01/16/02

Improving the standard of living of Ohioans depends upon our ability to produce an educated citizenry.

To prepare our children to function and flourish in our modern technological society, we owe it to them to provide the best science education that we can afford. This pressing goal makes the recent effort to introduce a new form of creationism in science class particularly destructive.

Last year, the Ohio General Assembly called for new state standards in several areas, including science. A standards committee team has been working on the project and implementing recommendations from groups such as the Ohio Board of Education science advisory committee and from the National Academy of Sciences.

In the face of this work to bring Ohio's science standards up to date, a well-organized effort is under way to introduce the concept of "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution into the Ohio curriculum. Under the guise of "fairness" and "diversity," this effort merely undermines the teaching of science.

Proponents argue that the notion of "intelligent design" (that life's origin and evolution may be directed by some creative force) is not raised in biology classes when discussing the evolution of life. It is only fair, they say, that this alternative to evolutionary biology be introduced to students.

The seductiveness of this argument is that it avoids the word "creationism" and makes it seem as though by introducing such an alternative to evolution we are making our science curriculum more inclusive. The problem is, however, that the concept of "intelligent design" is not introduced into science classes because it is not a scientific concept.

The group pushing this agenda, Science Excellence for All Ohioans (a project of the conservative American Family Association of Ohio), bemoans the fact that scientists confine their investigation to phenomena and ideas that can be experimentally investigated, and that science assumes that natural phenomena have natural causes.

This is indeed how science operates, and if we are going to teach science, this is what we should teach. But while this methodology has helped create the modern technological society in which we live, it is absolutely true that science has limitations on the areas it can study.

One may feel unsatisfied that science does not address notions of the existence or nonexistence of God, but this issue is simply not relevant within the domain of scientific inquiry. There should be room for discussion of such limitations elsewhere in the curriculum, in philosophy or religion classes, for example. But science classes should focus on the knowledge that can be gleaned from the scientific method, and not to pushing the philosophical agenda of individuals who would like to use science classes to discuss religion. And make no mistake about it: This is the stated intent of groups such as the SEAO. Their Web site argues that the intelligent design initiative should allow ideas that otherwise would be labeled "creationism" to be introduced into science classes.

The notion of intelligent design suggests that living systems are far too complex to have arisen naturally, and must therefore have been designed by an intelligent creator. The problem with this notion is that it is untestable within the context of the scientific method and therefore has no place within our science curriculum. As a practical matter, it is also worth noting that the scientific investigation of the origin and evolution of life has not thus far run up against any insurmountable roadblocks. There is much we do not know at the present time, but there is no evidence that there are yet limits to what we can know in this regard. While groups such as the SEAO promote the notion that biological evolution is a controversial science topic, this is simply not true. Evolution is to modern biology what Newton's laws are to modern physics. There is no controversy within the scientific community on this issue.

When Kansas officials removed evolution from the state science curriculum they not only subjected their state to ridicule in the national media, they set off a backlash that had serious potential economic consequences for the state. Several major national corporations announced plans to reconsider relocating to Kansas because of concerns about the education the children of their employees would receive.

If Ohio enacts standards that erode the teaching of science in our high schools, we will be taking a giant step backward in our efforts to compete economically on the national and international playing fields of our modern, technological society. As such, we will not only be doing a disservice now in the education of our children, but we will diminish their future opportunities for economic and cultural advancement in our state.

Krauss is chair of the Physics Department at Case Western Reserve University, and recent recipient of the American Association for Advancement of Science Award for Public Understanding of Science.