Jouer l’expert à la barre : l’épistémologie sociale de Steve Fuller au service de l’Intelligent Design

• Main Authors: Volny Fages, Arnaud Saint-Martin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Les Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme 2014-09-01
• Series: Socio
• Subjects: expertise; science and technology studies; social epistemology; controversy; intelligent design; creationism
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/socio/633

At the end of 2005, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the case of Kitzmiller et al. V. Dover Area District opposed parents of students supported by the American Civil Liberties Union to the Board of Education of the Dover district. The object of the litigation was the introduction of references to the anti-Darwinian theory, Intelligent Design, into the teaching of biology. This trial, which followed on numerous other trials concerning the teaching of the theory of evolution in the United States, concerns important epistemological issues. If it is proved in court that Intelligent Design is a science, even if marginal, then it ought to be possible to teach it. Several ‘meta-experts’ were therefore invited to testify to enable the epistemological status of this theory to be determined; thus epistemological conflicts, political battles and the construction of a jurisprudence were all intertwined. This article concentrates on the testimony of Steve Fuller, sociologist and philosopher of science, on behalf of the defence (of Intelligent Design). The aim here is to examine Fuller’s argument in detail and to set it in its intellectual, historical and socio-political context. Dramatic, excessive, controversial – Fuller enables us, through a dispute, to propose a consideration of the political and moral responsibility of academic experts, and in particular in the field of Science and Technology Studies, operating outside the academic sphere.