The Proof is in the Pudding, Not the Recipe
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Today's entry was written by Karl Giberson. Karl Giberson directs the new science & religion writing program at Gordon College in Boston. He has published more than 100 articles, reviews and essays for Web sites and journals including Salon.com, Books & Culture, and the Huffington Post. He has written seven books, including Saving Darwin, The Language of Science & Faith, and The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age.
It will soon be time for Easter dinner, a wonderful family event at our home on Boston’s South Shore. Three generations of family will gather at our table, joined by some friends whose families are far away, a new fiancé, and a couple of stranded college students who had nowhere to go.
At these extended family dinners everyone, except the poor college students, brings something for the meal. Contemplating the upcoming dinner has put me in mind of a thought experiment. Imagine that a guest brings a new pudding to dinner and, prior to serving it, goes on at some length about the recipe. The recipe, you learn, was developed with great rigor. It had been formulated by Ph.D. biochemists, who also had cooking certificates from culinary institutes in Paris. It followed all the rules of recipes. In fact you were amazed to discover that there were such things as “rules” for recipes. You had been laboring under the assumption that there were just recipes.
After the main course, desserts are served and, although you prefer pie, you feel obligated to have some pudding, since it—and its marvelous recipe—has been promoted with such enthusiasm by the well-educated cosmopolitan pudding-makers.
Unfortunately, the pudding tastes terrible. Nobody at the table but the pudding-makers likes it. But they aggressively celebrate their pudding anyway, arguing that their diligent adherence to such a perfect recipe must certainly have produced a good product and what was wrong with everyone that they were not impressed?
I offer this little parable about pudding to make a point about science. There is no “recipe” for doing science. Philosophers starting with Francis Bacon in the 17th century have tried to specify rules for doing science. Bacon said to use open-minded induction and draw only cautious generalizations. Two centuries later Karl Popper said do the opposite—make creative hypotheses and try to falsify them. But, for various reasons, none of these “recipes” for doing science have actually worked very well as a universal method. Science is always more complicated and messy than the recipes imply.
Recently a biology teacher inquired of Casey Luskin at the Discovery Institute how science works in the Intelligent Design paradigm. How, the teacher asked, does one “test intelligent design using the scientific method?” The response was that ID uses the scientific method: “a four-step process involving observations, hypothesis, experiments, and conclusion.”
This four-step process is, unfortunately, widely known as the scientific method. This creates the misleading impression that all you need to do is follow this one method—this recipe—and the result will be “science” Any investigation following this method will supposedly be “scientific.” If only it were this simple….
The only way to truly tell when “science” is happening is if new knowledge is being generated. And new knowledge is just that—new. New in the sense of novel, exciting, surprising. New in the sense of “How can that be?” This is how science has always worked, and this is where new ideas get their power.
When Mendeleev developed the periodic table of the elements in the 19th century he discovered it had a “hole”—an empty block in between Gallium and Arsenic, right under silicon. For his idea about the regularity of the elements to be valid, there had to be an element to fill that hole. So he made some reasonable extrapolations and developed a description of the atom that would naturally fit in the hole. And then Germanium was discovered, with exactly the properties that Mendeleev had predicted.
When Einstein developed General Relativity it made the unusual prediction that gravity would bend starlight and make stars appear in different locations. And then in 1919 this prediction was confirmed by Sir Arthur Eddington who photographed some stars under the conditions that Einstein had described. It was such a success that the New York Times ran a headline shortly thereafter: “Lights All Askew in the Heavens.” And scientists knew that General Relativity was a robust new science.
Revolutionary scientific ideas generate new knowledge about the world. They tell you something surprising and compelling.
The examples offered as indicators of ID’s scientific depth are not convincing. ID may follow the scientific method, but the “knowledge” generated is quite unimpressive. Luskin notes that, “ID begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI).” This is a fancy way of saying “intelligent agents produce intelligence.”
Next we are told that “Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI.” And how do we know that something is designed? Because it contains high levels of CSI. So we now understand that things with high levels of CSI will, if our hypothesis is true, have high levels of CSI.
But, as obvious as all this seems, it still doesn’t quite make sense to me. Are there not many things that are carefully and intelligently designed to be simple rather than complex? I once hired a landscape architect to help me plan my yard and I got the distinct impression he was using his considerable talents to make things simple rather than complex. I think he was minimizing the CSI in my yard.
