Medieval Replay: The Authorization of Scientific Truth
Second Quarter 2000
by James W. Skillen
Can you guess which medieval pope or emperor made the following statements?
- "Our earth-centered solar system, it must be stressed, is a reality—no matter how inconvenient that fact may be."
- "To suggest that the solar system's earth-centeredness is controversial among [scientists] is simply untrue and it misleads students....It's only controversial as a political and religious issue among people who are committed to a different way of looking at the origins of life."
The truth is that these statements were not made by a medieval pope or emperor. I substituted words "earth-centered solar system" for the word "evolution" in a Washington Post editorial (8/16/99) and in a quotation from University of Oklahoma anthropologist Michael Nunley (Washington Post, 12/1/99), respectively.
There is a double whammy in these statements, which treat theory as a fact and insist on the noncontroversial character of what the author believes to be true. Most of us were taught in school that the end of the so-called dark ages (the medieval period) came about when scientists and educators were liberated from papal and imperial requirements to publish and teach only the authorized truth. Yet what we find today in American public education is that government's public-school monopoly opens the way for the scientific and educational majority to authorize the teaching of only what they consider to be "reality." The fact is, however, that grand evolutionary theory is not a fact. The Washington Post editors who said that evolution "is a reality—no matter how inconvenient that fact may be," wrote a few lines later that sensitivity in the classroom to those with a religious conscience "should not mean legitimizing fictitious doubts about scientifically accepted theories [emphasis added]." Clearly what they mean by the "fact" and "reality" of evolution is that they have put their trust and confidence in the scientists who hold to evolutionary theory.
What about the noncontroversial character of evolutionary theory? In a recent review of two books by Peter Singer, the controversial Princeton professor who repudiates the "sanctity of human life," Peter Berkowitz takes Singer to task for advocating a very controversial view of evolution held by sociobiologists (The New Republic, 1/10/00). In another article, Robert Wright blasts the famous biologist Stephen Jay Gould for his view of evolution, which might make someone "wonder how evolution could have created anything as intricate as a human being" ("The Accidental Creationist," The New Yorker, 12/13/99). These two articles alone, not to mention countless books and journal articles, demonstrate that a great deal of controversy surrounds the theory of evolution.
There are at least two important questions, therefore, that need to be addressed by public officials in their capacity as law makers and enforcers. The first is whether government today has any more right to "authorize" scientific truth than it did in the days when popes and emperors were the government. What makes this question especially relevant today is that the recent upsurge in concern about the teaching of evolution arose because a majority (6-4) of the Kansas school board voted to no longer require knowledge of grand evolutionary theory in certain examinations. If democratic freedom is better than papal or imperial authoritarianism, why should scientists be upset by the exercise of democracy? The reason for their upset, of course, is that the scientific elite believe that they should be the ones to authorize the scientific truth that ought to be taught to all students. What the latest controversy demonstrates, however, is that government, whether authoritarian or democratic, should not be the one to impose scientific, philosophical, or theological truth on society. Neither pope nor scientists should be able to use the power of government to compel curricular content.
If government should not be allowed to enforce doctrines, including scientific theories, then the second important political question is this: how should government support and encourage both science and education? The answer is that government should orient its support of education by respecting academic and scientific freedom, just as it finally agreed to respect ecclesiastical and theological freedom.
Scientists, just as theologians, should be free to continue to argue with one another about the truth of different convictions and different theories. And educators should be free to contend with one another about what is true, false, and hypothetical in the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. And the only way that this can happen is for government to relinquish what remains of its educational monopoly. Neither creationists nor evolutionists should be allowed to use government power to impose their views on everyone. Government should not have the last word on textbooks or on any theory of origins. Governments at all levels should grant equal support (legally and financially) to the variety of schools and school systems chosen by parents and offered by educators. Different views of science, philosophy, and life will undoubtedly be propagated in those different school systems. That is as it should be.
