysics? There is a materialist, Cartesian metaphysics behind much of modern science. But it’s inarticulate and unquestioned in the schools. The lack of serious study of philosophy, morals, and related issues at any level in the public schools implicitly denies the knowability and importance of these most important subjects. You’re correct Peter that these things are being taught implicitly, but in a didactic and somewhat Marxist fashion.
Wouldn’t our society and schools be better off if the kids read a few paragraphs of Aristotle, the Bible, and Kant alongside the Grapes of Wrath?