Stephen Iacoboni

As I have mentioned repeatedly in this series on the science of purpose, the debate between intelligent design (ID) and naturalism has shifted decidedly in favor of ID over just the past two decades.  I have warned that one of the few remaining avenues that naturalism can take to rescue its paradigm is to appropriate “purpose” within a materialist framework. Not surprisingly, an overt attempt is underway by atheist scientists to do just that. “Evolution on Purpose” MIT Press has recently published Evolution on Purpose, a collection of essays by leading theoretical biologists whose overt goal is to demonstrate how purpose, in the […]

In my most recent post in this series on the science of purpose, I reemphasized the claim that telos is the fundamental element that establishes the validity of intelligent design philosophy. Of course, that’s an ancient assertion, famously offered by Anaxagoras, Aristotle, and further confirmed by Aquinas. One finds perhaps the most declarative statement to this effect in the third of the famous Gifford lectures by James Hutchison Stirling:  “For the very existence of Natural Theology, is bound up with the existence of final causes. Destroy final causes and you destroy Natural Theology forever.” Natural theology, the 19th-century name given to what is known today as intelligent design theory, posits the discernment of the […]

Editor’s note: For more on the Greek philosopher Plato as an inspiration to modern life science, see the forthcoming book on the thought of ID biologist Richard Sternberg, Plato’s Revenge: The New Science of the Immaterial Genome, by David Klinghoffer. Over time, socio-political debates readily evolve. What once was liberal is now conservative, and vice versa.  But scientific debates should not be nearly so fluid or changeable. Scientific concepts ought to remain consistent, pending some discovery demanding a whole-scale paradigm shift. Such tectonic shifts are rare. Copernicus altered our celestial framework from geocentric to heliocentric. Newton formalized natural law. Lamarck overthrew belief in the fixity […]

In reading David Klinghoffer’s post here, “Medicine’s ‘Sacred Space’ — Grossly Violated,” I was grateful for his mention of my previous Evolution News post (“My Briar Patch: Notes of a Country Doctor”). I was struck by his comment, “When my dad was dying, I saw both sides of the healthcare world, one that fought stubbornly to save a life and the other that was coldly indifferent and even eager to end it.” The unfortunate fact is, there really are those two conflicting sides in medicine. Allow me to provide a deeper perspective on this, borne of over 40 years of experience. I believe that most of […]

In my two most recent posts (here and here) in this series on the science of purpose, I introduced the notion of intentionality as an intrinsic characteristic of living systems. Much has been written throughout the history of philosophy on what constitutes intentionality. Here I will discuss the key concepts essential to this subject. One historically dominant position on intentionality has been the Brentano thesis, proffered by 19th-century German philosopher and psychologist Franz Brentano.  He maintained that it is intentionality which demarcates the psychic from the physical. The main competing position, held by Descartes, Locke, and others, identified consciousness as the essential criterion for separating mind from matter. In making the case for biologic intentionality, […]

This post marks my 22nd for Evolution News in as many months. I began by advocating that the notion of purpose be established as a scientific concept. I hope that the reasons I have offered over the past two years have been convincing. I ended my last post with what many would consider a radical claim. That is, we must further recognize, on the basis of powers ontology, aka dispositionalism, that the living state undeniably manifests the power of purpose, and that this can only come from its immanent property of intentionality. Purpose and intentionality permeate and in fact define the living state, in contrast to the inanimate. If you […]

In my most recent post in this series on the science of purpose, I introduced the subject of powers ontology, or dispositionalism. I did so because this recently developed metaphysical framework has the potential to overcome the limitations of the reductionist materialism which has dominated science for three centuries. It is only by replacing naturalism or materialism that we can begin to understand the fundamental role of purpose in nature, bringing us to a deeper appreciation of our own purpose in this life. Reductionism is a method for understanding something by minimizing it to a very simple level that can be restricted to abstract language. That was the seminal step required in the […]

Perhaps the most fundamental distinction between naturalism and intelligent design is where each metaphysical framework draws the line at irreducibility. Leading intelligent design theorists Michael Behe, William Dembski, and Stephen Meyer, for example, have asserted that the specified complexity of living systems cannot be reduced to natural law. Scientific atheists, aka naturalists, deny this, insisting that what is truly irreducible is natural law itself. That is, scientific atheism is based on the belief that all of reality ultimately reduces to matter and energy, and the natural law that governs the interactions between them. Naturalism, aka materialism, aka scientism, rests irrevocably on that […]

In that one simple phrase, St. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest Christian theologian of all time, echoed the fundamental teaching of Aristotle, who preceded Aquinas by 1,600 years. The statement is profound because, while simple, it is simultaneously all-encompassing. And it provides the foundational concept for what I have described here as the science of purpose The truth and application of the statement is so pervasive, in fact, that all living things, not just humans and animals but also plants and microbes, rely on its validity in order to learn and thus to survive. Not for Darwin’s sake, but because they have a purpose, which is life itself. And […]