Dover, Pennsylvania and Intelligent Design

Many people are so harsh towards Intelligent Design. I have been previously as well, and while I don’t necessary advocate it unequivocally quite yet, I do think it merits more examination as a scientific inclusion than is currently being given by those who simply see it as a way to preach religion in schools. I also see this as connected to our goals of examining society and women, and questioning academia’s ways of thinking.

For example, one could look at the Intelligent Design argument and advocate it as an extension of what science currently constitutes. At present, since the Scientific Revolution, anything that science by definition examines must be able to be proven or disproven, tested, measured in some way, and repeated in standard experiments. I do give merit to that type of scientific analysis – it has led to so many great discoveries and improvements for humanity.

However, it is this definition which by nature excludes a fundamental challenge of Darwinian evolution (note : Darwinian): that of the potentially irreducible complexity of aspects of creation and the emphasis on Chance.

Intelligent Design posits that because certain things are irreducibly complex (meaning that they could not have evolved in isolation without other parts also existing), evolution itself could not have resulted in them – Another Power (like God) must have had a hand. In addition, a major Catholic argument against Darwinian evolution is his emphasis on chance – that all things occurred, including the development of human beings, because of a fortuitous survival of species best adapted to their environment and able to pass on their particular traits. The Catholic Church opposes this notion because it denies God’s infinite foresight and hindsight that exists out of time; a foresight that predestined humanity from the very beginning. “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” (Gen 1:31)

It seems to me that Intelligent Design has merit in a science classroom only if one extends the definition of science to take into account unobjective things – which currently isn’t too probable. Intelligent design is a critique and challenge to Darwinian evolution but it will not be allowed in the science classroom because it can only be asserted out of negation, and the inability to unequivocally prove certain aspects of evolution:

1. the irreducible complexity of certain aspects of creation (the human eye is an oft cited example, though there are others) and
2. the development of human creation as a special and unique, not chance, realization.

It is a challenge because it takes into account that science can’t prove chance development, because it can’t see outside factors – factors which it, because of the exclusion of religion, refuses to consider.

Instead of an attempt to put religion into science, Intelligent Design can be considered as an attempt to expose the bias of agnosticism – a bias science consistently overlooks because of its fundamental tenants.

What does this then have to do with the feminine perspective in academia and subsequent implications? More than at first appears.

First off, it is a challenge to objective ‘unbiased’ determinants of scientific truths. Objectivity is important, but science doesn’t necessarily have to always be so. By considering that which one cannot prove, but is still a possibility, we are extending the realms of understanding in the scientific world – connecting it to other truths of other disciplines (disciplines only arbitrarily divided by human intervention, as everything in the world is part of a holistic unity).

This process is a most feminine process – seeing the interconnection of disciplines and ways of understanding, curtailing some of the deficiencies of one-sided pursuit. It is a way of thinking and analyzing science that is not as abstracted and dehumanized, nor as isolated and disconnected from the real and living truth. This could be extended to other areas of thinking – such as Theology and Philosophy, our cup of tea, which often suffers from a similar yet opposite problem – that of the theoretical and exclusion of the concrete. The implications of these changes have extraordinary (and also possibly dangerous) potential. This could lead to an academic climate more conducive to female ways of thinking and understanding – which in turn could lead to a more holistic, developed, humane, and connected world system.

All those in favour of Intelligent Design in Dover, Pennsylvania have not succeeded in their intentions this week. It's possible that what they were trying to do was wrong, or the scientific community was not and will never be ready for such a radical adjustment to their system of inquiry and understanding. Regardless, the defeat of Intelligent Design in Pennsylvania does not negate in my mind its considerable implications for the ways of academia and how this could affect the female sex.