Samwik,
Kauffman is a strict materialist.
There is no doubt that materialism is a constraint. "Constraint" does not mean "bad." The Laws of Physics themselves are a constraints.
What kind of constraint is materialism? Materialism is the only thing that keeps us sane and grounded in reality. In ancient times, everything you could possibly study was "science." But "modern science" does not have that same meaning. Why? Because in the millennia of the practice of science, we've actually (well, some of us anyway) learned something about what works and what does not work - and moreover, we have a pretty good idea of WHY it doesn't work.
This is not to say that people can't go on and study whatever they want, but the religionists have a deep-seated, absolute NEED to call whatever it is they do by the name "science." A sure way of achieving their goal is to change the definition of science to something more similar to medieval "science." Why? Because there's something we're missing, something we're not explaining. something we can't explain with existing science.
The presumption is that they're offering something that actually CAN "explain things" - well, so long as we use the appropriate definition of "explain."
