Kuhn and ID
By Matt Yglesias does a very nice job of suggesting that the work of Thomas Kuhn is compatible with a rigorous critique of Intelligent Design:
As an admirer of Thomas Kuhn’s work on the philosophy of science, I’ve had some discomfort with the positivist table-pounding that’s tended to be associated with the pro-science counterattack against intelligent design. Since Noam Scheiber’s new column attacks intelligent design by associating it with Kuhnian “postmodern” attacks on science, it seems that the time has come to spell out why I think one can — and should — be both a good Kuhnian and a good Darwinist.
Having thought about it some, I think the argument is actually rather straightforward. In Kuhnian terms, what Darwin did was “revolutionary science” — he laid out a new paradigm for thinking about biology, the relationship of species to one another, and their origins. Kuhn points out that it’s entirely typical of enterprises in revolutionary science that they don’t really explain all the data. Instead, you have “anomalies” — bits of data that don’t obviously fit into the framework. Any honest appraisal of The Origin of Species needs to concede that there were, in fact, a lot of anomalies left by Darwin’s initial formulation of his theory. Most notably, there were massive gaps in the fossil record and a lot of hand-waving associated with the account of how inheritance worked. On top of that, while Darwin did rebut the “watchmaker” argument with specific regard to the development of the human eye, there were many other apparent cases of “irreducible complexity” that Darwin didn’t take on.
To the IDers, all this is supposed to show that Darwin was doing dubious work that we should be suspicious of. A Kuhnian, however, understands that this is entirely typical of revolutionary science. Copernicus, Einstein, Newton, and all the great names of science did work that was similarly problematic. Or, rather, not problematic at all. These are the great scientists of human history — that’s what great scientists do.
It’s no secret that I’m pretty uncomfortable with Richard Dawkins and others who make an effort to elevate the institution of science beyond what it is, which is a historically situated set of methods for investigating the world. However, guys like Dawkins are MUCH less dangerous than the ID crowd, so I think that the sensible political move is to tolerate them as important allies in what really is a rather crucial fight.