This is a book about science by a sociologist, and it shows! Engaging and intelligently written, it misrepresents reality, rather like its subject – Intelligent Design Theory (IDT).
Though the title of this work might indicate a stark choice between science and religion, the appended question mark indicates the possibility of a resolution to the seemingly unending Manichaean struggle between two incompatibles.
Fuller believes that religion is important for science: that it 'offers the hope for a radical transcendence of humanity's origins that evolution firmly denies'; that the present scientific world-view has its roots in a biblical inspired creationism; and, moreover, it provides a motivation for science – so much so that, 'to lose touch with the creationist back story to modern science would be to undermine the strongest reason for pursuing science.' Enter Francis Bacon and the scienza nuova of the seventeenth century! When we do look closely at the details, the story is not so much of a seamless emergence as something much more controversial. At almost every turn new thinking was blocked by ecclesiastical authority and biblical paradigms – one thinks of the groundbreaking work of Thomas Willis (in neurology) or James Hutton (in geology), who went in dread of the capital charge of 'atheism'. In fact it was only when biblical paradigms were set aside that progress was made in understanding nature.
Not only does Fuller not seem to recognise this but wants to press further the claims of religiously grounded science. He believes that when one looks closely (as he claims to have done) at the modern branches of biological science such as genetics, biochemistry and molecular biology – those new areas of research which constitute what we now call neo-Darwinism – then you would be forced to conclude, 'that Darwin (had he been alive today) would reinterpret natural selection as a design-based mechanism, possibly propelled by a divine engineer' This is an amazing claim. As it happens it is an issue that two distinguished American biologists, Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart, actually address in their recent detailed assessment of neo-Darwinian science The Plausibility of Life (Yale, 2005) – another work missing from Fuller's bibliography! Their conclusion is diametrically opposed to that of Fuller, stating that, 'Today's persuasive and consistent answers (to the problems arising from the emergence of biological novelty and phenotypic variation) have come through molecular, cellular and developmental experiments (that) can now be seen as one of the strengths of a general theory of evolution' (pg.270). They completely dismiss the claims of IDT.
Regardless of all this, there is a more fundamental concern with Fuller's thesis. A careful reading of the sub-title will reveal what it is. We note that evolution is not a theory but a 'problem'. Generally, creationists make good mileage out of the line that evolution is 'just a theory' – just like we all have our pet theories about things. Only generally we don't! What we do have are hypotheses – a very different thing.
If evolution is a problem then, in Fuller's subtitle, intelligent design is the solution. In fact not only does he claim IDT to be more 'intellectually satisfying' – in that it reunites science and ethics in a purposeful programme – but that, 'IDT is well placed to demonstrate how operating with religiously inspired, design-based assumptions has led to hypotheses whose empirical validity have been accepted even by those not sharing those assumptions.' At the heart of the IDT controversy lies a misapplication of the word 'intelligent'. Because clever humans can find intelligible patterns in natural phenomena this does not necessarily indicate an intelligent designer. Curiously enough, this difference is nowhere more clearly illustrated than in the debates that took place between Darwin and Captain Fitzroy on board The Beagle (graphically dramatised in Harry Thompson's gripping account of the voyage in This Thing of Darkness, 2005). Fitzroy's claim to fame is as founder of the study of meteorology. As a committed creationist Fitzroy was convinced that weather patterns were intelligible because they reflected the workings of an intelligent creator. Though Fitzroy was right – there are intelligible patterns in the weather – it is also true, as Darwin gleaned, that intelligible weather patterns do not mean an intelligent weather designer. It is on this simple non sequitur that the whole edifice of IDT thinking rests.
Having got over the science in this book one may enjoy the sociology. Though Fuller seems intent on conflating Darwin's science with social Darwinism, he has interesting things to say about the development of Western science, the cultural and ideological significance of IDT, and the shenanigans related to its influence in the USA. Do look out for the fireworks that will most likely occur over how to celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Darwin in 2009!
Dominic Kirkham is an interested follower of SoF and writes regularly for Renew (Catholics for a Changing Church). He was formerly a history teacher, then a religious and RC Priest for 25 years, he is now in his third reincarnation as a provider of home maintenance services for elderly people.
Review of Science Vs. Religion? Intelligent Design and the Problem of Evolution by Steve Fuller, Polity Press (Oxford), 2007, 192 pages, ISBN: 978-0745641225, £15.99