science of culture

The Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, as it was originally named, grew out of a conference called "The Death of Materialism and the Renewal of Culture" that the Discovery Institute organised in the summer of 1995. It was founded in 1996 by the Discovery Institute with funding provided by Fieldstead & Company, the Stewardship Foundation, Howard Ahmanson, Jr. and the MacLellan FoundationThe evolution of the Center's name in 2002 reflects its attempt to present itself as less religiously motivated in the public's eye.[11] The "renewal" in its name referred to its stated goal of "renewing" American culture by grounding society's major institutions, especially education, in religion as outlined in the Wedge document. Since that time the Center has disavowed any religious motivations to its agenda and so has dropped "renewal" from its title and moderated its formerly overtly religious language of its public statements [12]. This was done to appeal to a more secular audience to which the Center hopes its social and political programs will appeal and make inroads.
Despite these changes to attempt to appeal to a broader, less religious, audience, the CSC still states as a goal a redefinition of science, and the philosophy on which it is based, particularly the exclusion of what it calls the "unscientific principle of ", and in particular the acceptance of what it calls "the of intelligent design". The position of the overwhelming majority of the scientific community is that the principle of allows and that is unfalsifiable, meaning any suggested policies or curricula put forth by the Center that rest on supernatural suppositions would be by definition , not science. The Center maintains that the exclusion of supernatural explanations introduces a bias that is driven by rather than being scientifically based.