To follow the scientific method ID has to make “testable predictions.” Here, apparently, is an example of how this is done: “Natural structures will be found that contain many parts arranged in intricate patterns that perform a specific function.” I am wondering how such a prediction would be verified though, since conventional evolutionary theory predicts exactly the same thing.
The upshot of all this is, as has become clear over the past few years, is that ID is still trying to find itself. If it succeeds in figuring out what it is trying to do, we will all know. But not because the “scientific method” was followed. We will know because ID will have generated some brand new information about the world.
The proof is in the pudding, not the recipe.
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March 30th 2010
Gregory,
“The scientific method” is a myth perhaps - but the disciplines you list, ... cosmology & geology, to biology & neuro-anatomy, to psychology & cognitive sciences, to anthropology, economics & linguistics ... (remove, perhaps, economics ...I am not sure) and the same methods of thinking and reasoning are applied in each and every case. I think this is “the” scientific method - logical problem solving to pull together a coherent whole. I can pick up original literature in all of these areas and the details change - but the logic of creative problem solving does not. The four-fold “recipe” of observations, hypothesis, experiments, and conclusion is but one method of creative problem solving.
Reply to this commentMarch 30th 2010
Did Darwin discover something new? or was he a great synthesizer of ideas and data which were already available at the time?
Reply to this commentMarch 30th 2010
Hi Karl,
If we distinguish between historical and experimental science, it might help clarify the question of how ID can be science.
Historical science seeks to find the best explanation for something that has happened, such as the origin of life (OOL). And Stephen Meyer just wrote a (too) lengthy book attempting to show that intelligent design was he best explanation for the OOL. Michael Behe has argued that the best explanation of irreducibly complex systems is intelligent design.
But given that the frst cells were designed, can we find out more?
Mike Gene is testing the hypothesis that the first cells were front-loaded in order to make the evolution of multicellularity more likely. And he is making considerable progress.
Richard Sternberg seems to be pursuing the same hypothesis as James Shapiro, that the DNA acts as some sort of genetic engineer. I don’t know if he’s made much progress, but it is a testable hypothesis.
So there seem to be ways to do science with ID, that can result in new knowledge.
Reply to this commentMarch 30th 2010
Mike G, if you’re around, I have an ignorant question to ask, regarding your front-loading hypothesis (I haven’t read what you’ve written beyond your posts here nor am I a biologist). Quoting Bilbo above, the hypothesis is “that the first cells were front-loaded in order to make the evolution of multicellularity more likely”. At least in the explanations I’ve read of the development of life on earth, it took 2.5 billion years or so to move from single-celled to multi-celled organisms. Paraphrasing Bill Bryson regarding that time period: “Much of life on earth was not terribly ambitious.”
Hmm, front-loaded + 2.5 billion years doesn’t seem to add up. What am I missing in the equation?
Reply to this commentMarch 30th 2010
He proposed Natural Selection (and sexual selection) as the mechanism that drove evolution.
Reply to this commentMarch 30th 2010
You say ID follows the scientific method?! Um, what’s the experiment part that develops evidence supporting or reluting the hypothesis?
There is only one way to reach conclusions through science and that is THE scientific method: question, hypothesis, experiment, gather evidence, and make a conclusion. What’s open to question with this scientific process is how much, and what kind of evidence, is needed to determine if something is true or false. I guess this is personal. How much do you need? I think the importance is that everyone determines that amount and stays consistent with that amount of evidence for all of life’s questions. I think we can all agree though, that the more evidence there is to support a hypothesis, the more likely that hypothesis is correct.
Reply to this commentMarch 30th 2010
Do ID theorists present their findings to mainstream scientists in published papers and at meetings? Can it withstand scientific scrutiny? Or do they do an end run around the scientific process and try to push their material directly into the school curriculum?
Reply to this commentMarch 30th 2010
beaglelady - #8056
March 30th 2010
Did Darwin discover something new? or was he a great synthesizer of ideas and data which were already available at the time?
He proposed Natural Selection (and sexual selection) as the mechanism that drove evolution.
——
Hi there Beagle lady,
Darwin did both: Years of collecting novel specimens and then assembling and deducing possible connections between these specimens. One of the perplexing ( to him) was the occurrence of marine fossils at the top of mountains in South America. Geology later provided the answers with an understanding of how mountain ranges are formed. (Uplift)
Reply to this commentRick
March 30th 2010
beaglelady - #8056
I missed that your post was a response to an earlier one. I guess some redundancy is ok.
