Designer Science: A History of Intelligent Design in America

Researcher Howell debuts with a fascinating survey of the intelligent design movement, a late 1980s through early 2000s effort to displace Darwinian evolutionary theory. Religious opponents have long argued against evolution, viewing the notion that life developed without direction from a creator as a repudiation of the Bible. Yet as efforts to debunk evolution failed to gain acceptance in public school classrooms, a group of anti-evolutionists decided to attack Darwinism via its roots in naturalism, or the belief that there is nothing beyond nature–a “strategic” attempt to dismantle evolutionary theory on philosophical rather than biblical grounds. Howell traces how the movement garnered support throughout the 1990s and early 2000s from the right, including conservative intellectuals and “grassroots evangelical populists” wielding intelligent design in “culture-war campaigns against US secularism.” By the mid-2000s the movement had faltered for reasons including the inability to produce a convincing alternative to Darwinism and was largely barred from classrooms. Still, Howell convincingly argues that intelligent design permanently influenced American conservative culture by casting the kind of doubt on “the reliability of scientific practice” that fueled later skepticism against vaccines and climate change. Deeply informed and substantive, this is a trenchant examination of the contested terrain where science, religion, and politics battle. (Sept.)