International Society for Complexity, Information and Design
|
|
Michael_Polanyi_Center_logo.jpg
The International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID) is a self-styled professional society that promotes the controversial idea of intelligent design — that there is scientifiic evidence for design in life.
Overview
The Society was launced by on 6 December 2001. It was co-founded by William Dembski, Micah Sparacio and John Bracht. Dembski, mathematician, philosopher, theologian, and intelligent-design advocate is its Executive Director. Its fellows include several amongst the ID movement, including Michael Behe and Jonathon Wells.
ICSID says that it is "a cross-disciplinary professional society that investigates complex systems apart from external programmatic constraints like materialism, naturalism, or reductionism. The society provides a forum for formulating, testing, and disseminating research on complex systems through critique, peer review, and publication. Its aim is to pursue the theoretical development, empirical application, and philosophical implications of information- and design-theoretic concepts for complex systems." It's tagline is "retraining the scientific imagination to see purpose in nature".
ICSID maintains an online journal entitled Progress in Complexity, Information and Design. Articles are submitted through its website and may appear in the journal if they have been approved by one of the fellows. This they argue is a form of peer review, though critics argue that such articles could not pass critical peer review in the rest of the scientific literature, and the journal has failed to appear several times, showing a lack of ideas on "intelligent design theory".
ISCID maintains a copyrighted online user-written Internet encyclopedia called the ISCID Encyclopedia of Science and Philosophy.
The society features online chats with well known scientists and philosophers. Past chats have included people such as David Chalmers, Stuart Kauffman and Dembski.
External links
- ISCID (http://www.iscid.org)
- ICSID Encyclopedia of Science and Philosophy (http://www.iscid.org/encyclopedia)