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 a new episode of ID the Future, I welcome 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 and 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 19th 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 20 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 what they do, they are turning back to purpose and looking for ways to explain its origin materialistically.
Download the podcast or listen to it here. 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.