A second misconception revolves around the question of what makes a concept or explanation "scientific." In particular, some scientists and philosophers assert that the concept of intelligent design in inherently unscientific. According to this view, science must explain things by using natural laws--not by invoking an act of God or some other intelligent agent. Thus, we no longer explain the orbit of a planet by saying that an angel pushes it through the heavens. We explain it with Newton's law of universal gravitation.
In the same way, design is ruled out-of-court because it invokes an intelligent agent rather than natural laws. Philosopher of science Michael Ruse, for example, has said:
Science attempts to understand this world. What is the basis for this understanding? Surveying science and the history of science today, one thing stands out: Science involves the search for order. More specifically, science looks for unbroken, blind, natural regularities (laws). Things in the world do not happen in just any old way. They follow set paths, and science tries to capture this fact.24
There are serious problems with this view, however. One problem is that it ignores areas of scientific investigation where intelligent design is a necessary explanatory concept. The Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is one example. At the time of this writing, radio telescopes are scanning the heavens, looking for artificial radio signals that differ from the random signals generated by natural objects in space. If we were to limit science to the search for "unbroken, blind, natural regularities (laws)," we would have to say that SETI is unscientific--by definition.
Archaeology would meet the same fate. Archaeologists routinely distinguish manufactured objects (e.g., arrowheads, potsherds) from natural ones (e.g., stones), even when the differences between them are very subtle. These manufactured objects then become important clues in reconstructing past ways of life. But if we arbitrarily assert that science explains solely by reference to natural laws, if archaeologists are prohibited from invoking an intelligent manufacturer, the whole archeological enterprise comes to a grinding halt.
A second problem with limiting science to blind, natural regularities is that it confuses laws with explanations--an error that philosopher of science William Alston calls "a 'category mistake' of the most flagrant sort."25 Laws and explanations are often two different things.
Scientific explanations often invoke not only laws but causal events and actions. For example, consider the field of modern cosmology. Most cosmologists explain the features of our universe not only by reference to the laws of physics, but by reference to a single event: the Big Bang. The Big Bang explains why galaxies throughout the universe seem to be receding from each other. It also explains the presence of low-level radiation that seems to permeate space.26 These phenomena cannot be explained solely by reference to physical laws or natural regularities. Rather, the critical explanatory feature of (Big Bang) is a one-time event that established the conditions responsible for the phenomena that we now witness.
Moreover, sometimes it seems that scientific laws are hardly relevant to our explanations at all--such as when we try to explain why things turned out one way rather than another. For instance, Newton's law of universal gravitation may tell us why the earth has a Newtonian orbit rather than a non-Newtonian one. But it doesn't explain why the earth follows its present orbit, instead of some other orbit that is equally compatible with Newton's law. That kind of explanation requires something else--namely, information about how the earth attained its present position and velocity.27
A similar example can be drawn from the field of historical geology. If a historical geologist wanted to explain the unusual height of the Himalayas, invoking natural laws would be of little use. Natural laws alone cannot tell us why the Himalayas are higher than, say the Rocky Mountains. That would require discovering antecedent factors that were present in building the Himalayas but not in other mountain-building episodes.
Thus, scientific explanation not only involves laws but may also involve past causal events. If scientists could never invoke past events and causes, they could never explain many important phenomena.
Why is this important? Because ignoring the role of causal events in scientific explanation has created a false dichotomy between agency--or intelligent design--and the laws of nature. The fact that scientific explanations may invoke laws doesn't mean that agency is somehow ruled out. Rather, intelligent agents can alter causal events and introduce other contributing factors. Although intervention may alter the course of subsequent events--sometimes in novel and unexpected ways--it does not violate natural laws.
Indeed, the actions of intelligent agents are themselves causal events. Therefore, citing the action of agents may be necessary to explain many present phenomena. Imagine trying to explain Mt. Rushmore without reference to sculptors. Law-like explanations involving only natural processes would completely miss the critical explanatory factor. That is why archaeologists, forensic scientists and historians often find it impossible to avoid postulating intelligent agency.
The notion that science explains solely by reference to natural laws suffers from yet a third problem. In addition to confusing laws with explanations, it assumes a cookie-cutter view of science, in which all disciplines ask similar questions and use the same "scientific method." This belies the rich diversity of methods that scientists use to understand the natural world.
Several philosophers, for instance, have argued that a clear distinction exists between the "inductive sciences" and the "historical sciences."28 These two broad categories ask different kinds of questions and use different kinds of methods. The inductive (or nomological) sciences, on the one hand, ask questions about how the natural world generally operates. Hence, a virologist may try to discover how a particular enzyme helps a virus infect its host. Or a crystallographer may try to determine the effects of weightlessness on crystal growth. In each case, scientists seek to uncover the regularities that characterize natural phenomena.
The historical sciences, on the other hand, ask different kinds of questions. Rather than trying to understand how the natural world operates, the historical sciences seek to understand how things came to be. One example, of course, would be the historical geologist who was seeking to explain the unusual elevation of the Himalayas. Another would be an evolutionary biologist seeking to explain the origin of giraffes. Still another would be the archaeologist seeking to reconstruct an ancient culture. Note that in each case the goal is not to find new laws or regularities but to reconstruct past conditions and events.
The importance of this distinction to our present discussion is that although postulating intelligent intervention is completely inappropriate in the inductive sciences, the same is not true in the historical sciences. In the inductive sciences the whole point is to discover how the natural world normally operates on its own, i.e., in the absence of intelligent intervention. Postulating an intelligent agent would thus contradict the implicit goal of research in the inductive sciences.
In the historical sciences, however, the goal is to reconstruct past events and conditions. Thus, there is no need to impose such restrictions. Quite the reverse. As we have seen, the explanation of certain artifacts or features may require reference to intelligence. Intelligent agents may have left traces of their activity in the natural world. The historical scientist need not turn a blind eye to them.
Hence, when investigating the origin of the living world, it may be perfectly acceptable--depending on the evidence--to hypothesize an intelligent designer.
Endnotes
24. Ruse, M. (1982). Creation Science is Not Science. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 7 (40): 72-73.
25. Alston, W. P. (1971). "The Place of the Explanation of Particular Facts in Science." Philosophy of Science, 38: 13-34.
26. For a readable and engaging discussion of the Big Bang, and the controversy this concept engendered, see Jastrow, R. (1978). God and Astronomers. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
27. See Lipton, P. (1991). Inference to the Best Explanation. London: Routledge. See page 52.
28. Philosophers have adopted many different means to distinguish between these two kinds of science. They have adopted the terms "inductive science" and "historical science" because they seem less cumbersome than some of the other terms we could have used. For a fuller discussion of the distinction between these two classes of science, see Mayer, S. (1990). Of Clues and Causes: A Methodological Interpretation of Origin of Life Studies. Doctoral dissertation, University of Cambridge.
