Dissent Over Descent: Intelligent Design's Challenge to Darwinism

If you think Intelligent Design Theory (IDT) is merely the respectable face of Christian fundamentalism, and Evolution the only sensible scientific world-view, think again...IDT has driven science for 500 years. It was responsible for the 17th century's Scientific Revolution and helped build modern histories of physics, mathematics, genetics and social science. IDT's proponents take literally the Biblical idea that humans have been created in God's image. This confident, even arrogant, view of humanity enabled the West to triumph in the modern era. Evolution, on the other hand, derives from more ancient, even pagan, ideas about our rootedness in nature and the transience of all life forms. It has been always more popular outside the West, and until Darwin few evolutionists were scientists. What happened to reverse these two movements' fortunes? Steve Fuller's brilliant revisionist history is essential reading for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of science's most vociferous debate.

Steve Fuller has appeared on Radio 4's 'Today', Radio 3's 'Nightwaves' and Channel 4's 'Trial of the 21st Century'. He has written for the Independent, the New Scientist and the New York Times, among others. Fuller is also Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick.