Just got Philip Kitcher's new
book. I'm only a few pages into it, but it looks like it's going to be very interesting.
He first lays the groundwork by explaining that there's no easy first round knock-out of ID. He dismisses many of the most common objections raised against it, that there are no peer-reviewed articles, that there's no experimentation and that it isn't testable. Anyone familiar with his argument that there is no clear demarcation between science and non-science as advanced in
Abusing Science will understand his reasons. Anyone not familiar with this argument needs to read that book.
He describes the core of ID as consisting of two major claims: the negative one, "that some aspects of life cannot be understood in terms of natural selection," and the positive one, "that these aspects of life must be understood as effects of an alternative causal agency." While finding "grounds for suspicion" that IDers are being less than forthcoming in advertising ID as independent of religious doctrine, he is willing to meet them on that battleground and accept the claim as true for purposes of his analysis.
Dr. Kitcher's main thesis is that ID loses not because it's not science or because it is religion. It loses because it's "dead science." It's science that has already been conducted and found to be wanting on scientific grounds. The questions that IDers pose as problems for evolution are ones that have been successfully addressed in the past.
More to come as I get farther into it.
Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin
We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat
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