[Phys-L] Re: judge rejects i.d. in PA case

[John Mallinckrodt <ajm@CSUPOMONA.EDU>]

Tim writes:

> ... I was trying to come with my own definition of what science is.
> I was currently looking at "science is the embodiment of a
> philosophy that the universe is logical and understandable, a
> philosophy that by observing the universe, humans can discover the
> underlying patterns and rules."

I don't really disagree with any of that.  Lots of definitions of
science can serve well in the abstract, but it seems to me that it is
far too fuzzy to serve in the current culture wars.  What does it
mean to be "logical and understandable"?  Does everyone agree that
religion does NOT endorse "observing the universe" in order to
"discover the underlying patterns and rules"?  I'm not so sure.

> ID fails this definition because it assumes the universe is not
> understandable - that facts beyond what we can probe and theories
> beyond what we can understand are at work in the universe.

Again I agree, but don't you think there is room left for ID
proponents, especially the charlatans, to argue that ID's strength is
precisely that it helps us to "understand" why the universe is not
understandable or something like that?

I don't quite understand why there seems to be so much resistance to
the approach--a slightly more operational version of Popper's test of
falsifiability--of simply demanding that a scientific theory should
rigorously rule out lots of very specific things and then judging the
"goodness" or "badness" of those theories that turn out to be science
according to this definition by how robustly they survive attempts to
observe the things they rule out.

For instance, it seems telling to me that the religious
fundamentalists abandoned (at least for public consumption) the idea
of "young earth creationism," a theory that I believe has a strong
claim on being science because it so rigorously rules so much out.
The problem with the theory is that, precisely BECAUSE of the fact
that it IS science by this definition, it is almost trivially
demonstrated to be "bad science."

Can somebody give me an example where this approach might become problematic?

--
John "Slo" Mallinckrodt

Professor of Physics, Cal Poly Pomona
<http://www.csupomona.edu/~ajm>

and

Lead Guitarist, Out-Laws of Physics
<http://www.csupomona.edu/~hsleff/OoPs.html>
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