---
title: "Steve Fuller (sociologist)"
chunk: 2/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fuller_(sociologist)"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:26.979527+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Intelligent design ===
Fuller has made many statements about his support for the teaching of intelligent design (ID) and authored two books on the subject. In 2005, in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, he testified on behalf of a local school system in the United States that required the teaching of intelligent design. The decision of the U.S. District Court held that intelligent design was a form of creationism and that its inclusion in the curriculum violated the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on the establishment of religion. The decision repeatedly cited Fuller's testimony to undermine the school system's position. Some of Fuller's critics within the Science and Technology Studies community described his participation in the trial as "naïve" and suggested that the field needs further development before it can constructively engage the legal community on the nature of science.
Fuller has said that he does not support intelligent design "but feels that it should have a 'fair run for its money'". In his book Dissent over Descent, he says he sees religion in general as a motivating influence in scientific pursuits and believes that the difference between science and religion is more institutional than intellectual. Critics have called his views on science postmodernist, though others characterize them as more closely related to social constructionism.
On February 21, 2007, Fuller debated Lewis Wolpert at Royal Holloway, University of London on whether evolution and intelligent design should be accorded equal status as scientific theories. Fuller supported the proposition. Fuller endorsed a work in support of intelligent design, the Discovery Institute's textbook Explore Evolution: The Arguments For and Against Neo-Darwinism (2007).
Appearing in the 2008 documentary-style propaganda film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Fuller claimed that "abortion and euthanasia" are natural consequences of the acceptance of evolution by natural selection. He also believes that religious belief has furthered the development of science.

=== Transhumanism ===
Much of his work focuses on questions around technological enhancements and how they can improve the capacities of human beings. Fuller argues that the pursuit for enhancements is based on a need ″to create some distance between ourselves and the other animals.″  For Fuller, transhumanism offers humanity the prospect "to re-engineer the human body to enable us to live longer so as to work and play harder."
He featured in the 2016 documentary The Future of Work and Death.

== Principal works ==

=== Science Vs Religion? ===
In 2007, Fuller wrote Science Vs Religion?: Intelligent Design and the Problem of Evolution. In addition to introduction and conclusion chapters, it has chapters on the history of the relationship between religion and science, the thesis that modern science has its basis in an attempt by humanity to transcend itself and reach God, how Fuller believes complexity distinguishes ID from "other versions of creationism", legal issues, and the future of "Darwinism".
Professor of mathematics at Rutgers University Norman Levitt, in a review, described it as "a truly miserable piece of work, crammed with errors scientific, historical, and even theological". Levitt took issue with the following points: 

Fuller's acceptance at face value of William Dembski's claims on complexity and randomness, and his failure to come to grips with the wealth of results that this field has generated and with the trenchant criticism of Dembski's claims (or even to describe these claims accurately);
Fuller's disparagement of evolutionary biology, without doing "serious analysis of the working methods and logical structure of biology itself" on which to base it;
Fuller's misrepresentation of Isaac Newton's religious beliefs in order to make a point that is in fact antithetical to Newton's views;
Levitt infers that Fuller's views arise from an "animosity to science as such and to its cognitive authority [that] still pervades academic life outside the dominion of the science faculty".
Fuller later responded to these points, accusing Levitt of axe-grinding and questioning his understanding of the book, which Fuller claimed was less a defense of contemporary intelligent design theory than a demonstration of its rootedness in the history of science. Fuller also claims that Levitt misquotes one of the three passages Levitt cites from the book, making it mean the opposite of the original. Levitt subsequently responded at length to Fuller, concluding that "Fuller's misreading of the politics that generated and sustains the ID movement is so complete as to constitute a peculiar pathology all its own." Fuller has long been highly critical of the views of science of his opponents in the Science Wars, including Levitt, dating back at least to 1994.
Sahotra Sarkar, a philosophy professor and integrative biologist at the University of Texas at Austin also criticized Fuller's book for presenting an "analysis of the intellectual disputes over contemporary ID creationism [that] is almost vacuous". Sarkar further states that the book has an idiosyncratic interpretation of the history of philosophy, including of Kant, and of logical positivism; having a limited grasp of the history of science, including making claims about Newton, Cuvier, Agassiz, Lamarck, Mendel, Pearson and Galton that are not supported by their writings; failure to engage the "debate over naturalism that ID creationism has generated" with "remarks on supernaturalism [that show] him to be equally non-cognizant of the work of ... Philip Johnson"; and other scientific errors.