The logician and philosopher of science Neil Tennant’s piece entitled ‘What might logic and methodology have offered the Dover School Board, had they been willing to listen?’ Read it here in the articles section.
P.S. Tennant (appropriately) takes Larry Laudan to task for the latter’s position on the scientific nature of creationism, which he (Laudan) expressed in a 1982 paper highlighted recently in a post on the blog.
Aaron,
Thanks for sharing Tennant’s paper. I found it to be a very enjoyable read.
I would add the enormous hypocrisy on the IDers and creationists part. After reaping the merits of the postmodernists take over of education, IDers and creationists wish to claim that it is only fair that creationism, or the wonderfully scientific sounding ‘irreducible complexity’, be added into the biology class without ever taking into consideration how unfair it would be for philosophers and scientists whose research papers went through a rigorous process to simply get published! To think that IDers and creationists could skip this process in the name of fairness is simply absurd.
Further, from a discussion I had with Dr. Zinser, I was informed that this conversation is unique only to the US (perhaps a bit to the UK and Australia as well) and that popular journals such as “philosophy and biology” are not even willing to discuss Intelligent Design and/or creationism. It is a shame that scientists/philosophers have to defend one of the most well established research programs against seemingly hostile pseudoscientific programs when there is so much more interesting scientific/philosophical issues that can be discussed in regards to Darwinism.
Tim,
One of Tennant’s primary points is that so-called ID is a cognitively meaningless thesis and I have to agree. I would continue, as Tennant does elsewhere, and argue that any statement along the lines of “God did x” is also cognitively meaningless.
It really is a waste of time to defend evolution from such nonsense, but it is unfortunately necessary.
I am almost certain this story has been discussed somewhere on this blog, but in the event it hasn’t, or was missed, you should check out the scandal surrounding Synthese and ID:
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2011/04/synthese-editors-cave-in-to-pressure-from-the-intelligent-design-lobby.html