Philip Kitcher Quotes

Creationists are actually criticizing methods that are used throughout science. As I shall argue extensively, there is no basis for separating the procedures and practices of evolutionary biology from those that are fundamental to all sciences. If we let the creationists have their way, we may as well go whole hog. Let us reintroduce the flat-earth theory, the chemistry of the four elements, and mediaeval astrology. For these outworn doctrines have just as much claim to rival current scientific views as Creationism does to challenge evolutionary biology.

Creationist strategy is often to run entirely different issues together, to concoct a muddy paste out of distinct allegations about the evils of evolution and the glories of Creationism.

Do the doctrine’s problem-solving strategies encounter recurrent difficulties in a significant range of cases? Are the problem-solving strategies an opportunistic collection of unmotivated and unrelated methods? Does the doctrine have too cozy a relationship with auxiliary hypotheses, applying its strategies with claims that can be “tested” only in their applications? Does the doctrine refuse to follow up on unresolved problems, airily dismissing them as “exceptional cases”? Does the doctrine restrict the domain of its methods, forswearing excursions into new areas of investigation where embarrassing questions might arise? If all, or many, of these tests are positive, then the doctrine is not a poor scientific theory. It is not a scientific theory at all.

For Creation “scientists” data has only one function; it is a potential source of problems for evolution. Counterexamples to the “theory” of Creation “science” do not count.

Because Creationists would like to identify themselves as members of the scientific community, scientists engaged in an internal debate with other scientists, they pounce on any remarks by eminent biologists or geologists that can be made to suggest their point of view. These remarks are wrenched out of context—whether creationists simply do not realize the importance of the context or whether they are willfully distorting the authors intentions, I do not know. In any case, for the creationists, misleading quotation has become a way of life.

Unfortunately, this is not the end of the story. Although they do not refer to closed systems in stating the second law, Creationists have heard that the law only applies to such systems. So they are ready for the response I have just given. Morris even calls it “an exceedingly naive argument.” There are two popular Creationist rejoinders. The first is to pooh-pooh the concept of a closed system. The second is to change the subject.

Creation “science” is spurious science. To treat it as science we would have to overlook its intolerable vagueness. We would have to abandon large parts of well-established sciences (physics, chemistry, and geology, as well as evolutionary biology, are all candidates for revision). We would have to trade careful technical procedures for blind guesses, unified theories for motley collections of special techniques. Exceptional cases, whose careful pursuit has so often led to important turnings in the history of science, would be dismissed with a wave of the hand. Nor would there be any gains. There is not a single scientific question to which Creationism provides its own detailed problem solution. In short, Creationism could take a place among the sciences only if the substance and methods of contemporary science were mutilated to make room for a scientifically worthless doctrine. What price Creationism?

The road to Creationism is paved with bad philosophy.

The formulation that I have given accords with those found in textbooks on physics. But it does not coincide with the statements of the second law offered by some Creationists.
Creationists like to present the second law either by omitting any mention of its restriction to closed systems or by choosing a statement that does not make this restriction clear.

If “scientific” Creationism merits no discussion in the community of professionals, then it does not deserve a place in the classrooms where those professionals are being educated. This is not to deny that professional education in the sciences might not benefit if it were more open to heterodoxy, if received opinion were not sometimes subjected to pressure from minority views. But the ideas in question ought to have something in their favor. They should not fail so abjectly as Creation “science” does.

So we encounter the strategy exemplified by Morris: Talk generally about design, pattern, purpose, and beauty in nature. There are many examples of adaptations that can be used—the wings of bats or “the amazing circulatory system,” for example. But what happens if we press some more difficult cases? Well, if there seems to be no design or purpose to a feature (and if its presence cannot be understood as a modification of ancestral characters), one can always point out that some parts of the Creator’s plan may be too vast for human understanding. We do not see what the design is, but there is design, nonetheless.
Since no plan of design has been specified, Creationists have available another all-purpose escape clause. But it is precisely this feature of Creation “science” that impugns its scientific credentials. To mumble that “the ways of the creator are many and mysterious” may excuse one from identifying design in unlikely places. It is not to do science.

It is hard to resist the impression that all these computations are designed to bamboozle those who become weak at the knees at the sight of numbers.

Even if Creationists continue to lose in the courts, they may still succeed in wreaking havoc upon science education (and, ultimately, upon American science). By lobbying local school administrators, the Creationist minions can affect the books that are chosen and the curriculum that is designed. Because textbooks are published to make a profit, the special-interest pressure will change the character of the books that are produced. While Creationist laws fail, the cause may triumph, as science education relapses into its post-Scopes, pre-Sputnik condition.

The Creationists are by no means the first to play on fears about what scientific inquiry will disclose. Anxieties about ourselves endure. If our proper study is indeed the study of humankind, then it has seemed—and still seems—to many that the study is dangerous. Perhaps we shall find out that we were not what we took ourselves to be. But if the historical development of science has indeed sometimes pricked our vanity, it has not plunged us into an abyss of immorality. Arguably, it has liberated us from misconceptions, and thereby aided us in our moral progress.

Evolutionary change is change in the genetic constitution of a population. This type of change can come about as a result of a number of factors. Immigration and emigration of organisms will bring new alleles and new allelic combinations into the population and will cause others to disappear. Mutation will lead to the formation of new alleles. The major claim of a Darwinian theory of evolution is that the principal factor of change is natural selection: The most important evolutionary changes come about because some allelic pairs are fitter than others, and these obtain greater representation for their constituents alleles in subsequent generations.