with Laplace’s vision of a deterministic universe (recall Laplace’s famous demon who could predict the future and retrodict the past with perfect precision provided that present positions and momenta of particles were fully known). [See the introduction to Pierre Simon de Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, trans. F. W. Truscott and F. L. Emory (New York: Dover, 1996)] [Behe, Dembski & Meyer: Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe, Ignatius Press, San Francisco 2000, P.19] To sum up, contemporary science allows a principled distinction between necessity and chance but repudiates design as a possible explanation for natural phenomena. [Owen Gingerich: God's Planet. Harvard university press, London, 2014. P.20] 2. Rehabilitating Design For Aristotle, to understand any phenomenon properly, one had to understand its four causes, namely, its material, efficient, formal, and final cause. [See Aristotle, Metaphysics, bk. 5, chap. 2, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. R. McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), p. 752.] [Behe, Dembski & Meyer: Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe, Ignatius Press, San Francisco 2000, P.20] If design is so readily detectable outside science, and if its detectability is one of the key factors keeping scientists honest, why should design be barred from the actual content of science? There is a worry here. The worry is that when we leave the constricted domain of human artifacts and enter the unbounded domain of natural objects, the distinction between design and nondesign cannot be reliably drawn. Consider, for instance, the following remark by Darwin in the concluding chapter of his Origin of Species: Several eminent naturalists have of late published their belief that a multitude of reputed species in each genus are not real species; but that other species are real, that is, have been independently created. . . . Nevertheless they do not pretend that they can define, or even conjecture, which are the created forms of life, and which are those produced by secondary laws. They admit variation as a vera causa in one case, they arbitrarily reject it in another, without assigning any distinction in the two cases.[Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859; reprint,
with Laplace’s vision of a deterministic universe (recall Laplace’s famous demon who could predict the future and retrodict the past with perfect precision provided that present positions and momenta of particles were fully known). [See the introduction to Pierre Simon de Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, trans. F. W. Truscott and F. L. Emory (New York: Dover, 1996)] [Behe, Dembski & Meyer: Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe, Ignatius Press, San Francisco 2000, P.19] To sum up, contemporary science allows a principled distinction between necessity and chance but repudiates design as a possible explanation for natural phenomena. [Owen Gingerich: God's Planet. Harvard university press, London, 2014. P.20] 2. Rehabilitating Design For Aristotle, to understand any phenomenon properly, one had to understand its four causes, namely, its material, efficient, formal, and final cause. [See Aristotle, Metaphysics, bk. 5, chap. 2, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. R. McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), p. 752.] [Behe, Dembski & Meyer: Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe, Ignatius Press, San Francisco 2000, P.20] If design is so readily detectable outside science, and if its detectability is one of the key factors keeping scientists honest, why should design be barred from the actual content of science? There is a worry here. The worry is that when we leave the constricted domain of human artifacts and enter the unbounded domain of natural objects, the distinction between design and nondesign cannot be reliably drawn. Consider, for instance, the following remark by Darwin in the concluding chapter of his Origin of Species: Several eminent naturalists have of late published their belief that a multitude of reputed species in each genus are not real species; but that other species are real, that is, have been independently created. . . . Nevertheless they do not pretend that they can define, or even conjecture, which are the created forms of life, and which are those produced by secondary laws. They admit variation as a vera causa in one case, they arbitrarily reject it in another, without assigning any distinction in the two cases.[Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859; reprint,
science-design.docx