Mitchell - as you probably are aware, I'm a fairly insular person when it comes to the raging debates of today, mostly because they are only faint shadows of the substantive debates of yesterday. Ill-formed notions shrieked by ill-formed intellects, with all the definition and critical distinctions removed. How can one really get that motivated to choose between patently false alternatives? Soooooo . . . I'm not really that well-informed about the whole Intelligent Design argument. Some very sad attempt to articulate the Five Ways, I suppose, but adapted to a modern audience?
In any case, I'm not really that interested. There IS, however, an interesting and perennial question about what constitutes "science." What exactly is the knowing faculty? How is it that we move from observation to knowledge? What kinds of things constitute the objects of this knowledge? It's also interesting to think about the history of science - Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes are three of the most interesting thinkers in the development of what we call, today, "science." Leaving aside the question of what the Intelligent Design proponents would argue, I would note that those who considered themselves to be scientists in the best sense thought they were talking about scientific things when they spoke of the Prime Mover. In fact, they thought the entire subject of Metaphysics was, itself, the highest and most advanced application of the mind and rigorous analysis to things considered in themselves. God's existence, immateriality, unity, eternity, primacy, omnipotence, etc., etc., were not really considered to belong to opinion, superstition, or even religion. By starting with what is most known, to us, the great thinkers of the West believed that they arrived at that which is most known, in itself - something which is only observed through its creation. I suppose physical, repeatable experiments could form the basis for some of the premises, but at some point, the syllogism takes over. Is this philosophy, and not science? Does the question even make sense, when one is the love of wisdom, and the other is knowing?
The whole argument about what is and is not "science" has become, frankly, rather shrill and pointless. It's a subject fit for theorists without scientific training, or for scientists without any ability to reflect on their own discipline or history. What is much MORE interesting is the question about what is the proper object of the faculty of reason - and what kinds of conclusions can really been known through this activity.
Whatever brainwashing and blasphemy against the sacred canon of modern science you think might be occuring in this class, there is probably ample room to question the blunders and dogmatism of science. Is anything so sacred really being harmed, here? Is it really worth the indignation?
