Author: Ophelia Benson

More Fuller. I’ve been reading the transcript (and so has Stewart, see his comments on I Employ Methods). It’s time to share.

A. Well, you might say as a philosopher I’m
professionally dissatisfied with all explanations that
claim to be final. And so there is going to be a
special suspicion sort of drawn toward the
taken-for-granted theories in any given discipline.

Q. So you’re not saying that intelligent design
is the correct or the better explanation for
biological life?

No, I’m not. I’m certainly not. They’re
not – they haven’t developed it enough to really be
in a position to make any kind of definitive judgment
of that kind…I want to see where
intelligent design goes, frankly. I mean, you know, again, it’s hard to make a judgment. But I do think
that when you get to a situation in science where one
theory is very dominant and so taken for granted that
people don’t even feel they have to, you know, defend
it anymore, then that’s kind of bad news
epistemologically, just generally speaking.

Well, it seems to me this (along with a lot of other places) is where the lack of expertise gets to be a problem. Which is no doubt why the plaintiff’s lawyer asked him about his expertise in some detail – got him to say No he’s not a scientist, not a biologist, not an expert on irreducible complexity, or on Behe, or on Dembski, or on complex specified information, not familiar with the textbooks that are being used, not familiar with Of Pandas and People. And this is where that shows up. The explanation doesn’t claim to be ‘final’. And then there’s the ‘it’s hard to make a judgment’. Well, yes, of course it is, because you don’t know anything about the subject! Therefore – therefore – you really ought not to be meddling in it. You ought not to be proffering your valueless opinions and hunches in a courtroom in a situation in which the vast majority of people who do know something about the subject think the side you are defending is utterly, bottomlessly wrong. That’s exactly why you should shut the hell up.

It says, Third, ID’s
rejection of naturalism and commitment to
supernaturalism does not make it unscientific. Did I
read that correctly?

A. Yes…But I do believe that ID is open
to supernaturalism. But it’s not exclusively
supernatural, it’s just with respect to this
dichotomy.

Q. But it has a commitment to supernaturalism
and to introducing it into the scientific community?[…]So if it’s not naturalistic, what else could
it be?

Yes, but the thing here is, what
supernaturalistic boils down to — I mean,
supernaturalistic just means not explainable in the
naturalistic terms. Right? It means involving some
kind of intelligence or mind that’s not reducible to
ordinary natural categories. Okay?
So that’s the sense in which I’m using
supernaturalistic. I’m not saying, you know, they’re
committed to ghosts or something. See, I’m not sure
what exactly — but that’s how I — I understand
supernaturalistic in this fairly broad sense…Well, as not naturalistic, given what we
take to be naturalistic now in science. Because in
the past, things that we now consider to be
naturalistic in science were not regarded as such.
Right? So that’s the basic point I’m trying to make
here.

But that’s not supernatural, you fool. That’s ‘not discovered yet’ or ‘not understood yet’, which is a completely different thing. As surely you know! You an expert in the rhetoric of science – surely you know perfectly well what ‘supernatural’ means. It means above, beyond, outside natural, it doesn’t mean natural but not fully understood yet.

Q. The goal is to have a supernatural designer
considered as a possible scientific explanation?

A. Well, it’s intelligent designer, and I think
the idea here is that intelligence is something that
cannot be reduced to naturalistic causes. Right? So
there is a sense in which the idea of intelligence
itself is taken to be somewhat supernatural here.

But ‘intelligent’ is just an adjective to apply to a process that, to the ID crowd, looks deliberate and planned and intentional – and ‘intelligent’ – instead of like a dull algorithm of reproduce, change, select, reproduce, change, select. But it seems pretty circular to take that adjective – ‘intelligent’ – that is the crux of the disagreement, and say that it’s something that cannot be ‘reduced’ to naturalistic causes. Why can’t it be, and how do you know, and are you sure you’ve looked hard enough? Maybe there’s some very ‘intelligent’ entity hiding somewhere that you just haven’t found yet. Go back and look some more and then come back – say in nine hundred years or so – and tell us what you’ve learned. In the meantime, get out of our school systems.

Steve Fuller. I’ve been browsing in some of my books, leafing through indexes, consulting bibliographies. Steve Fuller.

