El impresicindible John Brockman acaba de editar un libro colectivo muy particular: Intelligent Thought. Science versus the Intelligent Design movement (Vía Boing Boing). Sus autores son algunos de los más conocidos representantes de la “tercera cultura” como Jerry Coyne, Leonard Susskind, Daniel C. Dennett, Nicholas Humphrey, Tim D. White, Neil H. Shubin, Richard Dawkins, Frank Sulloway, Scott Atran, Steven Pinker, Lee Smolin, Stuart A. Kauffman, Seth Lloyd, Lisa Randall, Marc D. Hauser o Scott Sampson. Es un libro científico pero con un objetivo social y político: desenmascarar los supuestos fudnamentos científicos del diseño inteligente. También es un libro provocador desde su mismo título.
En una época en que los fudamentalismos religiosos (de todo tipo) pretenden limitar (y, al final, eliminar) los logros que las sociedades libres han obtenido después de siglos de esfuerzos, es más que nunca necesario que los científicos se impliquen en los debates públicos y no se escondan en sus laboratorios y tras la asepsia de su método científico:
Science is the big news. Science is the important story. Science is public culture....Yet at the same time, religious fundamentalism is on the rise around the world, and our own virulent domestic version of it, under the rubric of "intelligent design," by elbowing its way into the classroom abrogates the divide between church and state that has served this country so well for so long. Moreover, the intelligent-design (ID) movement imperils American global dominance in science and in so doing presents the gravest of threats to the American economy, which is driven by advances in science and in the technology derived therefrom.
This book — sixteen essays by Edge contributors, all leading scientists from several disciplines — is a thoughtful response to the bizarre claims made by the ID movement's advocates, whose only interest in science appears to be to replace it with beliefs consistent with those of the Middle Ages. School districts across the country — most notably in Kansas and later in Pennsylvania, where the antievolutionist tide was turned but undoubtedly not stopped—have been besieged by demands to "teach the debate," to "present the controversy," when, in actuality, there is no debate, no controversy. What there is, quite simply, is a duplicitous public-relations campaign funded by Christian fundamentalist interests.
It is to be hoped that the ID movement, because of the very publicity that it has sought and achieved, will be seen by the majority of Americans for the giant step backward that it is. Our children are literally the future of our nation, which will increasingly need competent scientists and engineers to guide us through the coming technological revolutions — revolutions that are already under way all around us. There are examples in history of the collapse of great civilizations. There is no particular reason that the United States should be exempt from historical forces. The Visigoths are at the gates. Will we let them in?
En la web del libro aparece una nota del editor que refleja una anécdota significativa sobre la necesidad de un libro de este tipo:
Just as I was about to send out this edition of Edge announcing the publication of Intelligent Thought: Science Versus The Intelligent Design Movement, I received the email below which it a stark reminder of why this book is necessary, why it belongs on your bookshelf, and why sixteen of the world's leading scientists (and Edge contributors) dropped everything to write essays on a crash schedule so the book would be published before the end of the school year.
Maulik Parikh is a post-doc in the Physics Department of Columbia University. He is leaving the U.S. to teach physics at a university in India.
Date: Mon, 8 May 2006
From: Maulik Parikh
To: John Brockman
Subject: Intelligent DesignJohn,
I have been teaching a new course on the frontiers of science, required for all freshmen at Columbia. These students are mostly sharp, capable, and open-minded. Still, many of them think that intelligent design should be studied in the interest of being fair and balanced. What's troubling is that even those who accept evolution often treat it as a matter of belief, of political persuasion, as if it were akin to being for or against free trade. And if they reject intelligence design it's often not because they can see its vacuousness as a scientific theory, but merely because the religious and conservative stripes of ID can sometimes look a little uncool. As for science, reason, evidence -- what's that?
