• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 228 0

tenet that inherited variation comes primarily from random mutations. Rather, Margulis argues, new species, at least microbial species, evolve through the exchange of genomes, where the fusion of genomes in symbioses leads to the variation on which natural selection acts, which then leads to increasing complexity in the species. She first published her theory in 1970. For more than three decades she has been lecturing on it at scientific conferences, writing about it in hundreds of articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, expanding upon it in technical books published by peer-reviewed university presses, and elaborating on it in popular books published by trade presses. After all this effort and evidence, the theory of symbiogenesis is finally wending its way into the generally accepted body of evolutionary knowledge taught to students, even though it remains controversial in some scientific circles.3 If Intelligent Design creationists want to know how to get their theory taught in public schools, they should take a lesson from Lynn Margulis: Roll up your sleeves and get to work—lab and field work, not legislative lobby work.

This vetting process by the community of scientists in a field is how new discoveries and theories gain acceptance or experience rejection. Adjudication is determined by a vote of sorts—the scientists in a field vote with their feet, either by running back to their labs to test the new discovery or theory, or by discarding it altogether. If it is useful, it stands a good chance of finding its way into general textbooks, which are often written by members of that scientific community. This system sounds insular, but it is remarkably egalitarian and democratic because anyone can join in the process, as long as they abide by the rules of the game of science. The Intelligent Design theorists, rather than respect these rules, instead revert to the question, What is science?

Science Defined in Its Defense

Creationists sometimes claim that the theory of evolution is a doctrine in a religion they call Secular Humanism, and thus if creationism is not taught in public schools, then neither should evolution be. The vast majority of believers and theists around the world fully accept the theory of evolution, so clearly they are not mutually exclusive. But is the theory of evolution a religious belief? No, it is not.

If a branch of science like evolutionary theory is a tenet of religion, then the definition of religion is so sweeping that virtually everything is a religion, rendering the word meaningless. Science is not a religion. Science is a very specific branch of human knowledge with a set of methods quite distinct from other branches of knowledge. I have, in earlier chapters, pragmatically defined it this way: Science is a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation. More formally, I have defined it as follows:

Science is a set of methods designed to describe and interpret observed or inferred phenomena, past or present, aimed at building a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation.4

The description of methods is essential, however, because it shows how science actually works. Included in the methods are hunches, guesses, ideas, hypotheses, theories, and paradigms, and testing them involves background research, experiments, data collection and organization, colleague collaboration and communication, correlation of findings, statistical analyses, conference presentations, and publications. In the simplest sense, science is what scientists do.

Although there is much debate among philosophers and historians of science about what science is, there is general agreement that science revolves around what is known formally as the hypothetico-deductive method: (1) formulating a hypothesis, (2) making a prediction based on the hypothesis, and (3) testing whether or not the prediction is accurate. In formulating hypotheses and theories, science employs natural explanations for natural phenomena. These characteristics of science were even codified into law in two