Here is a passage from Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont’s Fashionable Nonsense pp. 97-98:

Let us read it as a methodological principle for a sociologist of science who does not himself have the scientific competence to make an independent assessment of whether the experimental/observational data do in fact warrant the conclusions the scientific community has drawn from them. In such a situation, the sociologist will be understandably reluctant to say that ‘the scientific community under study came to conclusion X because X is the way the world really is’ – even if it is in fact the case that X is the way the world is and that is the reason the scientists came to believe it – because the sociologist has no independent grounds to believe that X is the way the world really is other than the fact that the scientific community under study came to believe it. Of course, the sensible conclusion to draw from this cul de sac is that sociologists of science ought not to study controversies on which they lack the competence to make an independent assessment of the facts, if there is no other (for example, historically later) scientific community on which they could justifiably rely for such an independent assessment. But it goes without saying that Latour would not enjoy this conclusion.

The passage is about Bruno Latour, you see; the ‘it’ in the opening words refers to Latour’s Third Rule of Method: ‘Since the settlement of a controversy is the cause of Nature’s representation, not the consequence, we can never use the outcome – Nature – to explain how and why a controversy has been settled.’ (Science in Action) They add a footnote to the observation that Latour would not enjoy this conclusion:

Nor would Steve Fuller, who asserts that ‘STS [Science and Technology Studies] practitioners employ methods that enable them to fathom both the “inner workings” and the “outer character” of science without having to be expert in the fields they study.’

Is that not hilarious? Oh do they! They employ methods, do they?! What kind of methods would those be then? Magic? Electro-mesmero-polycrypto salutations de mains? Pyramidal veridical saltations? Hyperosperical croptyflangial resonical fleering? No matter. No problem. We’ll just take their word for it. They say they have methods, so they must have methods, right? Of course. Because they wouldn’t say they have methods if they didn’t have methods – therefore they must have methods. Right? Right. So we’ll take their word for it. Same way, if some academics come tripping down the pike saying they have methods of resurrecting Shakespeare or turning back copies of the New York Times into gold necklaces, we’ll take their word for it, because why not? That’s what I call Sociology of Science.

Could be another sweatshirt slogan. ‘I employ methods.’

Bush is being especially irritating today. No he’s not, he’s always this irritating, but there are a lot of examples of that around today and recently. I feel like gathering a few of them together.

He didn’t get to appoint his friend to the Supreme Court – no fair.

Harriet Miers, the US president’s nominee for the supreme court, announced today she had withdrawn her name from consideration. Ms Miers, who is George Bush’s former personal lawyer, had been facing growing opposition amid questions about her qualifications and claims of cronyism.

Gee, I can’t imagine why. Just because she’s never done any judging. Just because she’s totally unqualified, and wouldn’t be nominated for even the smallest localest judicial post if she weren’t friends with Bush (just as Bush wouldn’t be elected lunch monitor if he weren’t his father’s son), and refuses to tell Senators what they need to know on account of how that would violate executive privilege – that’s no reason!

Both Mr Bush and Ms Miers said that the decision to withdraw followed a concerted attempt by senators to gain access to internal papers about her work at the White House…Mr Bush, who has insisted publicly in recent weeks that he did not want her to step down, said today: “It is clear that senators would not be satisfied until they gained access to internal documents concerning advice provided during her tenure at the White House, disclosures that would undermine a president’s ability to receive candid counsel.

No, senators would not be satisfied, and why should they be?! What are they supposed to do, just take Bush’s word for it? ‘She’s nice – I like her – she’s an evangelical.’ ‘Oh well in that case, no further questions.’ If he didn’t want senators asking to see the papers, it wasn’t very smart of him to nominate – of all the possible lawyers in the country – his own lawyer, was it! Ridiculous crybaby.

Then there’s the reinstatement of the Davis-Bacon Act. Remember last month, when we were treated to outraged diatribes on the subject of Davis-Bacon and the minimum wage? Oddly, even some Republicans found Bush’s suspension of Davis-Bacon a bit much. Even some Republicans don’t feel like stooping that low.

The White House yesterday reversed course and reinstated a key wage protection for workers involved in Hurricane Katrina reconstruction, bowing to pressure from moderate House Republicans who argued that Gulf Coast residents were being left out of the recovery…Conservatives strongly backed the waiver. But a group of moderate Republican members of Congress – many from districts in industrial areas populated by blue-collar workers – lobbied the White House and the congressional leadership for the prevailing-wage provision to be reinstated.

But – no such luck for the minimum wage.

U.S. senators – who draw salaries of $162,100 a year and enjoy a raft of perks – have rejected a minimum wage hike from $5.15 an hour to $6.25 for blue-collar workers…The minimum wage was last increased in 1997.

