Des Moines Register
06-02-07
Rights are intact: Vote turns on question, 'What is science?'
JOHN HAUPTMAN
The denial of tenure of an Iowa State University assistant professor who has
studied the concept of intelligent design and has expressed his belief in it has
stirred controversy about academic freedom and freedom of speech.
His tenure denial violates neither of those principles. I participated in the initial
vote and voted no, based on this fundamental question: What is science?
The assistant professor, Guillermo Gonzalez, works in the ISU Physics and
Astronomy Department in the area of astrobiology. He is very creative,
intelligent and knowledgeable, highly productive scientifically and an excellent
teacher. Students in my Newspaper Physics class like to interview him.
I have always been fascinated by his ideas, for example, that the first few
millimeters of moon dust contain pieces of ancient Earth, the circling moon acting
as a vacuum cleaner scooping up impact debris, or that numerous but precise
and delicate conditions allow life on our Earth. Where else is life allowed? These
are great questions.
The conditions that allow life are possible for many interesting reasons: The
Earth is the right distance from the sun to maintain its temperature midway
between the freezing and boiling points of water. The Earth has a magnetic field,
an atmosphere and salt-water oceans. It spins not too fast and not too slow. The
sun is a normal star and is positioned in our Milky Way Galaxy far enough from
the active center. The moon is just the right size to allow a total solar eclipse on
the surface of the Earth, etc.
Why are these conditions so "perfect" for us, allowing humans to exist and,
above all, to ask these questions? Intelligent design is the notion that a supreme
being arranged it for us.
The Greeks thought in a similar way. Grains grew, so there had to be a god
Ceres who managed this. The oceans had waves and tides and sank ships, so
the god Poseidon was responsible for these. There was love and war and
lightning, and a god for each: Aphrodite, Ares and Zeus.
We are past this way of thinking about nature. If one person exemplifies this, it is
Galileo, who argued that just thinking about what you see and imagining reasons
are not enough. You must test your ideas with measurements, and your ideas
(your "theory") must not only agree with all previous measurements, but also
predict the results of measurements that have not yet been made. Any single
wrong prediction, and you must junk the theory.
Intelligent design is not even a theory. It has not made its first prediction, nor
suffered its first test by measurement. Its proponents can call it anything they
like, but it is not science.
I believe that the letter signed by 120 ISU faculty members criticizing intelligent
design as not scientific was reprehensible, not because I do not agree, but
because it was obviously aimed at Gonzalez. An assistant professor at a
university has every right to pursue whatever investigations he or she so chooses
to investigate. There must be no bounds, no restrictions and no penalties for
research of any kind. This is the very meaning of a free university, and society
that supports free inquiry. It is a very precious thread that weaves its way from
Socrates through Galileo to us.
I believe the comment that somehow this decision had something to do with the
feelings of the community was also reprehensible, as are statements that this
tenure decision is a denial of free speech.
It is purely a question of what is science and what is not, and a physics
department is not obligated to support notions that do not even begin to meet
scientific standards.
JOHN HAUPTMAN is a professor of physics at Iowa State University.