On the Square Today

In today’s On the Square feature, Howard Kainz notes that some atheist philosophers of science have joined with Intelligent Design theorists in the criticizing neo-Darwinism :

Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, in  What Darwin Got Wrong  come at neo-Darwinism from a number of directions. Initially, they draw a comparison with B.F. Skinner’s psychological theory of “operant conditioning,” which attempted to explain changes in human behavior by patterns of stimulus and response. Limitations of that theory have eventually been revealed: it did not take into account internal mechanisms in organisms subjected to external stimuli; and the intention  of researchers or subjects affected the results of experiments. Skinner’s behaviorism can be corrected by taking these aspects into account. But no such correction is possible in neo-Darwinism, which has no interest in “the  internal organization of creatures . . . (genotypic and ontogenetic structures)” and recognizes no “intentions” in evolutionary processes.