Quick update

I know I said I'd talk about Gross's frameworks, but I've been very busy with life things, so haven't have a chance to finish off last one and put it into context. Life should be slowed down and whatnot next week though, so hang tight until then! It's a total cliffhanger, I know.

In the meantime, read this. Because it is awesome, and true.

http://www.cw.ua.edu/2010/11/08/a-course-on-evolution-should-be-required-for-every-ua-student/

Has some great quotes too.

Evol-ID in Gross's framework--Part 3

Today's post is about Turner's framework of controversies coming about from social dramas.

Human beings act in a ritualistic way. They repeat different acts and place special meanings on these acts without even really thinking about it. These rituals become a sequence of our daily lives, and function to prevent conflict. When these social rituals are deliberately challenged, this is when drama, or controversy, occurs.

So when IDers try and and have ID taught in science classes this is challenging a few social norms. They are challenging the idea of teaching good science in science class. They are challenging the first amendment (ie not teaching a single religion (if you accept the idea that ID is religion)). They are even challenging science's social norms by circumventing the normal methods of science.

These are all factors that can lead to the controversy starting/continuing.

Next will be Habermas and his framework.

Evol-ID in Gross's framework--Part 2

The first part of Gross's 3 frameworks is Gusfield's 'Controversies as clashes of moral orders'.

Now remember here, morals are more on a social scale... So this is basically saying controversies happen when two (social) differences of opinions clash, or when one moral becomes more of a norm and is challenged. I think it can also come about from people having different interpretations of the same moral norm.


So if we look at this just in terms of teaching ID in the science classroom, we find a clear clash of morals. One group believes that ID should be kept out of science, and one believes it should be taught next to genetics 'to be balanced'. You could even say that this is a challenge of the social norm too, because ID has been banned from schools.


Now this is just the beginning of the frameworks, and as I explain more about them the relations will become clearer and you can see why you need all three to analyse.


Before I finish this post though, I want to look at a couple of quotes.


The first quote comes from The Wedge  Strategy document that I talked about many posts back. The quote basically says that ID needs to "defeat [the]materialist world view" represented by the theory of evolution and replace it with "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.”


That basically gives very good evidence for a clash of moral norms where one really wants to overtake the other (especially when you consider they say they just want a balanced discussion).


The second quote is the one I mentioned last post from the Gross paper:

‘There is a more insidious effect of moral orders: by substituting displays of high feelings for reason, they distort and suppress public debate over the issues that are their concern.’

Now nearly all of this is true for Gusfield in this sense, except for one point. Rather than suppressing public debate, ID proponents are actually creating debate where none exists (or shouldn't). Well, there's no debate in science, but they're fuelling public debate but telling people that there is.

Turner's up next.

Evol-ID in Gross's framework

For the next few posts I thought I'd do a version of the analysis I did the controversy in for my class presentation.

I analysed the controversy using Alan Gross's three interlinking frameworks for examining controversies (the paper is titled Scientific and technical controversy: Three frameworks for analysis if you wanted to find it somewhere).

Basically Gross uses three controversy frameworks made by others, and show how they all interlink to give a greater understanding of a controversy (although he states that these three would still not encompass everything needed for some).

So the three frameworks are:

1. Gusfield framework

This framework says controversies are all about clashes of moral orders. That when people change, challenge, or adapt moral orders different from the norm, controversies arise.

He also makes this statement at one point, ‘There is a more insidious effect of moral orders: by substituting displays of high feelings for reason, they distort and suppress public debate over the issues that are their concern.’ I'll come back to this later.

2. Turner framework

Turner's framework suggests that controversies are all about social drama. When the norms in societies are challenged drama is the result, and this is where controversies arise.

3. Habermas framework

Habermas says that controversies can be broken down into five categories, each which needs a different type of communicative action to be solved.

The five categories with their resolutions are:

• Political--Negotiation

• Ethical--Mutual tolerance

• Moral--Understanding and agreement

• Intellectual--Understanding and agreement

• Scientific--Experiment and controlled observation (with some understanding and agreement)

He also points out the difference between morals and ethics. Ethics are an individual's ideas or choices on what they accept of believe to be true. Morals are on a social scale, as in what is overall accepted socially (social ethics, I guess).

cdesign proponentsists

I promised to talk about this a couple of posts ago and just realised I never got around to it. So it's going to be a bit of history, and a bit of a laugh.

ID came into existence around December of 1987. This was after creationism was banned for violating the Establishment Clause of the US constitution in June of 1987. The court that ruled this decision said that 'alternate science theories could be taught' or something along those lines. Hence the birth of the 'science' of Intelligent Design.

The book Of Pandas and People was being written while all this was going on, and in its drafting stages when the final verdict came out. The book was written by people with relations to the Discovery Institute, and when finally published was the first documentation containing information on ID as we know it.

Unfortunately, this wasn't always the case.

As I stated earlier, this book was having its draft edited when the final verdict banning creationism came out. The book had originally been filled with words like creationism, creationists, and creator. After the ruling, the book was edited again to put a new slant on the creationist movement. That's right, all those creation terms were changed to ID terms... Intelligent Design, design proponent, and designer respectively. No change to the creation content of the book, just putting a new term on it so they could eventually claim that ID wasn't religious and was actually scientific.

But if they changed what the book said during before the second draft, then how do we know that?

Well in one case the word 'creationists' wasn't edited completely correctly. It was only half replaced and ended up as 'cdesign proponentsists'.

This clear link between creationism and ID eventually played a big role in the 2005 court case that banned ID from science classes.