Steve Fuller: Designer Trouble
Steve Fuller: Designer Trouble
Darwinism has had it all its own way for too long, Warwick’s controversial sociologist tells Zoe Corbyn
The Guardian, Tuesday January 31, 2006
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/profile/story/0,,1698284,00.htmlIn 1981, in a courtroom in Little Rock, Arkansas, Michael Ruse testified that “creation
science”, the faith-based explanation of life’s beginnings, was not science at all. “In my
opinion,” Ruse told the court, “creation science is religion.” It was the first time in
America’s fraught struggle over evolution that a philosopher of science had taken the
stand and his words made a big impression on Steve Fuller, then a 22-year-old PhD student.“It set a precedent because, up to that point, the only people allowed to testify on the
nature of science were professional scientists,” Fuller recalls.These days, Fuller is a professor of sociology at Warwick University. Last October, in
Dover, Pennsylvania, he too found himself giving evidence in court. But unlike Ruse, a
champion of Darwinian evolution, Fuller took the stand as an expert witness in support of
intelligent design. Fuller argued that ID – the idea that some systems are so complex they
must have been designed by an intelligent agent – should be added to the science
curriculum. He lost. The Dover judgment concluded ID was the progeny of creationism and
couldn’t be taught as science. “The judge in the Dover case went back to the old standard
of what the experts say,” says Fuller. Read More ›