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wrote:

SNIP of interesting history of science

One supposes that Brahe had to express some opinion on
cosmology in order to get funding and to stay out of
prison so he did the best he could without drawing the
ire of the religious and political powers. An apt analogy
can be made to many of today's public school administrators.

A more apt analogy would be the modern working *scientist*
the overwhelming majority of whom feed at the public
trough. This is once of the principal sources of the
intertia in the science establishment IMO.

More history snipped

I stipulate your history is correct. I think you
are filtering the degree of resistance these new ideas
met with from within the establishment science of their
day because, in retrospect, they turned out to be right
(except for our pal Tycho). I rather think that the
turning points of science we're discussing here didn't
just get quietly accepted by the other scientists of
the day without some fairly pointed argument and resistance.

Here we do have a good analog to present day politics. The
new "Jewish Physics" is Evolutionary Biology. It is under
political attack, being demonized by a marginalized political
faction (in the present case one with religous roots) for
purely politcal purposes. Like their predecessors who found
scientists or at any rate, men who called themselves scientists
to criticize "Jewish Physics" these people support those who
present a superficially scientific challenge to Evolutionary
Biology, e.g. the "intelligent design" guys.

This is a vast overstatement of Reality. Evolutionary
Biology has had it say and its way in education and popular
culture without significant opposition for a long, long
time. The fact that anyone *dares* to now question it
hardly demonizes it. Your level of bunker mentality here
rivals the Evangelical Fundamentalists who also believe
that they are the downtrodden and oppressed in these
matters.

SNIP

"Intelligent Design" is just a reformulation of Creationism
in which the Creator "guides' the evolution of species rather
than creating them directly by divine will. It is pretty

That's not exactly the case. Some versions of "author"
theories accept evolution as a mechanism, some do not.

"Intelligent Design", like all theologically based philosphical
constructs rests on the premise of some sort of divine
intervention.

Again, you are overstating a strawman. The proponents of ID are
theologically motivated, without question. But they assert that their
*claims* are rooted in science. Why is it so painful to give them the
hearing necessary to refute at least the scientific components of their
claims? I do not get the visceral objection to this that you and others
in the community of scientists seem to have.

In my opinion, this visceral objection is not driven by science per se
but by the regnant personal philosophy of many people within the
community. A good many scientists are self professed atheists and/or
agnostics. It just kills them to consider the possibility that
the discipline to which they clung as a sole source of knowledge
may in fact be better served by means of metaphysical considerations.
So, they retreat to "Not on *my* watch, this isn't really science,
etc."

Once again, if the scientific claims of ID and all the rest
are *bad* science, it ought easily to be refuted. But refusing
to even engage makes the science estabishment look silly and
scared. In some perverse sense, refusal to engage with the IDers
as a matter of science is giving them more credibility in the
popular political debate than you think they deserve. Ponder
that a moment.

No scientific theory will or even can disprove
the existance of divine intervention. But no theory that is
dependant on divine intervention, is scientific.

Right, this is the standard argument for what science is and does.
I am asserting that this is a bad judgement call on the part of
the scientific community. Science without metaphysics will always
be blind in one eye. If more scientists understood metaphysics and more
theologians understood the methods of science I believe (but
cannot prove) that there would be a cross pollination of productive
ideas. I'm not arguing for the dilution of science here - I am
arguing for its *augmentation* . This is valid so long as everyone
involved understands the limits of each of these systems of thought.

The goal is not to promote better science or better metaphysics.
The goal is to better apprehend Truth by whatever means are most
appropriate.

P.S. Oh, and for the record, some of the theologians under whom I enjoyed a
portion of my education, had the *exact same* bunker mentality,
unwillingness to engage with their challengers, slavish adherence to the
methods they best understood, and all the other stuff that I've suggested
are bad practice on the part of the science establishment. It
seems that nothing is more 'sacred' than what you already believe ...

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Tim Daneliuk
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/