Wide of the Mark

"I approach the creation-evolution dispute not as a scientist but as a professor of law."

(page viii)

Phillip Johnson's book Darwin on Trial is to be read to gain a perspective on creationist thinking and argumentation. A lawyer and professional anti-evolutionist, Johnson is proof that the best education the world can provide, from Harvard and the University of Chicago, does not guarantee a mind open to the possibilities of the world. To paraphrase the eponymous Kavanagh, lawyers, in a world awash in grey, seek the black and white. Johnson is a reminder that attorneys are trained to advocate, to make arguments, not to look hard for the best understanding .

Johnson, a law professor who taught in the rarified air of Berkeley, decided in the long twilight of his life, with little knowledge or experience in science, to apply his skill at argumentation to defeat scientific secularism. He desired for America to return to being the frankly Christian country that he believed it once was. To that end, he helped to form the Intelligent Design (ID) movement, the 2nd generation of modern creationism that had been relabeled as ‘creation-science’, and to found its Discovery Institute, in particular, its Center for Science and Culture. (note 1) This movement seeks to re-introduce creationism into scientific education.

An Example of Lawyerly Logic

As a leader in the ID movement, Johnson supported the 1981 Arkansas law requiring the provision of a ‘balanced treatment to creation-science and to evolution-science.’ Johnson defended his advocacy of this law in his Chapter 9: The Rules of Science. The law was successfully challenged by a large coalition of scientists, educators, the ACLU, and mainstream Christian and Jewish organizations. In his case summary, the presiding judge said that ‘creation-science’ does not meet the essential characteristics of science: That it be guided by natural law; that its explanations refer to natural law; that it is empirically testable; that its conclusions are tentative; and that it is falsifiable.

Johnson responded: "Critics pointed out that scientists are not in the least 'tentative' about their basic commitments, including their commitment to evolution. In addition, scientists have often studied the effects of a phenomenon (such as gravity) which they could not explain by natural law. Finally, the critics observed that creation-science makes quite specific empirical claims (a young earth, a worldwide flood, special creation), which mainstream science has said are provably false." (page 101)

Contrary to his first point, the scientific method is clearly tentative. Johnson himself, throughout the book, inadvertently demonstrated this. He liked to point out inconsistencies in older approaches to a particular aspect of evolutionary biology, or in currently contentious or unresolved areas of the field. This is the very tentativeness of the scientific method. He saw it instead as demonstrations of incoherence or lack of solid proof. His own definition of tentativeness missed the point – he referred to the firmness with which science advocates hold to their method.

On the second point, in fact nothing in science is ultimately explained by natural law. Newton said in his Principia: "I have not as yet been able to deduce from phenomena the reason for these properties of gravity, and I do not feign hypotheses (Hypotheses non fingo)." Newton offered no deep or final explanation of what gravity actually was, just a means to model how it behaved. Yet his Law is in fact a natural explanation, looking at how nature behaves and providing a predictive model for that behavior. Johnson here again appears confused as to what science is and isn’t.

On the third point, he is correct, that creation-science makes some testable empirical claims, and he specifically mentions as examples a young earth or a world-wide flood. The problem for Johnson here is that the evidence for a young earth is resoundingly negative. There is some evidence for regional flooding, but scant if any evidence for a world-wide flood. If Newton were to survey this kind of evidence, he would reject the hypothesis and move on. (note 3) This is the scientific method in action; the history of science is littered with discarded hypotheses. As to special creation, it is not a testable or falsifiable hypothesis, the very problem that the judge in the Arkansas case pointed out.

Aimless Attacks

Some of Johnson’s criticisms of evolutionary biology were justified: He pointed out some acknowledged difficulties and holes in evolutionary biological thinking and, at his most accessible, he was clear-eyed about science explication that sometimes crosses the line of careful science into dogmatism. (note 2) Yet too often he was simply off-target. He didn’t seem to understand the aims or methods of science, its mutability and progression, and in particular seemed unaware of the less-than-perfect modeling that comprises its tentative core.

