The following conflation of intelligent design and global warming is unworthy of Chomsky the scholar (as opposed to Chomsky the activist). Chomsky uncritically takes as the definition of ID what he has read in the popular press. It might interest readers of this blog to know that I hold in my files a note (dated February 26, 1997) from Chomsky on MIT stationery commeting favorably on one of my early papers on information and ID (namely, “Intelligent Design as a Theory of Information” — which ultimately became chapters 3 and 4 of No Free Lunch). Chomsky in his private moments has in fact been a critic of evolutionary theory, a fact reflected in Daniel Dennett’s criticisms of Chomsky in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.
Evolution, ecology and `malignant design’
Noam Chomsky says the Bush administration’s hostility toward scientific inquiry puts the world at risk of global-warming disaster
NOAM CHOMSKY
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
Nov. 13, 2005
President George W. Bush favours teaching both evolution and “intelligent design” in schools, “so people can know what the debate is about.”
To proponents, intelligent design is the notion that the universe is too complex to have developed without a nudge from a higher power than evolution or natural selection. Read More ›