Dissent over Descent: Intelligent Design's Challenge to Darwinism
UK £12.99,Canada $26.00,
UK Publication June 2004
ISBN 9781840468045
Hardback
Buy: | Waterstones| Book Depository
If you think Intelligent Design Theory (IDT) is merely the respectable face of Christian fundamentalism, and Evolution the only sensible scientific world-view, think again. Historically, the situation is almost exactly reversed. IDT has driven science for 500 years. It was responsible for the 17th century's Scientific Revolution and has helped build modern histories of physics, mathematics, genetics and social science. IDT's proponents have upheld, often secretly, radical views of Christianity, taking literally the Biblical idea that humans have been created in God's image. This confident, even arrogant, view of humanity enabled the West to triumph in the modern era.
Steve Fuller's brilliant revisionist history is essential reading for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of science's most vociferous debate.
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‘A rich mine of often-overlooked information, personal interpretations of the history of science that are provocative and sometimes astonishing, and a sceptical sociologist's view of the grand narrative that science, and especially the neo-Darwinian synthesis, is apt to claim for itself.’ Times Higher Education, Book of the Week
‘The richness and complexity of argument defy critical summary.’ Times Higher Education, Book of the Week
‘Fuller's account of Biblical literalism also looks unlike what anyone else means by it. He says literalism is not a plain descriptive account or "fixed doctrine", but an "act of communication" demanding a personal response. But in biblical hermeneutics, this is just what is opposed to "literalism". So his positive view turns out to be idiosyncratic and possibly misleading - what he defends is rarely what the people he defends think.’ Times Higher Education, Book of the Week
‘He achieves his aims of forcing readers to re-examine the terms of the evolution versus intelligent design debate, to see how ID-type views have driven scientists in the past, and to question a view of science as "a unified mode of inquiry with a uniquely progressive character". Even should the book fail to convince, it will certainly not fail to stimulate.’ Times Higher Education, Book of the Week
‘Bold, original and intensely thought-provoking’ Cambridge Journals
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Steve Fuller has appeared on Radio 4's Today, Radio 3's Nightwaves and Channel 4's Trial of the 21st Century. He has written for the Independent, the New Scientist and the New York Times, among others. By day, Fuller is also Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick.
See more books by: Steve Fuller
