Popper, Kuhn, and Creationism

Since at least McLean v. Arkansas in 1981, Creationists — Christian fun­da­men­tal­ists who oppose evo­lu­tion — have turned, intrigu­ingly, to phi­los­o­phy of sci­ence to try to jus­tify the inclu­sion of Creationism along­side evo­lu­tion in sci­ence classrooms.

Looked at his­tor­i­cally, though, the turn to phi­los­o­phy of sci­ence for sup­port is not a new move. In the nine­teenth cen­tury, Creationists and fun­da­men­tal­ists looked to Francis Bacon as their philoso­pher of choice. But it was a par­tic­u­lar use of Bacon, one that applied a rather naïve real­ist sense of evi­dence and empiricism.

In the late twen­ti­eth and early twenty-first cen­turies, it is sec­u­lar philoso­phers of sci­ence Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, oppo­nents in life, who Creationists have turned to in their attempt to make their ideas seem as “sci­en­tific” as pos­si­ble. This use appears par­tic­u­larly ironic given that both Popper and Kuhn — for all their dis­agree­ments and dis­putes — were both con­cerned with dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing pseudo-science from science.

But is it an ironic use? Or is the use of these two the­o­rists, so con­cerned as they were with defin­ing the nature of sci­ence, per­fectly nat­ural given that this is exactly the debate Creationists — espe­cially those in favor of “Intelligent Design” — are involved in? (Remember too, that the gold stan­dard for main­stream evi­dence and trust today requires at least the nom­i­nal appear­ance of sci­ence and sci­en­tific method­ol­ogy.)

Put in con­text, then, it seems per­fectly ratio­nal and even expected that believ­ers in alter­na­tive cre­ation sto­ries should turn to philoso­phers of sci­ence in an attempt to jus­tify the why and how of their beliefs to outsiders.

Generally, I have to won­der if their use selec­tive, or if they rig­or­ously and thor­oughly apply Kuhn and Popper’s the­o­ries to both their own ideas and those of main­stream sci­ence? In other words, are they sim­ply try­ing to “bring down” main­stream sci­ence, or are they using these the­o­ries to bring rigor to their own approaches? From my read­ing, their use does appear selec­tive, and does appear to sim­ply be focused on reduc­ing main­stream sci­ence to their level (please cor­rect me if I am wrong).

Intelligent Design appears to me to be a “neg­a­tive” research pro­gram, not a pos­i­tive one. In other words, it defines itself in oppo­si­tion to main­stream the­o­ries of evo­lu­tion instead of pre­sent­ing its own, fal­si­fi­able the­o­ries to explain the evi­dence. Noting this, Francis Collins points out that evo­lu­tion­ary biol­ogy makes pre­dic­tions, which then work (or don’t). As far as I can tell, Intelligent Design does not do this.

Finally, why have Creationists decided on Popper and Kuhn (as opposed to, say, Quine or Putnam)? I can’t answer this as yet, but it’s an inter­est­ing question.