Steve Fuller's talk

[Phil McKerracher]

A very entertaining and informative talk, I thought. He's obviously an articulate and intelligent guy, and I liked his arguments right up to the conclusion, which didn't seem to follow. I mean, it's pretty obvious that we should teach children how to think and not just fill them with dogma. It's also pretty obvious that in order to make new scientific discoveries, you have to be prepared to discard old assumptions. No argument there. I grew up reading fairy stories and then science fiction and I don't think it did me any harm at all - indeed, it prepared me for my eventual career in "magic that works" (electrical engineering).

But it's a long leap from there to accepting that ID should be taught in science classes. It's not just an alternative way of looking at things, it's fundamentally unhelpful. That's why we don't teach alchemy or phlogiston theory any more. They're interesting historical footnotes, but we can't learn anything from them except that they are disproven. I don't think he addressed this point at all. Yet he criticised the judge in the Pennsylvania case (unfairly, in my opinion) for doing essentially the same thing - concentrating on a principle and ignoring underlying facts.

What do others think?

[Killer Blob]

Erm, yes, I agree with you.

[Janet W]

Also being discussed here on the lablit forums:

http://forums.lablit.com/viewtopic.php?t=180

(We started off discussing another section of Prof. Fuller's rebuttal - the section questioning the extent to which Biology is dependent on the theory of evolution, but have moved on to discussion of last Thursday's talk.)

Yes, we are having difficulty working out what is meant by "seeing things from the point of view of a designer", other than using a machine model, which is done anyway (see some of the later posts on that thread).

I agree he was an enthusiastic and entertaining speaker, and the question-and-answer session was fun; I just hope he's not feeling too battered..

[Janet W]

I think we need to get our Chair to remind everyone of the forum at the end of question time.. everyone is bursting with questions at the end of the meeting, and then the forum is really quiet..

[Janet W]

Steve Fuller has joined our discussion on the Lablit forum thread, and Louis has already joined too.. anyone else coming to join us?

[Phil McKerracher]

I'm lurking. I notice there's also a new review on http://www.lablit.com/article/139/.