Phil 8: Introduction to Philosophy of Science

Outline 14: Creationism Revisited

I. Does Creation science satisfy the court’s demarcation criteria?

 Creation science seems both testable and falsifiable.

 Creation scientists do seem tentative.

 It seems question begging to argue that creation science invokes miracles

rather than natural laws.

II. Are the court’s demarcation criteria accurate?

 (i) doesn’t seem to be a good criterion if it requires that every scientific posit
identify the natural laws that govern that posit.

 (ii) also doesn’t seem to be a good criterion for similar reasons. Furthermore, the
idea that scientific explanation proceeds via deduction from natural law is far
from obvious. We’ll talk more about this issue in our final unit.

 If (iii) requires that no “ad hoc” hypotheses be used to protect a theory from
false observational consequences, then it’s a very vague criteria.

 Relatedly, if (v) requires that scientific hypotheses be falsifiable in isolation, then

almost no scientific theory will pass that test. But if instead creation scientists are
allowed to hook up hypotheses to auxiliaries, then it is very easy for a theory to
be falsifiable.

 Demarcation criterion (iv) is also not a good condition. Scientists are plenty
dogmatic about some parts of their theories.

III. Should creation science be treated on a par with other sciences?

 Even if creation science is a science, there might be good reasons why it should
not be taught in schools, funded by scientific grants, etc.

 Lauden’s view is that creation science is science, it’s just a bad science.

 In the previous unit, we learned that the confirmation of scientific theories is a

thorny issue. On what grounds can we criticize creation science as bad theory,
given all the problems we’ve see with theories of confirmation?
 To answer this question, we require a more sophisticated picture of the way
science actually works.