By McAllister Hull
Physics Professor Emeritus
The op-ed piece by Rebecca Keller in Saturday's Journal is based entirely on serious misconceptions about science. There are at least two misconceptions:
It is appropriate to have uninformed opinions about scientific propositions, including scientific theories.
Any idea without objective proof is a theory, and is "scientific" if its proposers dress it in jargon.
There is no absolutely proven theory in science, and even mathematics does not offer certainty. Yet we launch astronauts (and usually bring them back) on the basis of a set of theories that are not absolutely proven.
Science, however, does not raise mere speculation to the level of hypothesis without some objective evidence that favors the idea. And to raise the idea from hypothesis to theory requires considerable favorable (and no unfavorable) objective evidence.
Acceptance by the whole community of working scientists of a theory requires years of successful explanation of observed phenomena.
Intelligent design is a very old idea that gets revived every so often, and most recently has been dressed up in layers of jargon. Nevertheless, the emperor has no clothes: Intelligent design has no scientific content.
It is at best speculation, not worthy of raising even to hypothesis stage. It is not a theory: there is no evidence for it. And therefore there is no justification for discussing it in a science class.
Scientific theories are not subject to opinion, they are subject to testing; i.e., to designing experiments that push their explanatory capacities to the limit of current experimental technology.
The "controversy" among biological scientists is not about evolution as a (well tested ) theory, but about ideas within the theory that deal with details not yet fully embraced.
The controversy discussed by Keller is brought about by religionists and their supporters who do not understand the scientific meaning of "theory"— or don't care— and who are seeking a means to bypass the Supreme Court decision against teaching creationism in public schools.
It is perhaps worth asking why there is no controversy of this kind about, say, quantum mechanics, a theory that its practitioners agree is not totally clear. Is this lack of controversy because the Bible did not pronounce on quantum mechanics as it did about creation?
Keller brings up Galileo, who warned against the church's pronouncing on matters that science can deal with, and who spent the last years of his life under house arrest for explaining, on the basis of evidence he had obtained, that the solar system is heliocentric rather than Earth centered, as the opinion of the church demanded.
I haven't heard that the Rio Rancho School Board has threatened science teachers, who recognize that intelligent design has no place in a science class, with house arrest. But, by requiring that science teachers introduce it in science classes, the board is in the same intellectual blind alley as the 17th century Inquisition.
McAllister Hull taught in the Physics and Astronomy Department and was provost at the University of New Mexico.
opinion 
...go to bookmarks
E-mail Story
Print Friendly
