sleeping with the enemy

As longtime readers of this site might recall, my fixation on electoral politics is a distraction from a very different purpose: writing a PhD thesis in the history and philosophy of science. My dissertation is an analysis of the many things askew with Intelligent Design, both as a philosophical movement and as a scientific program.

I do have a certain sympathy with the apologetic aims of the ID movement. But I have nonetheless concluded that the approach is mostly wrong—a position which unfortunately puts me at cross purposes with many of my co-religionists. Phillip Johnson is one: an emeritus professor of law at UC-Berkeley, Johnson has found a second career as the most recognizable face of the ID movement. He specializes these days in critiquing the philosophical foundations of “Darwinism” (scare quotes intentional), naturalism, modernism, and the like.

Not very well, mind you: his rhetorical skills are impressive, unless you happen to be a scientist, or philosopher of science, in which case they grow tiresome but quick. His primary error is in assigning the wrong evidentiary standard for science, as the title of his first book on the subject attests. All science is provisional; the proper standard of evidence is inference to best explanation, and not beyond all reasonable doubt, as Johnson clearly supposes. His attempts at dealing evolution a death by a thousand cuts are marked by this fundamental error.

Johnson portrays ID advocates as iconoclasts, casting down the idols of naturalism in general, and the false god Darwin in particular. Yet these strategies—were they to be successful—would undermine far more than the aspiring revolutionaries dare suspect. Consider, for example, the ID attacks on standard interpretations of the fossil record. These critiques are without doubt of greater rhetorical effect than similar charges by old-school creationists; but when abstracted from the particulars of dusty bones and homologies and radiometric dating, they turn out, in the end, to be an assault on all forms of historical inference. Everything from forensic science to archaeology to reconstructed accounts of ancient battles might be rendered suspect.

Of course, I do not expect any such doom to fall, as the ID arguments regarding the fossil record are almost entirely without substance. I mention them here only to highlight a larger point: Before deploying new rhetorical slings and arrows, one ought ponder the possible collateral damage. Ideas matter, and the law of unintended consequences is a bitch.

Which is why Johnson's apparent embrace of postmodernism is troubling.

CJ: Much has been said about the impact of our entering the post-modern era. How do you anticipate post-modernism will impact the debate?

Phil: Well, It's already having a big effect. The world that I grew up in was one in which a very confident rationalism dominated all of the universities…scientific rationalism, and the thought was that you could have a rationalism in the world of values as well, but now the idea that there are different rationalities has taken hold. I think it's positive, on the whole, in the sense that it focuses attention on assumptions that people make, and there really isn't one single kind of rational system that can combine everything in the world. Then, where it becomes excessive is when it verges over into nihilism or indifference ideas. Post-modernism is like a whole lot of things: taken in the right doses, it's a healthy antidote to excessive rationalism; taken in overdose, it poisons the mind. But you find the notion that non-Western ways of thinking must be treated with respect, that even ancient traditions of tribes may have their truth value—these are healthy developments, I think, and they help open up the universities to challenges to the dominant scientific materialism. So yeah, it's having a big effect and I think, on the whole, a healthy one.

Razib of the utterly fascinating blog Gene Expression is no theist, but has his own reasons for wondering whether the ID embrace of PoMo is a good thing.

Johnson in sensible in cautioning against excessive post-modern(ish) thinking (Derridaism for example), and I do believe he his correct that one should examine and expose one's assumptions. His response, interpreted narrowly is not something I would normally object to, the world of values and the world facts should be mixed judiciously, with caution. Nevertheless, I think Johnson and company are playing with fire. They are using post-modernism to win battles, it is part of the sensibility that gives them the commanding heights when they argue for “equal time” in the classroom. Also, I think we can intuit which “ancient traditions of tribes” Johnson wishes to extoll. The irony is that the Christian-monotheistic tradition has often been given credit for the rise of science becauses of its idea of a unitary harmonious universe ordered by a Creator, subject to invariant laws. In any case, I think the important point is not to neglect that Johnson believes that on the whole post-modernism is healthy.

This might not be isolated, though I am not familiar with the current mood in sophisticated Christian philosophical circles. I saw a book at the library titled The Twilight of Atheism. I checked it out, but I haven't had time to read it. I've skimmed enough to pick out some basic errors from the angle of data collection, but one thing I have noted in several passages, and confirmed by examining the index, the author seems to believe atheism is irrelevant in a post-modern world. The assumption is that post-modernism is basically already triumphant. If anyone has read the book in full they can correct me for missing something, but this is a troubling development, because Christian philosophers often have an indirect influence on the direction of clerical training.

All I can say is that is that it might be true that the Nothing will swallow up your enemies, but it never stops in its march. Count me as part of the remnant who still hews to the vision of the Enlightenment, and on this count, I stand with many theists like Martin Gardner.

Count me in as well. Postmodernism does have its uses; but one can absorb most of the movement's insights in about thirty minutes, with enough time left over for a power nap. As a “universal acid”, PoMo is far more effective, and pernicious, than any dreams of Darwin's dangerous idea. The dissolution of truth leads an individual to a decadent nihilism, a ruling elite to a soft totalitarianism. And that's just for starters.

Tactical advantage is a poor substitute for long-term strategy.