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Culture, history and society

Culture, history and society

Beyond belief

01 Dec 2005

Intelligent design must be resisted

In the October issue of Physics World Robert Crease asked how scientists should respond to “intelligent design”. Supporters of intelligent design (ID) argue that evolution is not the random process proposed by Darwin. Rather, they believe that living creatures have evolved in accordance to a design drawn up, presumably, by a supernatural creator or God.

Why should physicists be interested in this debate? First, supporters of ID are campaigning to force schools in the US to read out statements in science lessons that could lead students to believe that the scientific evidence for evolution and ID is comparable. The Big Bang model of cosmology has been challenged in a similar way in the past.

Second, Crease’s article prompted more letters to Physics World than any article in the past 10 years, revealing that many physicists are interested in the interface between science and religion (see pp18-19; print version only). Recent developments in cosmology and genetics mean that the traditional divide between science and religion – science can tell us nothing about how to lead our lives, religion can tell us nothing about how the world works – is becoming blurred. Indeed, when professors of theology start to deliver lectures on “Religion and the quantum world”, as happened recently at Gresham College in London, it suggests that stimulating interactions between the two sides are possible.

It is impossible, however, to see how ID can be considered as science (although what religious-education teachers choose to do is their concern). Science is all about finding out how the world works through observation and hypothesis. Scientific theories should be able to explain all the experimental data available and, ideally, make new predictions that can be tested. However, no theory can ever be proved to be correct because there is always the possibility that some piece of evidence will turn up to the contrary. For instance, we will never be able to say that the general theory of relativity is true, but that does not mean that we can deny the existence of gravity. The same is true of the theory of evolution by natural selection.

There are still gaps in the theory of evolution and disagreements between biologists about the details, but this is the case for most scientific theories. The bottom line is that evolution makes predictions and ID does not, and that means that ID has no place in science lessons.

Physics after the year of physics

There is still work to do

We can say with confidence that Einstein has received good press in the International Year of Physics, which ends this month, but it will take some time to determine if the main goal of the year – to raise public awareness of physics and the physical sciences – has been achieved (see p13; print version only). The shortage of students studying physics at schools and universities, and a lack of people qualified to teach the subject in schools, will not be solved in a year, so it is essential that all efforts to address these problems are maintained and, if possible, increased. If the year of physics helps to reverse these trends, then 2005 will truly have been another annus mirabilis.

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