Stephen C. Meyer
Stephen C. Meyer is an American philosopher of science and theologian. Meyer, along with Bruce Chapman and George Gilder, is a founder of the Discovery Institute and its Center for Science and Culture, which advocates the controversial concept of intelligent design, and a leading proponent and lobbyist in the intelligent design movement. Meyer is a Vice President and Senior Fellow at the institute's Center for Science and Culture.
Biography
Meyer graduated with a degree in geology in 1980 from Whitworth College and worked as a geophysicist for the Atlantic Richfield Company. After attending a creationist conference he became increasingly interested in origins and rejected the evolutionary creationism in which he had previously believed.
Meyer won a scholarship from the Rotary Club of Dallas to study at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. Meyer earned his Ph.D. in history and philosophy of science in 1991. His dissertation was entitled "Of clues and causes : a methodological interpretation of origin of life studies."
After graduating, Meyer taught at Whitworth College, which has links to the Presbyterian Church (USA) in Spokane, Washington, and then at Palm Beach Atlantic University, a Christian university. As of 2006, Meyer works full-time at the Discovery Institute.
In 1990, Meyer, Bruce Chapman and George Gilder, formed the Discovery Institute as a non-profit educational foundation and think tank based upon the Christian apologetics of C.S. Lewis and opposed to materialism. It was founded as a branch of the Hudson Institute, an Indianapolis-based, conservative think tank and named for the HMS Discovery, which explored Puget Sound in 1792.
In 1993, Chapman secured seed money in the form of a grant from Howard Ahmanson, Jr. and $450,000 from the MacLellan Foundation, which underwrote the earliest nucleus of intelligent design authors who titled themselves "The Wedge" [1]. Meyer had previously tutored Ahmanson's son in science, and Meyer recalls being asked by Ahmanson "What could you do if you had some financial backing?" It is from these beginnings that the intelligent design movement grew.
Meyer has recently co-written or edited two books: Darwinism, Design, and Public Education with Michigan State University Press and Science and Evidence of Design in the Universe (Ignatius 2000). He has published over 70 articles and papers.
Meyer has been described as "the person who brought ID (intelligent design) to DI (Discovery Institute)" by historian Edward Larson, who was a fellow at the Discovery Institute prior to it becoming the center of the intelligent design movement.
Peer review controversy
On 4 August 2004, an article by Meyer appeared in the peer-reviewed scientific journal, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.[2] On 7 September, the publisher of the journal, the Council of the Biological Society of Washington, released a statement repudiating the article as not meeting its scientific standards and not peer reviewed. [3] The same statement vowed that proper review procedures would be followed in the future and endorsed a resolution published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which observes that there is no credible scientific evidence supporting ID. [4] The journal's reasons for disavowing the article were denied by Richard Sternberg, the managing editor at the time the article was submitted and who subsequently left after its publication. [5] Critics of Meyer's paper believe that Sternberg himself was biased in the matter, since he is a member of the editorial board of the Baraminology Study Group, an organization with a creationist agenda. The Baraminology Study Group's official position is that Sternberg is not a creationist and acts primarily as a skeptical reviewer. [6] A critical review of the article is available on the Panda's Thumb website. [7]
Meyer's alleges that those who oppose "Darwinism" are persecuted by the scientific community: "The numbers of scientists who question Darwinism is a minority, but it is growing fast. This is happening in the face of fierce attempts to intimidate and suppress legitimate dissent. Young scientists are threatened with deprivation of tenure. Others have seen a consistent pattern of answering scientific arguments with ad hominem attacks. In particular, the series' attempt to stigmatize all critics--including scientists--as religious 'creationists' is an excellent example of viewpoint discrimination." [8]
Bibliography
Books
- David K. DeWolf, Stephen C. Meyer, Mark E. DeForrest (1999) Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curriculum: A Legal Guidebook ISBN 096421041X
- Michael J. Behe William A. Dembski and Stephen C. Meyer (2000) Science and Evidence of Design in the Universe ISBN 0898708095
- Campbell and Meyer (2003) Darwinism, Design, and Public Education, Michigan State University Press. ISBN 0870136755
Scientific paper
- Meyer, S.C. (2004) The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 117(2):213-239. online version This paper was withdrawn by the publisher because the editor, fellow intelligent design proponent Richard Sternberg, went outside the usual review procedures in allowing Meyer's article to be published in his last issue as editor. see:Sternberg peer review controversy
Film
External links
Pro-ID
Anti-ID
- evowiki
- Meyer's hopeless monster Review of Meyer, Stephen C. 2004. The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 117(2):213-239
- the antievolutionists - Meyer