//www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesD ... php?id=494
//www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index. ... ew&id=2834
The use by evolutionary biologists of so-called demarcation arguments—that is, arguments that purport to distinguish science from pseudoscience, metaphysics or religion—is both ironic and problematic from the point of view of philosophy of science. It is ironic because many of the demarcation criteria that have been used against non-naturalistic theories of origin can be deployed with equal warrant against strictly naturalistic evolutionary theories. Indeed, a corpus of literature now exists devoted to assessing whether neo-Darwinism, with its distinctively probabilistic and historical dimensions, is scientific when measured against various conceptions of science.9 Some have wondered whether the use of narrative explanation in evolutionary biology constitutes a departure from a strict reliance upon natural law. Others have asked whether neo-Darwinism is falsifiable, or whether it makes true or risky predictions. In 1974, Sir Karl Popper declared neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory “untestable” and classified it as a “metaphysical research programme.” While he later revised his judgment, he did so only after liberalizing his notion of falsifiability to allow the weaker notion of “falsifiability in principle” to count as a token of scientific status.
The use of demarcation arguments to settle the origins controversy is also problematic because the whole enterprise of demarcation has now fallen into disrepute. Attempts to locate methodological “invariants” that provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for distinguishing true science from pseudoscience have failed.10 Most philosophers of science now recognize that neither verifiability, nor testability (nor falsifiability), nor the use of lawlike explanation (nor any other criterion) can suffice to define scientific practice. As Laudan puts it, “If we could stand up on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like 'pseudo-science'…they do only emotive work for us.”11
Others have asked whether neo-Darwinism is falsifiable, or whether it makes true or risky predictions. In 1974, Sir Karl Popper declared neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory “untestable” and classified it as a “metaphysical research programme.” While he later revised his judgment, he did so only after liberalizing his notion of falsifiability to allow the weaker notion of “falsifiability in principle” to count as a token of scientific status.
The use of demarcation arguments to settle the origins controversy is also problematic because the whole enterprise of demarcation has now fallen into disrepute. Attempts to locate methodological “invariants” that provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for distinguishing true science from pseudoscience have failed.10 Most philosophers of science now recognize that neither verifiability, nor testability (nor falsifiability), nor the use of lawlike explanation (nor any other criterion) can suffice to define scientific practice. As Laudan puts it, “If we could stand up on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like 'pseudo-science'…they do only emotive work for us.”11
Keep banging the same old drum.The prevalence of unobservables in such fields raises difficulties for defenders of descent who would use observability criteria to disqualify design. Darwinists have long defended the apparently unfalsifiable nature of their theoretical claims by reminding critics that many of the creative processes to which they refer occur at rates too slow to observe. Further, the core historical commitment of evolutionary theory—that present species are related by common ancestry—has an epistemological character that is very similar to many present design theories. The transitional life forms that ostensibly occupy the nodes on Darwin's branching tree of life are unobservable, just as the postulated past activity of a Designer is unobservable.69 Transitional life forms are theoretical postulations that make possible evolutionary accounts of present biological data. An unobservable designing agent is, similarly, postulated to explain features of life such as its information content and irreducible complexity. Darwinian transitional, neo-Darwinian mutational events, punctuationalism's "rapid branching" events, the past action of a designing agent—none of these are directly observable. With respect to direct observability, each of these theoretical entities is equivalent.
