The Exclusion, and Return, of Purpose in Science
Purpose was once considered fundamental to understanding nature. But for the last few centuries, scientists committed to a Darwinian view of life have ignored it. Now some materialists are reconsidering agency, function, and emergence in biology. But can they succeed without acknowledging intelligent design?
On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid welcomes Dr. Stephen Iacoboni, an award-winning cancer researcher and practitioner of medical oncology for forty years. In his personal memoir, The Undying Soul, he chronicles his spiritual journey and return to faith. And in his book, Telos: The Scientific Basis for a Life of Purpose, he offers a unique reconciliation between faith and science. He also writes regularly at Science & Culture Today.
In this opening segment, Iacoboni takes us on a brief historical tour of purpose in science, showing when it began to get excluded in the scientific pursuit. First, he defines purpose in the context of living things. “Purpose is simply the fulfillment of a goal that benefits an organism,” explains Iacoboni. Purpose has been an integral part of the study of nature since the ancient Greeks. But with the advent of Darwinism in the nineteenth century, many scientists began to adopt a bottom-up view of life, sidelining purpose in favor of reductionist explanations of life.
However, in the last twenty years, today’s scientific materialists have dramatically altered the direction of their research. Realizing that a reductionist framework doesn’t adequately explain why living things do the things they do, they are turning back to purpose and looking for ways to explain its origin materialistically.
This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation. In Part 2, Dr. Iacoboni will more fully explain the change in tactics among materialists and how ID proponents should respond.
Dig Deeper
- Get a copy of Dr. Iacoboni’s book Telos: The Scientific Basis for a Life of Purpose.
- More conversation with Dr. Iacoboni: