Center for Science and Culture, Discovery Institute
Center for Apologetics and Propaganda
The Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture is a misnomer. The center neither participates in science nor concerns itself broadly with cultural matters. According to Bruce Chapman, the president of the Discovery Institute:
"The foremost thing is to demolish the Darwinist superstition. All our people can get along on that. What they don't agree on are the alternatives, such as the theory of design."
Since Darwinian evolution has been a guiding principle of biology since the 1870s, this is hardly a scientific perspective.
What drives the Center for Science and Culture is hostility to naturalism. Since naturalism is a basic principle of science, the Center seeks nothing less than redefinition of science. Individual members are driven by a variety of motives including hostility to science, legalistic thinking and religious fundamentalism.
The Center for Science and Culture is well funded, largely by donations from wealthy religious fundamentalists. It issues regular press releases promoting religiously conservative viewpoints. It promoted the Santorum amendment, an attempt to insert intelligent design into public school curricula. It has actively promoted antievolution before state and local school boards. It was especially effective in Ohio, but has also been active in Kansas, Texas
, Georgia, Minnesota, etc. In view of its remoteness from mainline science and its active role in promotion it could more accurately be called the Center for Apologetics and Propaganda.