And, finally, Bush covers himself with glory by seeking an exemption from a ban on cruelty to terrorism suspects for the CIA.

The White House wants the CIA to be exempted from a proposed ban on the abusive treatment of terrorism suspects being held in United States custody. The Senate defied a threatened presidential veto three weeks ago and passed legislation that would outlaw the “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” of anyone held by the US. But the Washington Post and the New York Times, both quoting anonymous officials, said the vice-president, Dick Cheney, proposed a change so that the law would not apply to counter-terrorism operations abroad or to operations conducted by “an element” of the US government other than the defence department.

Impressive, isn’t it. Impressive how very seldom he does anything even minimally admirable – impressive how consistent he is. Make the rich richer, keep the poor poorer, appoint hacks to important government jobs, and seek to abuse suspects. Lovely fella.

Well great. Janeya Hisle of the Pennsylvania ACLU took extensive notes on Steve Fuller’s testimony, so we can explore his linkage of social constructionism with creationism more thorougly. Thank you Janeya Hisle.

According to Dr. Fuller, scientific methods are inherently discriminatory and designed to shut out alternative ideas. For example: peer review. The reviewers are rarely a representative group but a “self-perpetuating elite.” By evaluating a scientist’s track record and publications, the process discriminates against young scientists with new or unpopular ideas. Dr. Fuller said that these same scientists might also have unequal access to grant funding. He suggested that an affirmative action program for scientists with alternative ideas might be one way to address this economic bias.

Yup – he’s right. Reviewers are rarely (at least I hope so, oh I hope so, oh please please please I do so hope so) a representative group. There’s a reason for that, oddly enough. It’s pretty much the same kind of reason that, when you take your car or computer or tv or cyclotron to the shop to be fixed, the people behind the counter don’t go out into the street and collar passers-by and drag them into the back of the shop to fix your toy. It’s because the odds are they don’t know how, and because if you’d wanted any old fool to fix your toy, you wouldn’t have bothered bringing it to the shop, would you. You’ll notice the same principle at work in a lot of places. Dentists. Surgeons. House builders. Electrical engineers. Now, I don’t know about Steve Fuller, but when I go to the dentist, I don’t sit around thinking how unrepresentative the whole arrangement is, and that it really ought to be more representative and democratic and anti-elitist, and that any schmuck with two hands ought to be in here messing around inside my mouth. No. Do we think Steve does? Not really, no. So why does he think it about peer review? Because he’s a berk?

But Dr. Fuller put the most emphasis on the innate tendency of scientific method itself to favor the most popular theory. He said that our current methods persuade scientists to move in a unified direction, eventually creating a small number of widely accepted ideas or paradigms that are only challenged when they begin to self-destruct. Dr. Fuller said that these paradigms in science are so strong that, in order for an unpopular or alternative idea to have a shot at validity, a scientific revolution must occur.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He’s read Kuhn. Read Kuhn and then run amok.

Dr. Fuller explained that the boundaries between science and non-science are constantly being negotiated and policed. In Dr. Fuller’s world, the words “a well substantiated explanation” should be stricken from the definition of scientific method and that instead we should think of science as “an explanatory conception of a range of phenomena” in order to validate newer, less established ideas.

He’s also read Andrew Ross. Oh, lord…

Testability, while important to the growth of scientific theory, should not determine whether or not an idea is science…ID is not currently testable but, according to Dr. Fuller, testability relates to the longevity of an idea and does not effect whether or not something is science. Regardless of testability, a new idea should still be presented to school children. ID is not testable, but Dr. Fuller specifically supports teaching it in classrooms because ID needs “new recruits.” When asked whether the ID movement has religious motives, Dr. Fuller replied that almost all science “has religious roots.”…Dr. Fuller is clear that the ID mindset assumes a creator exists. Yet, whether ID introduces a supernatural aspect or not is moot because the term supernatural refers both to things that are “above” observation (for example, God) but also to things that are “below” observation – like atoms. In short, he agreed that the ID movement’s motive was religious and that it may be considered “supernatural” in so far as it is not currently testable. But according to Dr. Fuller, that doesn’t mean it’s not science.

ID needs new recruits? And we need to give them to it? And atoms are supernatural? Oy, oy, oy…

According to Dr. Fuller, belief in genetic mutation and natural selection has a tendency to make people just “sit around and wait to die” instead of questioning, studying and testing ideas.

Excuse me? It does? On what planet?

The one that representative astronomers know how to find, I suppose.