Write a short 1-2 page essay contrasting the views of Johnson, Pennock, and Grinnell on whether methodological naturalism is philsophical dogma or an assumption necessary to protect the integrity of science.  How do you think each author would respond to the question of whether it is possible in principle for empirical science to warrant a design inference?
 

Consider the following statements as well as any others you find pertinent:
 

"(Science) should be a self-critical search for as much of the truth as its methods of investigation can ascertain, which may or may not include the truth about how new quantities of genetic information have come into the world."  Johnson, Darwins' Rules of Reasoning, p 19.

"Theistic realism opens the mind to additional possibilities, without preventing the acceptance of anything that really is convincingly demonstrated by empirical evidence.  Johnson, Reason in the Balance, p 218.

"We who know how this game of bait and switch is played just look for the "switch" that turns innocent "MN" into the real thing."  Johnson quoted by Pennock on p. 202

"Science assumes MN because to do otherwise would be to abandon its empirical evidential touchstone." Pennock, p 196

"Johnson wants to make an exception to the law in this one area, but it would infect the entire enterprise.  MN is not a dogmatic ideology that simply is tacked on to the principles of scientific method; it is essential for the basic standards of empricial evidence."   Pennock, p 196

"Naturalistic explanations are an assumption necessary for doing science.  Only naturalistic explanations become part of science because of the way in which scientific discoveries become credible."  Grinnell p 100.

"the naturalistic world shared by everyone is the only world accessible to science.  If it can't be measure or counted or photographed, then it can't be science, - even if it's important."  Grinnell, p 105.

 
 

Required readings:
 
 

1.  Excerpt from Part 1 "Conceptual bases of experimental design and analysis".  Designing experiments and analyzing data: A model comparison perspective.  Maxwell, S. E., & Delaney, H. D. (2003).  Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2nd ed. in press.  p. 3 - 22.
 

2.  Historical science, experimental science, and the scientific method, Geology, Nov. 2001., vol. 29, 987-990,  C. Cleland
 

 
 

Optional readings (on reserve at Zimmerman library):
 
 

A case against accident and self organization:  Part I:  Introduction, Part II:  Verbal and mathematical logic relating to the questions presented,   D. Overmann

Response to Frederick Grinnell,  Peter van Inwagen, Proceedings of "Darwinism:  Scientific inference or philosophical preference?",  SMU  3/92

The methodological equivalence of design and descent, S. Meyer  view article