Some surprising parallels can be found in Erwin Chargaff’s unrelenting assault, from inside the scientific establishment, on molecular biology. As the search for the physical gene heated up after World War II, Chargaff’s biochemical research on DNA base pairing added a vital part to the solution of DNA’s structure. When the structure was solved in 1953 by Watson and Crick, molecular biology was born. Chargaff felt he had received insufficient credit for his part in the discovery (he was not awarded the Nobel Prize). He spent the rest of his long life bitterly mocking the efforts to extend the molecular understanding of life, taking every opportunity to point out perceived weaknesses in theoretical and philosophical approaches to molecular biology, appealing to ways of the past.

There were and still are weaknesses in the approach to molecular biology, and who better than an eminent biochemist to elucidate them? He was not wrong, per se, with some of his criticism. Yet science adjusts to new ideas and facts; the field of molecular biology has continued to make progress, overcoming many of Chargaff’s early objections.

Wide of the Mark

The Evangelical professor of philosophy Nancey Murphy reviewed Johnson’s book in her article Phillip Johnson on Trial. She found "Johnson's own arguments dogmatic and unconvincing. The main reason is that he does not adequately understand scientific reasoning."

She pointed out that science seeks the best available explanation; an assessment of a theory is thereby relative rather than absolute. During the normal poking of holes in a scientific theory, practicing scientists seek to test and to progress in understanding. If a problem persists, the theory is altered; it is generally not abandoned unless and until there is a better alternative, the now best available explanation.

She also noted that "hypothetical reasoning ... can never amount to proof. The best that can be hoped for is a high degree of confirmation. Much of what philosophy of science is about is examination of the conditions under which a scientific theory can be said to be well-confirmed. So objecting that any scientific theory is 'not proved' is empty as one can be."

Johnson’s style in Darwin on Trial has been described as mordant or trenchant, i.e. sharp-elbowed, the same description applied to Chargaff’s criticisms in his day. (notes 4,5) Chargaff was fueled by unquenchable disappointment and Johnson by religious dogmatism; neither of them directly acknowledged their primary motivations. Both became anti-reductionists, a particularly difficult viewpoint for Chargaff as a practicing scientist.

Together Johnson and Chargaff demonstrated that it is possible to make some accurate critical assessments and still be wide of the mark.

Today molecular biology is at the center of a biology organized by an evolutionary outlook. It is this approach to biology that arms us to react with unprecedented understanding and speed to the current coronavirus pandemic. Without the scientific method we have few weapons to respond.

 

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Notes

1. An anti-science institute entitled the “Center for Science?” A better example of empty rhetoric might be hard to find.

2. Like Johnson, Marilynne Robinson, in her Absence of Mind essays, capably takes ‘parascientists’ to task, her term for those who practice scientism, dogmatically overstate their case and arrogantly misuse the authority of science. And like Johnson, she inevitably overplays her hand, showing some glaring misunderstanding of the practice and limits of science, and mis-applying the poor behavior of those ‘parascientists’ to the whole of science.

3. Detailed discussion of the scientific evidence for and against the young earth and global flood hypotheses can be found on the Talk Origins website.

4. Erwin Chargaff on his first meeting with Watson and Crick: "Two pitchmen in search of a helix." (Robert Olby, The Path to the Double Helix, page 389) 
Chargaff on molecular biology: "I am against the overexplanation of science, because I think it impedes the flow of scientific imagination and associations. My main objecton to molecular biology is that by its claim to be able to explain everything it actually hinders the free flow of scientific ideas. ... If DNA, a hundred years ago a humble molecule in Miescher's hands, has been hypostasized into one of the symbols of the ever-increasing divorce from reality that characterizes our living and thinking, this may be taken as one of the signs that the winds of alienation have begun to beat at the doors of what was the most concrete building erected by the Western mind, namely, that of science." (Horace Judson, The Eighth Day of Creation, page 222) 

5. Nancey Murphy also noted that Johnson provided no workable replacement for the Theory of Evolution, and asked: "What would evolutionary biologists do if there is no conception of the field to guide their research?"

Johnson responded: "That evolutionary biologists fear unemployment tends more to call their objectivity into question than to establish that the theory they cherish is true."(Phillip Johnson, Reason in the Balance, page 230) 

Mordant? Yes. Deliberately obtuse? Yes. She clearly was asking him what scientific theory he would proffer to replace the standing one, given that a working theory is part of the scientific approach. With his ad hominem retort, he not only avoided answering the question, but demonstrated once again how little he understood about the methods of science.