Today’s Washington Post reports:

WICHITA ? Propelled by a polished strategy crafted by activists on America’s political right, a battle is intensifying across the nation over how students are taught about the origins of life. Policymakers in 19 states are weighing proposals that question the science of evolution.

Here are some scattered thoughts of mine ….

1. Although it is desirable for public schools to be neutral about religion, pure neutrality isn’t possible. To teach evolution is to put the weight of the state behind a set of views that some people find theologically abhorrent. To teach both evolution and “intelligent design” is to give arbitrarily equal attention to two doctrines, while omitting many others (including the Biblical account). To avoid offense by skipping the origins and history of life is to give members of certain denominations a veto over the curriculum for religious reasons.

2. My opinion on this subject may not be worth anything, but I think it’s a theological mistake for fundamentalist Christians to try to place creationism on an equal footing with evolution in schools, or to champion “intelligent design” as a scientific hypothesis. The Post quotes Senator Santorum: “students should be exposed to ‘the full range of scientific views that exist. … My reading of the science is there’s a legitimate debate [between evolution and ‘intelligent design’]. My feeling is let the debate be had.'” If I were a fundamentalist, I would not accept the idea that core principles of my faith were testable hypotheses on par with those of science–subject to confirmation or refutation. First of all, I wouldn’t want to give so many hostages to fortune. What if the data do not ultimately support the existence of God–must I then agree that there is no deity? In any case, the data will not support the Genesis account, and surely it’s a retreat to move from Genesis to “intelligent design.” Even I were confident that the scientific evidence would ultimately corroborate my beliefs, I wouldn’t want religion to rest on data. Faith is faith. It should stand against all evidence.

3. Civil libertarians should be aware of, and concerned about, a tension in this debate. According to the Post, “Alabama and Georgia legislators recently introduced bills to allow teachers to challenge evolutionary theory in the classroom. Ohio, Minnesota, New Mexico and Ohio have approved new rules allowing that.” On one hand, it may offend the constitutional separation of church and state for an agent of the state, the biology teacher, to challenge evolutionary theory on religious or quasi-religious grounds. On the other hand, doesn’t the First Amendment grant a biology teacher a right to say what he or she believes? I can probably be talked into a “gag order,” but not without deep regrets about the offense to the teacher’s rights.

4. I generally like the idea of “teaching the controversy.” In this case, that would mean teaching high school students some philosophy of science. I realize that schools face excessive mandates already, but I suspect that debating the meaning and purpose of science is more important than knowing most particular scientific facts and theories. Thus, for example, some assert that science consists only of conjectures that stand until evidence refutes them. In that case, Darwinism is “just a theory,” and so is “intelligent design”–but so is heliocentrism. We merely hypothesize that the earth circles the sun, and we stand ready to change our theory. Is this a plausible philosophy of science, or is there such a thing as certainty (or near-certainty)? If so, it would seem that evolution has a lot more evidence behind it than intelligent design.

Meanwhile, are articles of religious faith also conjectures that stand until evidence makes them fall? Or is science fundamentally different from religion?

Sociology of science becomes relevant here, too. We can know very little directly about nature. Even if we make our own observations, we must use instruments and techniques that others created. Thus trust in other people is essential to science. The kind of people who believe in evolution are very different from the kind of people who believe in creationism or intelligent design. I’m not saying that one group is better than the other, only that they have radically different sociologies. The evolutionists dominate biology departments at Research-1 universities. The proponents of intelligent design mostly work at independent outfits funded by wealthy fundamentalists, or in academic departments other than biology. On one view of the sociology of science, the dominant strand is just more powerful: it’s the one with money and prestige. That’s what Senator Santorum means when he says: “Anyone who expresses anything other than the dominant worldview is shunned and booted from the academy.” (Note: this kind of diagnosis is also common on the postmodern left.) On a different theory, mainstream science is a self-correcting, transparent, rational community. Students, as budding citizens, need to develop informed opinions about science and scientists.

5. Fundamentalist opponents of evolution may do some damage if they prevent our students from gaining access to modern biology–not to mention geology, medicine, anthropology, physics, psychology, and other disciplines that have embraced the notions that the earth is very old and that natural selection explains many biological changes. The damage is likely to be worst for young people who come from relatively sheltered–and often disadvantaged–backgrounds.

However, I am at least as worried about the threat from today’s “Darwinian fundamentalists,” who believe that almost all important social, economic, and even moral questions can be answered by speculating about what traits must have increased our ancestors’ chances of survival in the early Pleistocene. We are evolved, physical creatures with certain inherited limitations. But we know much less about these limitations than many pop-Darwinians claim. Besides, our evolved traits or tendencies do not tell us much about what is valuable. Roaches are very durable and “fit” (in the Darwinian sense), whereas tigers only survive today on human charity. Yet it is important to be able to see that tigers are beautiful and priceless. The equation of the fit with the good is a great mistake, more characteristic of our age than religious fundamentalism.

