January 8, 2001: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
STATEMENT BY WILLIAM A. DEMBSKI ON THE PUBLICATION OF ROBERT
PENNOCK'S NEW
BOOK WITH MIT PRESS
How Not to Debate Intelligent Design
By William A. Dembski
Intelligent design has many critics. Some play hard and fair. Robert
Pennock is not one of them.
Pennock has just published _Intelligent Design Creationists
and Their
Critics_ with MIT Press. It includes two essays by
me. Pennock never
contacted me about their inclusion. Indeed,
I only learned of their
inclusion after his volume was
published and became available to the
public
last week.
It appears that Pennock and MIT Press are
legally in the clear -- Pennock
selected pieces for which he
was able to obtain copyright permissions
without having to
consult me.
There's more to ethics, however,
than legalities. What Pennock and MIT
Press have done is
emblematic of the viewpoint discrimination that
dissenters to
Darwinism face in American academic culture. Pennock's
volume
is supposed to constitute a definitive refutation of intelligent
design,
allowing intelligent design proponents to have their
say and then meet
their strongest critics. Instead, it is a
shabby ploy to cast intelligent
design in the worst possible
light.
Imagine if someone critical of
Darwinian evolutionary theory decided to
publish a book titled
_Dogmatic Darwinian Fundamentalists and Their
Critics_,
managed to obtain copyright permissions for pieces by prominent
Darwinists (mostly outdated pieces at that), and then situated
their
pieces
within a collection of critical replies
designed to make them look
ridiculous. Substitute intelligent
design for Darwinism, and that's what
Pennock and MIT Press
have done.
In my case, Pennock chose a
popular 2,000 word essay of mine titled "Who's
Got the Magic?"
and followed it with a 9,000-word rebuttal by him titled
"The
Wizards of ID." For the other essay of mine, Pennock chose
"Intelligent Design as a Theory of Information," which was a popular piece
on information theory that's now five years old. I've written
much on that
topic since then, and the essay itself is now
outdated. Moreover, Pennock
followed that essay with three
critical responses. One of those responses,
by Elliott Sober,
was a lengthy technical review (from the journal
_Philosophy
of Science_) of my technical monograph _The Design Inference_
(Cambridge University Press, 1998). No portion of that monograph or
anything comparable from my work was included in Pennock's
book. Finally,
I
was given no chance to respond to my
critics.
I contacted both Pennock and MIT
Press to register my concerns. I would
like to have seen a
public apology by Pennock and some notice by MIT Press
indicating that my essays appeared without my knowledge, that they
represent my popular rather than technical work on intelligent
design, and
that I was not given a chance to reply to my
critics. Pennock indicated
that unless I chose to pursue legal
action, he considered the matter
closed. MIT Press ignored my
concerns and indicated they would be happy to
hear about any
other concerns I might have.
I do not plan
to seek legal redress, though it seems to me that Pennock
and
MIT Press have deliberately tried to undermine my standing in the
academic
community. Pennock chose popular and outdated work of
mine, positioned
various critiques of my work with it, gave me
no opportunity to reply to
my
critics, and packaged it all
in a volume titled _Intelligent Design
Creationists and Their
Critics_, thus casting me as a creationist, which
in
contemporary academic culture is equivalent to being cast as a flat
earther, astrologer, or holocaust denier. There's no way I
would have
allowed my work to appear under such conditions if
I had any say in the
matter. Pennock saw to it that I had no
say in the matter.
Some critics of
intelligent design play hard and fair. They allow
intelligent
design proponents to put their best foot forward and they in
turn produce their strongest counterarguments to intelligent design.
Pennock, by contrast, is like the Emperor Commodus in the
movie
_Gladiator_, who first needs to hamstring his opponents
before he tosses
them into the arena.
Episodes like this are bad for American academic life. They
undermine free
and open exchange. They make for bad feelings
on all sides. And they
prevent ideas from getting the critical
scrutiny they need. Intelligent
design needs critical
scrutiny. But by rigging the debate the way he did,
Pennock
ensures that intelligent design will continue to be politicized.
Pennock's new book is an object lesson in how not to debate
intelligent
design.
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