Darwinism, Design and Public Education - Rhetoric & Public Affairs

John Angus Campbell

Michigan State University Press

2003

634 páginas

21h 8m

ISBN-13: 9780870136757

From the Scopes Trial in 1925 through the action of the Kansas board of education, the teaching of evolution in public schools has been a flashpoint in American education. Although its implications are not yet fully evident, the advent of a modern scientific theory of intelligent design (ID), and a scholarly research community advancing this theory (the ID movement) has reenergized and is now redefining the character of this controversy. Darwinism, Design, and Public Education examines ID as a science, a philosophy, and a movement for educational reform. Central to all three aspects of ID is its claim that, if science education is to be other than state-sponsored propaganda, a clear and principled distinction must be drawn between empirical science and the materialist philosophy that drives contemporary Darwinian theories of origin and development. Contents Part I: Should Darwinism Be Presented Critically and Comparatively in the Public Schools: Philosophical, Educational, and Legal Issues Part II: Scientific Critique of Biology Textbooks and Contemporary Evolutionary Theory Part III: The Theory of Intelligent Design: A Scientific Alternative to Neo-Darwinian and/or Chemical Evolutionary Theories Part IV: Critical Responses