Newton and Intelligent Design

Provost's Colloquium Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Abstract

The Intelligent design (ID) debate has centered on Darwin's theory of evolution, but it also has a long history involving physics and astronomy.  Popper's "principle of falsification", is at the center of the modern argument against ID,  yet the principle of falsification is recent (ca 1959).    The recent changes in the Kansas science standards can be viewed as an attempt to reject the principle of falsification, saving the ID argument.  However, the Rejection of the ID argument occurred long before Popperlian falsification, making the pre Darwinian History relevant to today’s debate.

 The idea of intelligent design goes back to at least Plato and has played an important role in the development of the physical sciences.   Newton uses the ID argument in his Optics and has a discussion of the nature of God in Principia.  We have Newton's letters to Bentley (ca 1692) on the ID argument. 

 The use of the ID argument was delivered a fatal blow with the posthumous publication of David Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion in 1779.  Pierre-Simon Laplace's "Nebular Hypothesis" in his "System of the world" (1796) abandoned the Newtonian ID argument and countered Newton's arguments. 

 Yet, the use of physics and astronomy as an ID argument continued with Paley's Natural Theology in 1802 and continues to this day.   Interestingly, behind today’s debate of evolution lies an attack on physics and cosmology.

 I will explore the history of the ID argument and the historical reasons why physics rejected the argument from design.