Intelligent Design Tangles Science and Religion

Singham Replies: Ted Lawry argues that the predictive power of theories is indicative of their truth. But dominant scientific theories have always made successful predictions; that is how they gained their ascendancy in the first place. The geocentric model of the Solar System, for example, had enormous predictive power. So did the phlogiston theory of combustion. But that did not prevent those theories from being supplanted by other theories that, in key respects, directly contradicted their predecessors.

One way to sustain the position that, if a scientific theory works well and is predictive, it must be true is to add the supposition that we are currently living at the end of science, that is, that our current scientific theories are the final word. That position is more or less the one taken by science writer John Horgan. ¹ But if we follow historical precedent and allow for the fallibility of even current highly successful theories, as David C. Nobes argues, then we are faced with the problem of how we would ever know when we have achieved “truth.”