I spent much of yesterday on a flight from New York to Los Angeles. As usual, on a crowded flight, it’s impossible NOT to hear conversations when people are trying to yell over aircraft noise. Before I put on my noise-cancelling headphones and tried to catch a quick catnap, I heard the following from the seats behind me:
Person 1: “I was reading about this Intelligent Design stuff in the New Yorker. It seems like a pretty solid theory but they won’t let it be taught in the classrooms and that’s not right.”
Person 2: “It’s not science though.”
Person 1: “Why not?”
Person 2: “There’s no scientific evidence to back it up. I was reading this article in the paper. Even the people who are pushing it don’t agree on some of the things they want the public to know.”
The conversation went on for a while, morphing into a discussion of current politics in the United States. I put my headphones on and went to sleep. But the whole thing got me to thinking that perhaps what we really need in our science classrooms is more emphasis on critical thinking, of helping students (and maybe society in general) develop better B.S. detectors.
There’s a difference between theory and hypothesis, but to hear proponents of such ideas as Intelligent Design and Creationists tell it, the two words mean the same. This is because both camps have put forth hypotheses about the origin of everything in the universe. Fine. In science, when we have a hypothesis, we then devise tests that provide data to either prove or disprove the hypothesis. Now let’s do some tests to prove or disprove those hypotheses. Otherwise, conflating “hypothesis” with “theory” is NOT critical thinking, nor is it intellectually honest.
Some food for thought:
Here’s the Dictionary.com definition for “hypothesis.”
Here’s the Dictionary.com definition for “theory.”
Of the two, the word “hypothesis” fits the ideas that the IDers and Creationists want to teach. But they are NOT theories, specifically because there is no data to support the central tenet of each set of hypotheses: i.e., that there’s some creator out there flinging universes together on some timeline known only to itself.
I’m of two minds about whether this stuff should be taught in schools. Perhaps it should. But I don’t think it has a place in the science classroom for two reasons: there’s not enough time to teach honest, true science, let alone wasting time on hypotheses that have more to do with religion and culture; and two, we don’t teach science in comparative religion and other such classes.
On the other hand, a good, honest, dispassionate application of the scientific method to these hypotheses is exactly what science does best. So, therein lies the central dilemma.
No matter where this stuff is taught, it should all be subjected to the same rigid tests that true science and critical thought require. To do otherwise is to admit intellectual laziness. And such an admission in the name of a religion or belief system does little FOR such beliefs and systems, other than to set their adherents up as less than intellectually honest in their intentions, something that I (brought up in a religious family I was) was taught would be a waste of the intelligence and reasoning faculties we were born with.