"Science is not a game in which arbitrary rules are used to decide what explanations are to be permitted"
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Michael Behe challenges the idea that science should predefine the kinds of explanations it will accept. By rejecting the image of science as a game with arbitrary rules, he pushes against methodological naturalism, the convention that restricts scientific explanations to natural causes. The rhetorical move is strategic: it frames current boundaries as gatekeeping rather than as safeguards for reliable knowledge, inviting readers to consider whether those boundaries exclude potentially true explanations simply because they do not fit the rulebook.
The context is the debate over intelligent design, where Behe is a leading figure. He argues that certain biochemical systems exhibit irreducible complexity and that design is a better explanation than undirected processes. From this vantage, rules that forbid reference to intelligence behind nature seem not only unnecessary but obstructive, privileging a metaphysical stance rather than following evidence wherever it leads.
Critics counter that the rules he calls arbitrary are pragmatic standards forged through centuries of trial and error. Methodological naturalism is not a metaphysical claim about what exists; it is a working rule that keeps science tied to testable, repeatable, and predictive claims. Explanations invoking unbounded intelligence or supernatural causation struggle to meet these criteria, because they resist falsification and can be made to fit any outcome. The rule is less a boundary on truth than a filter for empirical accountability.
History shows that science does revise its rules, but usually by strengthening, not weakening, its commitment to testability. Meteorites, germs, and plate tectonics were accepted not by relaxing standards but by meeting them. Behe’s provocation nevertheless raises a valuable question: are scientific norms serving discovery or defending turf? A defensible middle ground holds that any explanation, including design, earns admission by generating specific, risky predictions and surviving attempts to refute them. That is not an arbitrary rule; it is the discipline that makes scientific explanations more than stories.
The context is the debate over intelligent design, where Behe is a leading figure. He argues that certain biochemical systems exhibit irreducible complexity and that design is a better explanation than undirected processes. From this vantage, rules that forbid reference to intelligence behind nature seem not only unnecessary but obstructive, privileging a metaphysical stance rather than following evidence wherever it leads.
Critics counter that the rules he calls arbitrary are pragmatic standards forged through centuries of trial and error. Methodological naturalism is not a metaphysical claim about what exists; it is a working rule that keeps science tied to testable, repeatable, and predictive claims. Explanations invoking unbounded intelligence or supernatural causation struggle to meet these criteria, because they resist falsification and can be made to fit any outcome. The rule is less a boundary on truth than a filter for empirical accountability.
History shows that science does revise its rules, but usually by strengthening, not weakening, its commitment to testability. Meteorites, germs, and plate tectonics were accepted not by relaxing standards but by meeting them. Behe’s provocation nevertheless raises a valuable question: are scientific norms serving discovery or defending turf? A defensible middle ground holds that any explanation, including design, earns admission by generating specific, risky predictions and surviving attempts to refute them. That is not an arbitrary rule; it is the discipline that makes scientific explanations more than stories.
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| Topic | Science |
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