Last Friday, some colleagues and I discussed a very strong paper by Joe Oppenheimer et al. that bridged rational choice theory and cognitive psychology. The authors of the paper (and the texts they quoted) said that memories are “stored,” “linked,” “tagged,” “called up,” and “retrieved” by the brain. These metaphors have come originally from various domains of human activity. (I suppose that shopkeepers store things, dogs retrieve things, and archaeologists tag things–to name just a few uses). However, the proximate source for all these words, obviously, is computer programming. Without thinking twice about it, we use the computer as an analogy for the human brain. This analogy can be illuminating, but we must be careful to remember that it is not literal. Brains are like today’s computers in some respects, but not in many others. It struck me that in John Locke’s day, the main metaphor for the brain was painting: i.e., representation of sense-data on flat surfaces. Painting was a very advanced technology in 1700–better than it is today. But it was an imperfect metaphor for cognition, and so is computing in our era.

The Cambridge philosopher Miles Burnyeat says that Plato is ?good to think with? (pdf, p. 20) I believe the same of Dante, which is why I chose to write a book about current moral issues by interpreting sections of the Divine Comedy. Like Plato?s dialogues, the Comedy is a concrete story in which abstract ideas appear as statements by embodied characters in specific historical circumstances, who attempt (to various degrees) to live by what they say. In both works, the question of irony arises. Plato is not Socrates, and Dante-the-poet is not Dante-the-pilgrim. It isn’t clear what the author thinks of his main character’s views.

It is not obvious why we should use old literary works to think about current moral issues, especially if the authors of those texts refused to say straightforwardly what they believed. However, the humanities are premised on the idea that we should ?think with? novels, dialogues, and other narratives.

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In a comment on last Thursday’s post, Michael Weiksner argues that political theorists employ a “high risk/high return” strategy for social change. They develop comprehensive, sometimes radical arguments that can be used in public debates. Mostly, such arguments have little influence, if only because there is no organized constituency or institution with the capacity to realize them. “But every now and again, you have Machievelli or JS Mill or Rawls, and their frameworks impact society for decades or longer.” In contrast, Michael says, people like me take a “hedged position.” We work closely with practitioners and communities. This strategy increases our odds of making a small difference but rules out any major effect. For instance, as a result of the projects I’m involved in, some day there may be better civics courses in high schools. There will definitely not be a new social order.

One problem with the high-risk strategy is that it may achieve catastrophically bad results. From Plato through Calvin to Marx, many of the most influential theorists have been, in my opinion, disastrously wrong. They have been wrong precisely because they have not been anchored in practical experience.

But there are also drawbacks to the low-risk strategy. Some thinkers who are deeply immersed in practice suffer from narrow horizons or excessive caution. John Dewey was an exemplary “engaged scholar,” yet he made some spectacularly bad calls (applauding World War I and opposing US entry into World War II, for instance). In any case, there is nothing dangerous about most of today’s highly abstract political theory. For example, Elizabeth Anderson’s arguments against natural property rights, posted on left2right, were what originally got me thinking about the role of political theory. If Anderson were somehow to influence popular opinion, no harm would follow–perhaps some good.

Nevertheless, I’m against the high risk/high return strategy for a different reason, one that’s specific to our time. Mainstream political philosophy has long been consumed with questions of distribution–who should get what goods and rights. For most liberals, property should be redistributed (to some limited degree). For most libertarians, existing property distributions should be left alone. I suppose that on a completely theoretical level, I lean the liberals’ way. But I see two problems with this whole debate:

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I?m a moral particularist. I believe that some words and concepts have moral significance, but we can only tell whether they are good, bad, or neutral in particular cases. Abstracted from any specific context, they have indeterminate significance. Examples include love, loyalty, pleasure, courage, and generosity. These words and concepts are indispensable. We cannot replace them with ones that have determinate and predictable significance without oversimplifying morality. Therefore, moral judgment ought to be about whole situations, not about abstract concepts.

I?m also a cultural particularist. I believe that people have large sets of values, experiences, preferences, and opinions that jointly constitute their ?cultures.? Often, many people who live at roughly the same time and place share a lot of ideas, values, etc., and then we say that they belong to the same ?culture.? However, there is usually no single perspective, worldview, premise, or foundation that defines or underlies their culture. Thus there may be no precise boundary to a culture; and we can often classify one person as a member of several cultures at once. Some philosophers have argued that the various cultures of the world are fundamentally incompatible or unable to comprehend one another. But every member of a complex, reasonably free society will have slightly different ideas, experiences, and values, so each person can be described as having his or her own ?culture.? This is a reductio ad absurdum; it suggests that there can be no deep incompatibility among cultures (or else no one could understand anyone else). If everyone in a society does share exactly the same set of values, then we suspect that they are deprived or politically repressed.

These two forms of particularism are independent and separable, but they go together well. The combined position has implications for moral reasoning and the humanities. I?m spelling out the implications in my book on Dante, which is nearly finished.

However, I recently realized that there is a phenomenon that particularists have difficulty explaining: coherence.

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