http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/science/sciencespecial2/15evol.html?pagewanted=printNY TIMES
November 15, 2005
Philosophers Notwithstanding, Kansas School Board Redefines Science
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Once it was the left who wanted to redefine science.
In the early 1990's, writers like the Czech playwright and former president
Vaclav Havel and the French philosopher Bruno Latour proclaimed "the end of
objectivity." The laws of science were constructed rather than discovered, some
academics said; science was just another way of looking at the world, a servant
of corporate and military interests. Everybody had a claim on truth.
The right defended the traditional notion of science back then. Now it is the
right that is trying to change it.
On Tuesday, fueled by the popular opposition to the Darwinian theory of
evolution, the Kansas State Board of Education stepped into this fraught
philosophical territory. In the course of revising the state's science standards
to include criticism of evolution, the board promulgated a new definition of
science itself.
The changes in the official state definition are subtle and lawyerly, and
involve mainly the removal of two words: "natural explanations." But they are a
red flag to scientists, who say the changes obliterate the distinction between
the natural and the supernatural that goes back to Galileo and the foundations
of science.
The old definition reads in part, "Science is the human activity of seeking
natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us." The new one
calls science "a systematic method of continuing investigation that uses
observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument
and theory building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena."
Adrian Melott, a physics professor at the University of Kansas who has long been
fighting Darwin's opponents, said, "The only reason to take out 'natural
explanations' is if you want to open the door to supernatural explanations."
Gerald Holton, a professor of the history of science at Harvard, said removing
those two words and the framework they set means "anything goes."
The authors of these changes say that presuming the laws of science can explain
all natural phenomena promotes materialism, secular humanism, atheism and leads
to the idea that life is accidental. Indeed, they say in material online at
kansasscience2005.com, it may even be unconstitutional to promulgate that
attitude in a classroom because it is not ideologically "neutral."
But many scientists say that characterization is an overstatement of the claims
of science. The scientist's job description, said Steven Weinberg, a physicist
and Nobel laureate at the University of Texas, is to search for natural
explanations, just as a mechanic looks for mechanical reasons why a car won't
run.
"This doesn't mean that they commit themselves to the view that this is all
there is," Dr. Weinberg wrote in an e-mail message. "Many scientists (including
me) think that this is the case, but other scientists are religious, and believe
that what is observed in nature is at least in part a result of God's will."
The opposition to evolution, of course, is as old as the theory itself. "This is
a very long story," said Dr. Holton, who attributed its recent prominence to
politics and the drive by many religious conservatives to tar science with the
brush of materialism.
How long the Kansas changes will last is anyone's guess. The state board tried
to abolish the teaching of evolution and the Big Bang in schools six years ago,
only to reverse course in 2001.
As it happened, the Kansas vote last week came on the same day that voters in
Dover, Pa., ousted the local school board that had been sued for introducing the
teaching of intelligent design.
As Dr. Weinberg noted, scientists and philosophers have been trying to define
science, mostly unsuccessfully, for centuries.
When pressed for a definition of what they do, many scientists eventually fall
back on the notion of falsifiability propounded by the philosopher Karl Popper.
A scientific statement, he said, is one that can be proved wrong, like "the sun
always rises in the east" or "light in a vacuum travels 186,000 miles a second."
By Popper's rules, a law of science can never be proved; it can only be used to
make a prediction that can be tested, with the possibility of being proved
wrong.
But the rules get fuzzy in practice. For example, what is the role of intuition
in analyzing a foggy set of data points? James Robert Brown, a philosopher of
science at the University of Toronto, said in an e-mail message: "It's the
widespread belief that so-called scientific method is a clear, well-understood
thing. Not so." It is learned by doing, he added, and for that good examples and
teachers are needed.
One thing scientists agree on, though, is that the requirement of testability
excludes supernatural explanations. The supernatural, by definition, does not
have to follow any rules or regularities, so it cannot be tested. "The only
claim regularly made by the pro-science side is that supernatural explanations
are empty," Dr. Brown said.
The redefinition by the Kansas board will have nothing to do with how science is
performed, in Kansas or anywhere else. But Dr. Holton said that if more states
changed their standards, it could complicate the lives of science teachers and
students around the nation.
He added that Galileo - who started it all, and paid the price - had "a
wonderful way" of separating the supernatural from the natural. There are two
equally worthy ways to understand the divine, Galileo said. "One was reverent
contemplation of the Bible, God's word," Dr. Holton said. "The other was through
scientific contemplation of the world, which is his creation.
"That is the view that I hope the Kansas school board would have adopted."