Reply to this commentRick
March 30th 2010
Hi Karl A.,
I probably should’t try to answer for Mike Gene (btw, I claim that he’s doing science, he doesn’t), but I will.
1) Mike’s hypothesis is that the first cells would contain the ingredients necessary for multicellularity.
2) This does not guarantee that multicellurarity would evolve. Other factors would come into play, such as the environment, and the right combination of mutations.
3) So to use the 2.5 billion year argument, we would need to know that environmental conditions were conducive for multicellular life. And that there had been enough time to allow for the right combination of mutations to probably happen.
Reply to this commentMarch 30th 2010
Hi Beaglelady,
Since the scientific community rules out teleological explanations a priori, ID is not considered to be science, and therefore rarely if ever is given the opportunity to be heard. Just watch Gordon Glover’s videos if you don’t believe me.
Reply to this commentMarch 30th 2010
Karl Gibberson #8013,
Reply to this commentThank you for your response. Could you also clarify regarding my 2nd example? That is, would all studies done on evolution by natural selection be considered science by your definition, or would only Darwin be credited with that, as the one who came up with the new theory, and all these subsequent studies would only be verifying what Darwin already discovered?
March 30th 2010
Funny how many excuses we get when we ask for the purpose of, well, anything in life from IDists. Like one I saw was that we don’t know the purpose of every human-made artifact we find—as if that was the point (we’d like any verifiable purpose).
So we get the charge that ID is ruled out a priori, and the claim that teleology (I know that purpose and teleology aren’t exact synonyms, but close enough here) simply doesn’t need to be shown at all, simply because we’re not terribly concerned that every human purpose isn’t known for every single thing they do.
The upshot is that IDists think that teleology should be ruled “in” without any sort of evidence for it. Science demands evidence, so we get the supporting evidence-free charge that ID is ruled out a priori, even though it is clearly ruled out a posteriori.
ID is an endless stream of excuses for its lack of meaningful output.
Glen Davidson
Reply to this commentMarch 30th 2010
“That is, would all studies done on evolution by natural selection be considered science by your definition…”
“All is too strong—some quacks still attmept to do experiments, but in the spirit of your questions, the answer is “Yes.”
” or would only Darwin be credited with that, as the one who came up with the new theory…”
No. The theroy advanced by Darwin has changed quite a bit since then. Scietific theories are not cast in stone.
“and all these subsequent studies would only be verifying what Darwin already discovered?”
No, they didn’t. Mendel added signifcantly to the thery of evolution, and so did Watson and Crick.
In science each builds upon the work of predecessors.
Isaac Newton (quoted by Albert Einstein)
“If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Darwin stood on the shoulders of Charles Lyell, just as others have stood on his since.
Reply to this commentMarch 30th 2010
Well, the ID folks had the chance to be heard at the Kitzmiller vs Dover Area School District trial and at the debate at the American Museum of Natural History. Sounds like pretty important venues to me. I was at the debate. The trial had international coverage.
Reply to this commentMarch 30th 2010
” the scientific community rules out teleological explanations a priori”
Often asserted but not true. Here’s just one example where teleology was considered as an explanation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-1
Reply to this commentApril 5th 2010
This may not address the thrust of your argument, but there is no “proof in the pudding” unless you made it with some whiskey.
However, if you want an aphorism that actually makes sense, you might try “the proof OF the pudding IS IN THE EATING.”
Repeat after me….
“The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”
There.
For the rest of your life you can do as I do whenever someone makes the nonsensical statement “the proof is in the pudding”, and gently point out their nonsense.
Reply to this commentApril 14th 2010
Giberson rights “There is no “recipe” for doing science.” Then contradicts himself by proposing a recipe: “The only way to truly tell when “science” is happening is if new knowledge is being generated.” And isn’t it odd that the goal of science should be novelty instead of accuracy?
If there is no recipe, then there is no recipe and science is what each scientist claims it is. But Giberson is right that the debate over what is science is long, confusing and unsettled. However, FA Hayek wrote an interesting book, “The Counter-Revolution in Science” (available in the literature section at mises.org) in which he defines science as the attempt to classify objects accurately. His definition is very interesting. He also provides the history of how science became the cult of scientism and is no longer real science. TE’s have been suckered into becoming cult members of scientism.
Reply to this commentApril 16th 2010
Glen,
Reply to this commentI just want to point out that teleological explanations are ruled out a priori by science. That is because teleological explanations, the way the commenter means it, are just another way of saying God did it, which is not an explanation.