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Kitcher Philip (2007). Living with Darwin : Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith. New York : Oxford University Press.
Added by: Marie Musset (29 May 2008 11:20:27 Europe/Paris) Last edited by: Marie Musset (28 Oct 2008 15:50:19 Europe/Paris) |
| Resource type: Book BibTeX citation key: Kitcher2007  |
Categories: General Keywords: enseignement de l'évolution, États-Unis, sciences, sciences et société Creators: Kitcher Publisher: Oxford University Press (New York) |
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| Abstract |
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Creationists take every opportunity to remind audiences that the founders of modern science were devout, Bible-believing Christians. This historical truth is the starting point of a new book aimed at a general readership by the distinguished philosopher of science, Philip Kitcher, on the historical entanglement of science and religious doctrine in relation to Darwinism. Kitcher argues that creationism and "intelligent design" are better understood as dead sciences rather than as pseudosciences. Creationist views, broadly speaking, did play a role in the history of geology and the life sciences but they are no longer part of science. Kitcher devotes a chapter to showing, in accessible language, when and why each of the three major anti-Darwinian positions successively became a dead science: "Genesis creationism", or opposition to the idea of an ancient earth in the name of a literal reading of the biblical creation narrative, around 1830; "novelty creationism", which defended the special creation of species against the evolutionary idea that all living things that have ever existed on our planet belong to a single tree of life, around 1870; and "anti-selectionism", or opposition to natural selection as the principal agent of evolution, around 1930. Genesis creationism, novelty creationism, and anti-selectionism have all been revived in our day by those who oppose Darwinian evolution on religious grounds. Kitcher demonstrates that as science these attempts to resurrect the dead have failed.
Added by: Marie Musset Last edited by: Marie Musset |